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 What entertainment can teach communicators about writing people actually want to read

 By Matthew Celestial

I have spent a lot of my career trying to convince people to watch things: films, television shows, animated series, games, characters you have never met and stories you did not know existed until someone decided they were worth putting in front of you. It is one of the things I have always loved about working in entertainment: you can spend months building a campaign, perfecting the messaging and arguing over precisely how something should be introduced to the world, but eventually it reaches an audience that was not in any of those meetings and has no obligation to care about how hard you worked on it.

They either pay attention or they don’t.

Entertainment teaches you that lesson quickly, and sometimes brutally. Nobody owes you the next episode. Nobody has to finish the trailer. Nobody is required to understand why your film matters, fall in love with your character or read the interview you worked incredibly hard to place. There is always another show, another creator, another notification, another story and, increasingly, an entire internet waiting one thumb movement away.

Which is why I have been thinking about something happening in professional communications.

Our writing is getting flat.

Not necessarily bad. In fact, much of it is technically very good. It is grammatically correct. “Strategically aligned.” Appropriately punctuated. The key messages are there, the executive quote has been approved really quickly and everyone who needed to see it has seen it.

Open LinkedIn on almost any morning and you will find organizations thrilled to announce something, executives excited to share something else and companies proud to partner with another company that is, presumably, equally proud to partner with them.

“The Great Flattening”

 Naturally, it would be convenient to blame artificial intelligence for all of this. However, corporate  writing has always been interchangeable even before we started integrating ChatGPT within our communications plans.

There have always been forces pulling professional language toward the middle. Legal needs to review it. Marketing has terminology it wants included. Leadership has preferences. Someone wants another key message in the second paragraph. Someone else thinks a sentence sounds too strong. The writer changes it, sends it back, changes it again and, after enough rounds of revisions, the final version arrives at that magical place where nobody is particularly offended by it.

Nobody is particularly moved by it either.

Generative AI didn’t create that instinct, but it has made the conversation much more interesting because we can now produce an astonishing amount of perfectly acceptable language almost instantly. A reasonably good prompt can produce a respectable news release, executive quote, newsletter introduction, LinkedIn post or corporate statement before most of us have finished making coffee.

For communicators, that should be both exciting and slightly terrifying.

Because if competent writing becomes abundant, competence alone becomes less valuable. The differentiators start becoming the things that are considerably harder to manufacture at scale: a surprising observation, a distinctive voice, cultural literacy, humour, judgment, specificity, curiosity, reporting, taste and the ability to recognize when something technically works but simply isn’t interesting. Above all, there is the increasingly rare quality of actually having something to say.

DOES ANYONE CARE?

One of the reasons I have loved working across animation, film, television and games is that entertainment operates under an unusually unforgiving condition: the audience can leave whenever it wants.

Think about how much information a trailer is expected to communicate in a matter of minutes. It has to introduce a world, establish tone, give us characters worth following, create an emotional response and leave enough unanswered that we want more. A poster might get a few seconds of someone’s attention. A show’s premise needs to survive being reduced to a sentence.

Behind all of those decisions is essentially the same question:

Why would anyone care?

It sounds almost embarrassingly obvious, but it is a ruthless editorial test. What’s the hook? Who is this actually for? What haven’t they seen before? Where is the tension? What should they feel? What might they remember tomorrow? Why would they tell someone else about it? These aren’t exclusively entertainment questions. They’re questions communications professionals must face.

ATTENTION IS FADING

This is where I think communications has to become much more realistic about the environment in which our work actually exists.

We might categorize a CEO announcement as executive communications, a news release as media relations, an annual report as corporate communications and a LinkedIn post as social content, but the person encountering those things does not organize their attention according to our communications plans.

Their LinkedIn feed contains your carefully approved executive statement beside someone’s promotion, a creator’s video, an advertisement, a former colleague’s career announcement and a post they profoundly disagree with. Their phone contains your newsletter beside Netflix, TikTok, YouTube, Spotify, Reddit, sports highlights, breaking news, text messages and the group chat they would almost certainly rather be reading.  That is the actual competitive environment.

Your annual report is probably not competing with another annual report for someone’s attention.

That doesn’t mean the annual report should suddenly have a cliffhanger, or that every CEO needs to become a content creator, or that a serious piece of public-interest communication should be rewritten like the season finale of Succession. There are moments when communications should be deliberately straightforward, restrained and even boring. But we should be much more respectful of what we are asking from people when we ask them to pay attention.

When you think about it, attention is not the final outcome of communication. Typically, it is the admission price. Before somebody can understand our message, trust our organization, reconsider an issue, remember a fact or take action, something considerably more basic has to happen first. They have to keep reading.

WE NEED TO BORROW THE WRITERS’ ROOM TEST

I don’t think communicators need to turn every communications department into a writers’ room, but I do think we could borrow some of its instincts. The next time something is almost ready to leave your desk, forget for a moment how difficult it was to get approved and read the opening again.

Would you keep watching? Does the first paragraph genuinely earn the second, or does it spend 150 words clearing its throat before getting to the interesting part? Then ask the question entertainment people are almost annoyingly obsessed with: what’s the hook?

Not the key message, not the organizational objective and not the thing leadership most wants included. What is the idea that makes another human being lean forward rather than move on?

A hook does not have to be sensational. It can be a surprising fact, a useful insight, an unresolved problem, a contradiction, a human story or simply a genuinely important piece of information presented clearly. What matters is that there is a reason for someone to continue.

Then ask who you are actually talking to.

“Stakeholders” is not a person. Neither is “the general public.”

What does this particular reader already know? What are they doing when they encounter this? What might they misunderstand? What do they care about that has absolutely nothing to do with your organization?

Entertainment companies can become almost obsessive about audiences because their survival depends on understanding them. Communications professionals should probably be just as obsessive.

And then there is the test I have increasingly come to love: Could anyone else have written this?

Take the company name out of the announcement and replace it with its closest competitor. Change the executive’s name. Leave everything else untouched. Does it still work?

If the answer is yes, you may not have a writing problem so much as a specificity problem.

Words like innovative, transformative, authentic, purpose-driven and industry-leading are not inherently meaningless, but they become close to meaningless when everyone can plausibly use them. Specificity is harder. Specificity requires knowing what is actually different, finding the detail that proves it and trusting the audience enough to let that detail do some of the work.

Finally, ask the question that the entertainment industry ultimately lives or dies by: Will anyone talk about this afterwards? 

Not necessarily online. Not necessarily publicly. But is there a fact, an idea, a sentence or a story worth carrying into another conversation? Because being read is good, yes. However, we want to be remembered considerably.

WRITING ISN’T THE DECORATION AT THE END OF THE STRATEGY

There is a tendency in communications to treat writing as the final layer of the work. The strategy happens first. Objectives are established, stakeholders are mapped, messages are developed, risks are considered and approvals begin moving through the organization. Somewhere toward the end, a writer is handed all of this and asked to make it sound good.

But writing isn’t the wrapping paper around communications strategy. Writing is part of the strategy.

The strongest key message in the world has limited value if nobody reaches the paragraph containing it, just as the most carefully developed organizational narrative cannot do much if it sounds indistinguishable from the narrative of every other organization in the category.

And this is where I think generative AI ultimately makes the future of writing much more interesting rather than less.

For years, one of the practical challenges facing communications teams was production: How do we make enough content? How do we feed all of these channels? How do we write another version of this? How do we turn this announcement into five other things?

Technology is rapidly making that problem easier. The challenge is that we have to ask ourselves if our content is worth someone’s attention. We, now, must become editorial directors of our own work.

MAYBE WE NEED TO ENTERTAIN A LITTLE MORE 

I can already imagine the objection to all of this: public relations isn’t entertainment. It isn’t.

A crisis statement is not a screenplay. A public-health advisory does not need a plot twist. An employee who needs information about their benefits should not have to make it through three acts to find it. Sometimes the best writing is simply clear.

But I think entertainment understands something about communication that becomes more valuable with every additional thing fighting for our attention: you cannot force an audience to care. But you can give them a reason to.

I’ve spent years around people trying to make audiences care about characters that don’t actually exist. When you think about it, that is a fairly extraordinary communications challenge. Somehow, a collection of drawings, pixels, performances or words can become meaningful enough that someone quotes a character twenty years later, buys something with their face on it, makes art inspired by them, travels to a convention to celebrate them or introduces that same story to their children.

That kind of connection isn’t created because somebody found the perfect synonym for innovative. It comes from specificity, character, emotion, surprise and craft. An understanding of the audience and, perhaps most importantly, respect for the fact that their attention has to be earned.

Public relations does not need to become entertainment, and every organization certainly does not need to start behaving like a media company. But our profession could borrow some of entertainment’s respect for the person sitting on the other side of the screen.

They can scroll past. They can close the tab. They can delete the email. They can stop watching. They can stop reading. And in a world where producing more words has never been easier, perhaps our job isn’t simply to produce more of them. Maybe, just maybe, it is to give people a reason to stay.

So before we ask whether the next piece of communication is approved, optimized, aligned and on-brand, I think there is one more question worth asking.

Would I keep reading? 

Matthew Celestial is a Toronto-based writer and communications professional covering media, culture, entertainment and the ideas shaping how we communicate. He has spent more than a decade working across animation, film, technology and consumer brands, and is Managing Partner at Rhetor.

 

 

Communications professionals should read more romance novels 

Why becoming a better writer might require reading outside public relations 

By Matthew Celestial

I think communications professionals should read fewer books about public relations.

I don’t mean we should stop learning our craft. There are books about public relations, journalism, marketing, business and leadership that have fundamentally shaped how I think about my work, and there is enormous value in understanding the theory and practice behind what we do.

But I have started to wonder what happens when the only writing we consume is written by people who sound like us, for people who work like us, about the same problems we spend all day thinking about. Eventually, perhaps unsurprisingly, we start sounding like one another.

Some of the writing I find myself studying most closely these days has almost nothing to do with public relations. I love romance novels. I love romantic comedies. Give me two people who clearly belong together, 110 minutes of increasingly ridiculous reasons they cannot admit it, a beautifully timed misunderstanding and an airport scene that would almost certainly result in an arrest under normal circumstances, and I am there.

I’ve watched enough romantic comedies to know the architecture. I know there will probably be a meet-cute. I know somebody will say the wrong thing. I know there will be a moment when everything seems hopeless. I know somebody is going to realize something approximately 15 minutes before the credits roll. And still, when it is done well, I keep watching.

With all of the romcoms I was diving into this summer, I realized I wasn’t just consuming them but rather studying the communication.

Romance has an interesting challenge as a genre because the audience frequently enters the story with a pretty good idea of where it is going. That should make it boring. It doesn’t though.

A reader can pick up a romance novel knowing that some version of happily-ever-after is probably waiting at the end and still stay awake far later than intended because they need to know what happens on the next page. That tells us something important about writing.

Knowing where a story is going does not necessarily make it predictable. Not caring how it gets there does. Now, what does this have to do with the communications profession?

Communicators work with predictable destinations all the time.

The company is pleased with its quarterly results. The organization believes its new initiative will create meaningful change. The executive is optimistic about the future. The partnership brings together two organizations with complementary strengths. We often know the ending before we start writing.

Our job is to make the journey there worth someone’s attention.

Romance writers do this through character, conflict, anticipation, specificity and emotional stakes. They understand that two people simply meeting, discovering they like each other and living happily ever after would make for a remarkably short book. Something has to happen.

Professional communications obviously isn’t fiction, and we should never manufacture conflict or drama where none exists. But sometimes, in our determination to present organizations at their most polished, we remove the very things that make their stories interesting.

The obstacle. The difficult decision. The thing that didn’t work. The unexpected result. The person who changed their mind. The reason this mattered in the first place. We leave the conclusion and remove the journey. Then we wonder why nobody keeps reading.

Good characters aren’t described. They’re revealed. One of the things fiction has made me much more conscious of is how often professional writing tells readers what to think instead of giving them enough information to reach the conclusion themselves.

Consider the way we introduce executives.

They are visionary, dynamic, accomplished, innovative, passionate, they have an impressive track record and are committed to driving transformational growth. Perhaps all of those things are true. But compare that with the way a novelist introduces a character.

A good writer might tell us what someone orders for breakfast, what they notice when they enter a room, the joke they make when they’re uncomfortable, the photograph they keep on their desk or the thing they do when they think nobody is watching.

We understand the person through details.

This is something entertainment understands particularly well. Characters become memorable because they are specific. They have contradictions, habits, flaws, desires, histories and ways of speaking that belong to them.

The same principle can make nonfiction and professional communications dramatically more interesting. Instead of telling me that an entrepreneur is resilient, tell me about the moment they almost closed the company. Instead of telling me that an organization is innovative, show me what it built that nobody else was willing to try. Instead of telling me an executive cares deeply about an issue, show me why.

Specificity is evidence. And evidence is usually more interesting than an adjective. Professional writing could use a little more tension

I should clarify what I mean here before somebody adds a love triangle to the annual report.

When writers talk about tension, they aren’t necessarily talking about conflict between people. Tension is often simply the distance between what someone wants and what currently exists. Romcoms are extraordinarily good at this. We know these people like each other. They know these people like each other. Everybody else in the fictional universe appears to know these people like each other. And yet. That and yet can sustain hundreds of pages.

Communications has its own versions of and yet.

We want cities to be more sustainable, and yet changing infrastructure is expensive and complicated. We have access to more communications technology than at any point in history, and yet trust remains difficult to build. An organization has an ambitious goal, and yet something stands between where it is and where it wants to be.

That space is often where the story lives.

Corporate writing has a tendency to resolve tension as quickly as possible because unresolved questions can make organizations uncomfortable. We prefer certainty. We prefer solutions. We prefer announcing that the challenge has already been addressed.

But sometimes the honest question is considerably more compelling than the polished answer.

Voice matters more when everyone can write.

There is another reason I have been thinking about fiction lately.

Generative AI can now produce technically competent professional writing in seconds, which means simply being able to construct a grammatically correct paragraph is becoming less distinctive. Voice becomes more interesting.

Pick up novels by several great writers and you will notice how differently they see the world. Sentence length changes. Rhythm changes. Humour changes. The details they notice change. Even when two writers are exploring similar themes, you can often feel the presence of a particular person behind the words.

Professional writing tends to work in the opposite direction.

We are often trained to disappear. Sometimes that is entirely appropriate. The communications professional isn’t supposed to become the story, and writing on behalf of an organization requires discipline.

But organizational voice doesn’t have to mean the absence of voice. An executive should sound like that executive. A university should not sound like a bank. A children’s organization should not sound like an accounting firm. Two companies competing in the same category should still have different ways of seeing the world.

If every organization feeds roughly the same information into roughly the same tools and asks for “professional, engaging copy,” sameness becomes almost inevitable. The advantage belongs to whoever knows what they actually sound like. Read for rhythm, not just information.

Romantic comedies taught me another lesson that I didn’t initially think of as a writing lesson at all: timing.

A great joke delivered two seconds too late doesn’t work. Neither does a confession that arrives before we care about the characters making it. Stories have rhythm. Scenes have rhythm. Conversations have rhythm.

Writing does too.

Sometimes a sentence needs room to wander, gathering detail and momentum as it moves toward an idea the reader hasn’t quite reached yet. Sometimes it doesn’t. Sometimes the sentence should stop.

Professional writing can become strangely monotonous when every sentence has roughly the same construction, every paragraph roughly the same length and every idea receives exactly the amount of explanation expected of it.

Read great fiction aloud and you can hear the difference.

Long sentence. Short one. A pause. Something unexpected. Then movement again.

This is one of the reasons I think becoming a better writer requires reading beyond the kinds of things we are expected to produce professionally. You start noticing not just what writers are saying, but how they are controlling your attention while saying it.

Once you notice rhythm, it becomes difficult not to hear it everywhere. Read something that has nothing to do with your job. Perhaps the broader lesson isn’t really about romance novels at all.

It is about creative cross-training.

If you write speeches, read comedy and pay attention to timing. If you work in crisis communications, read thrillers and notice how information is revealed. If you write executive communications, read a memoir and study how people develop a recognizable voice. If you work in branding, read poetry and look at what happens when every word has to earn its place.

If you pitch journalists, read journalism, not just the headlines, but the structure, the ledes, the transitions and the details reporters choose to include. If you communicate with communities, read novels written by people whose lives look nothing like yours. And yes, if you want to understand tension, character, anticipation and emotional payoff, read a romance novel.

The objective isn’t to imitate these genres. Please do not end your next CEO memo with a kiss in the rain. The point is to expose yourself to writers solving different problems.

Because eventually those techniques start following you back to work. You notice that the opening isn’t doing enough. You recognize when you’ve described someone instead of showing us who they are. You hear when three consecutive sentences have exactly the same rhythm. You realize that the interesting part of the story is buried in paragraph eight. You become less satisfied with language simply because it is correct.

You start wanting it to be good. I still want the happy conclusion. There is probably another reason I love romantic comedies and romance novels, and it has nothing to do with professional development.

I like hope.

I like watching people find each other. I like ridiculous misunderstandings and grand gestures and dialogue that is somehow much cleverer than anything anybody says in real life. I like knowing, particularly when the world feels complicated, that for the next couple of hours somebody has constructed a universe in which things might work out.

I don’t think writers need to apologize for loving the things they love.

In fact, I increasingly think the opposite. Our taste shapes our writing. The movies we watch, novels we underline, magazines we keep, jokes we repeat, songs we play again and conversations we remember all teach us something about language, whether we realize it or not.

The trick is learning to pay attention.

So yes, read the communications books. Read the industry reports. Study the frameworks. Understand the research. Know your audience, your objectives and your key messages.

But every once in a while, close the business book. Pick up something that has absolutely nothing to do with your job. Read the sentences slowly. Notice what makes you laugh. Notice when you become impatient. Notice the line you reread because you wish you had written it. Notice when you suddenly care deeply about a person who does not exist.

Then ask yourself how the writer did that.

For me, sometimes that means a romance novel. And if two fictional people taking 350 pages to realize they’re in love can teach me to write one better paragraph, I consider that a pretty good professional development expense.

Matthew Celestial is a Toronto-based writer and communications professional covering media, culture, entertainment and the ideas shaping how we communicate. He has spent more than a decade working across animation, film, technology and consumer brands, and is Managing Partner at Rhetor and the founder of Statement Worldwide and Matte Equation.

When and How to Go Negative

 By Mike Medeiros

There always seems to be an election campaign going on somewhere. Sweden and the German state of Sachsen-Anhalt both held highly publicized elections earlier this month. In Canada, campaigns are currently underway for the Quebec provincial election and municipal elections across Ontario. Brazil is also in the middle of its 2026 election campaign, while the United States is heading towards its November midterm elections. In the latter two cases, campaigns can get quite nasty.

Not all election campaigns are negative. But political attacks are a familiar feature of modern campaigning, and they can be some of the most memorable messages voters encounter.

But are they effective?

To answer that question, I spoke with Alessandro Nai, an Associate Professor of Political Communication and Journalism at the Amsterdam School of Communication Research (ASCoR) at the University of Amsterdam. Nai is an expert on negative communication and negative campaigning.

For communication professionals, negative communication can be tempting when criticizing a competitor, responding to an attack, or simply trying to attract attention. But when does going negative actually make sense, and what are the risks? 

Does Going Negative Work?

There is a widespread belief that negative communication works. According to Nai, this belief is particularly entrenched among campaign consultants, who often see attacking an opponent as a necessary part of campaigning.

However, the reality is more complicated.

Negative messages can be effective at capturing attention, particularly when they are aggressive or provocative. They can also mobilize segments of the population that are already highly polarized or respond positively to aggressive messaging.

But attention is not the same thing as persuasion.

A negative message can hurt the target while also hurting the person delivering it. This is known as the backlash effect. While an attack may reduce support for an opponent, it can also reduce support for the attacker.

This makes it difficult to say that negative communication simply “works.” Its effectiveness depends on what we mean by success. Is the objective to attract attention, damage a competitor, mobilize existing supporters, change people’s minds, or generate media coverage?

A message that generates significant attention may look successful through media coverage, social media engagement, or impressions. But if that attention comes at the expense of the organisation’s reputation, the result may be less positive than the initial metrics suggest.

Not all publicity is necessarily good publicity!

When Should You Go Negative?

If negative communication can produce both benefits and costs, when should a communicator actually use it?

For Nai, the first consideration should be the image of the person or organisation delivering the message.

People do not evaluate a message in isolation. They evaluate it in relation to what they already believe about the communicator. An aggressive attack from someone known for being confrontational may therefore be received differently from the same attack coming from someone with a reputation for being positive and conciliatory.

This is related to what researchers call expectancy violation. We have expectations about how certain people are supposed to behave. When they behave differently, we notice it and may react negatively.

Nai points to gender as one example. Research suggests that women who engage in negative campaigning can sometimes face greater backlash because voters may hold stereotypes that women should behave in a kinder or more cooperative manner.

Similarly, a candidate with an aggressive public persona may be given more latitude when attacking an opponent because the behaviour is consistent with what voters already expect.

The same principle can apply outside politics.

Before going negative, communicators should therefore ask: Does this message fit our existing image?

If it does not, that does not necessarily mean the message should not be used. An organisation may deliberately want to change how it is perceived. But that choice comes with costs and needs to be made consciously.

The second question a communicator should ask is: What exactly are we trying to achieve?

A communicator might want to weaken a competitor, energize supporters, attract media attention, or change the public conversation. These are very different objectives.

Attacking a competitor may energize existing supporters, but it may also alienate people who are undecided or less committed.

Generating media attention may also be relatively easy through an aggressive message, but once journalists and commentators pick up the story, the organisation loses some control over the narrative.

Context matters too. There is a difference between initiating an attack and responding to one. According to Nai, audiences tend to be more forgiving when a communicator responds to an attack because a response is expected. But by responding, the communicator may also allow the opponent to determine the subject of the debate.

When Does Going Negative Go Too Far?

Perhaps the biggest danger is assuming that there is a universal formula for when negative communication becomes too negative.

Nai cautions against treating negative communication as inherently bad. Criticism can serve an important purpose. Negative campaigning can, for example, expose wrongdoing. More broadly, criticism allows organisations and individuals to challenge claims and hold competitors accountable.

The problem comes when negativity becomes an objective in itself.

Nai suggests that negative communication becomes particularly problematic when it is primarily an exercise in violating social norms or being aggressive simply for the sake of attracting attention.

The difficulty is that these norms are not universal. What one person considers impolite, another may consider perfectly acceptable. Those norms can also change over time.

Another important consideration is who receives the message.

Nai’s research suggests that people respond differently to negative and uncivil communication depending on their political alignment and individual characteristics. People who are closely aligned with the communicator are more likely to forgive attacks, even when they might otherwise find them distasteful.

Personality also matters. Individuals who are more aggressive or have a greater need for chaos are more likely to view attacks as acceptable or entertaining.

For communication professionals, this means there is no single audience response to a negative message. A message designed to energize one audience may alienate another.

That is particularly important in today’s fragmented media environment, where organisations communicate simultaneously with loyal supporters, critics, journalists, employees, and the general public.

Negative Communication Is a Strategic Choice

So, should communicators go negative?

There’s no one-size-fits-all answer. Negative communication can attract attention and serve a legitimate strategic purpose; but it can also produce backlash, damage the communicator’s image, and give others control over the conversation.

For communication professionals, going negative should therefore be a strategic choice, not simply a reaction to the pressure to be noticed.

Before going negative, communicators should consider the communicator, the audience, the objective, and the context. Does the message fit the organisation’s existing image? Is the goal to weaken a competitor, mobilize supporters, generate attention, or shape the public debate? Who will receive the message, and how might they interpret it? Is the organisation initiating the attack or responding to one?

There is also another question worth asking: What happens if the message works?

An attack that successfully attracts attention can take on a life of its own. Journalists may pick it up. Supporters may amplify it. Critics may respond. The organisation may then find itself defending the tone or substance of its own message rather than communicating the issue it originally wanted to discuss.

Negative communication can be rewarding. In some situations, it may even be expected. But the fact that an attack gets noticed does not necessarily mean that it has succeeded.

For communication professionals, the challenge therefore is not simply knowing when to go negative. It is knowing why they are doing it, who they are speaking to, and what they are willing to risk in the process. 

Mike Medeiros is a political scientist and communications specialist with expertise in political psychology, public communication, and audience behaviour. He holds a PhD in Political Science and recently completed the Strategic Public Relations program at the University of Toronto.

AI Can Write the Message, It Can’t Own the Consequences.

By Oluwayemisi Mafe

 

Artificial intelligence can draft a media release in seconds. It can turn a lengthy report into social media posts, suggest responses to difficult questions, summarize stakeholder feedback, develop key messages and produce the first draft of an executive speech before many of us have finished our morning coffee.

For communications professionals working under constant pressure to do more, faster and often with fewer resources, that capability is enormously attractive but there is a question we should be asking more often; when AI helps create a message and that message causes harm, who owns the consequences? The answer cannot be the technology.

An AI tool will not sit across the table from an executive team explaining why inaccurate information was published. It will not answer a journalist demanding to know how a false claim made it into a media release. It will not rebuild trust with employees after confidential information is mishandled. And it will not stand before stakeholders whose experiences were misrepresented by language that sounded perfectly polished but fundamentally misunderstood them, we will.

That is why the most important conversation about AI in public relations is no longer simply about what the technology can do. It is about what we remain accountable for when we use it. As much as the efficiency is real, so is the responsibility.

There is little value in pretending communications professionals should somehow remain untouched by AI. When used well, generative AI can be an extraordinary productivity tool. It can help us overcome the tyranny of the blank page, organize information, generate alternatives, identify gaps in a draft and adapt material for different channels and audiences.

The technology will continue to improve, and communications teams will continue to integrate it into their workflows. The question, therefore, is not whether AI belongs in communications. It is whether our governance, professional standards and judgment are evolving as quickly as our adoption of the technology. Truth is, there is a fundamental difference between delegating a task and delegating accountability.

We can delegate aspects of drafting to technology but cannot delegate our responsibility for what eventually carries an organization’s name. That distinction matters. A sentence can be grammatically flawless but factually wrong. A response can be perfectly structured and culturally tone-deaf. A stakeholder message can sound empathetic without demonstrating any real understanding of the people receiving it. An executive statement can be eloquent while making promises the organization cannot keep.

AI can produce plausible language remarkably well. Professional communicators must determine whether that language is true, appropriate, responsible and strategically sound. While accuracy is only the first test, since much of the discussion about responsible AI use focuses understandably on accuracy, generative AI can produce incorrect information with remarkable confidence, making verification essential. Factual accuracy is only one dimension of communications judgment.

Context needs to be considered as a technically accurate statement issued during a sensitive situation can still cause reputational damage if it ignores what stakeholders are feeling or experiencing. A message that works for one community may be inappropriate for another. Language that sounds neutral to an AI system may carry historical, cultural or political significance that changes how people interpret it.

Then there is confidentiality as well. Communicators routinely handle information that organizations would not want entered casually into third-party systems; unreleased financial information, employee matters, litigation, government relations strategies, crisis scenarios, patient or customer information, acquisition plans and executive deliberations. The convenience of asking an AI tool to ‘summarize this’ does not remove our obligation to understand where that information is going and whether we are authorized to put it there.

Bias also presents another challenge as AI systems learn from vast quantities of existing human-created material. They can reproduce assumptions, stereotypes and patterns of exclusion embedded in that material. A communications professional who accepts an output because it sounds polished may inadvertently amplify those problems.

And then there is something harder to measure; judgment. Should the organization respond at all? Is this the right moment? Who needs to be consulted before we speak? What might this sentence mean to someone outside the room? What are we missing? What happens if this message becomes tomorrow’s headline? Those are not mere questions, they are asking for strategy, relationships, ethics and organizational consequence.

The danger of confusing fluency with judgment is perhaps one of generative AI’s greatest strengths and also one of its greatest risks even when it sounds convincing. We have traditionally associated articulate writing with expertise. AI disrupts that assumption because it can produce authoritative-sounding language without possessing accountability, lived experience or organizational context. This makes human scrutiny more important, not less as a beautifully written answer can still be the wrong answer.

For communications professionals, this creates a new kind of risk. When an AI-generated draft is already polished, we may approach it as editors rather than interrogators. We correct a phrase, adjust the tone and perhaps verify a statistic but responsible use requires harder questions. Where did this claim come from? What assumptions underpin this recommendation? Whose perspective is absent? Is this consistent with what the organization has previously said and done? Could we defend every sentence publicly? And perhaps the most important question; would I be comfortable putting my professional judgment behind this? If the answer is no, the content is not ready simply because the technology says it is.

Human-in-the-loop cannot mean human-at-the-end. Many organizations respond to AI risk with the phrase ‘human in the loop.’ That is a useful principle, but only if the human is doing more than proofreading the final output. Human oversight should begin before the prompt is written. What information is appropriate to provide to the tool? What problem are we asking it to solve? Is AI even appropriate for this particular task? What expertise should inform the output? Who has authority to approve the final communication? These decisions are especially important when communications involve vulnerable communities, sensitive employee matters, public policy, health information, legal issues or crises.

In those situations, the communicator’s role is not simply to make AI-generated content sound better, it is to ensure the entire communications process reflects sound professional judgment that may sometimes mean deciding not to use AI at all. Professionalism has always included knowing which tools to use. Increasingly, it must also include knowing when not to use them.

Communications needs a seat at the AI governance table because responsible AI cannot be left exclusively to IT, legal or information-security teams. Those functions are critical, but communicators bring a different perspective. We understand audiences. We understand how language can be interpreted beyond its intended meaning. We think about trust, reputation, stakeholder expectations and the gap that can emerge between what an organization intends to say and what people actually hear.

That perspective belongs in organizational AI governance. Communications leaders should be helping organizations establish clear expectations around issues such as what information can be entered into AI systems, which communications require mandatory human review, how AI-generated facts and sources are verified, when disclosure may be appropriate, who approves high-risk content, and how errors involving AI-assisted communication will be handled. This is not about building bureaucracy around every prompt. It is about ensuring that the speed of adoption does not outpace the organization’s ability to manage the consequences.

Stop press, just before you press publish, perhaps responsible AI use in communications can begin with a simple accountability test. Before AI-assisted content leaves our hands, we should be able to answer these questions. Is it accurate? Have the facts, quotations, statistics and sources been independently verified? Is it appropriate? Does the message reflect the audience, cultural context, timing and circumstances in which it will be received? Is the information protected? Have confidentiality, privacy, copyright and organizational data policies been respected? Whose perspective might be missing? Have we considered bias, accessibility and the stakeholders most affected by the communication? Who owns this message? Is there a human being prepared to stand behind its accuracy, judgment and consequences? If nobody can confidently answer the fifth question, the first four are not enough.

Our value was never just the words; there is another reason I believe this moment should excite rather than frighten communications professionals. AI is forcing us to confront a question our profession has wrestled with for years, what is the strategic value of a communicator? If our value is primarily our ability to produce competent copy quickly, then increasingly capable AI presents an obvious challenge. But that has never been the highest value of our profession. Our value is understanding the environment in which words will land. It is recognizing the stakeholder who has not been considered. It is challenging an executive when the proposed message and organizational behaviour do not align. It is understanding that sometimes the right communications advice is not say this, but change this. It is anticipating how today’s statement may become tomorrow’s reputational issue. It is knowing when empathy is required, when evidence is required, when silence is appropriate and when an organization needs to listen before it speaks.

As AI helps us do some of our work faster, perhaps that gives us an opportunity to spend more of our time doing the work that requires precisely what AI does not possess; context, courage, empathy, ethical judgment and accountability. The future of communications, then, should not be framed as humans versus machines. The more useful distinction is between capability and responsibility.

While AI will become increasingly capable, when an organization communicates, someone must still decide whether the message is true, whether it is responsible, whether it reflects the organization’s values and whether it deserves the trust of the people receiving it. Truth is, AI can write the message but it cannot own the consequences.

Oluwayemisi Mafe, MCIPR, ACIM, MNIMN, ANIPR, is a strategic communications and public affairs leader with more than 15 years of experience helping organizations build trust, strengthen stakeholder relationships, and navigate complex reputation and policy issues across Africa and Canada. She specializes in corporate communications, public affairs, health advocacy, stakeholder engagement, and inclusive communications.

Co-Presidents Message

There is something about September that always feels like the start of a new year. Even long after our own school days are behind us, the rhythm of the season has a way of inviting a reset. Students are heading back to class, routines are being rebuilt, calendars are filling up, and there is a crispness in the air that reminds us it is time to refocus.

For communicators, this is a natural moment to pause and ask: How do I want to show up in the months ahead? What habits will help me do my best work? What goals deserve my attention? Whether you are stepping into a new role, leading a team, building your confidence, navigating change, or simply looking for new inspiration, September gives us permission to begin again with intention.

It is also the time of year when many organizations begin planning and budgeting for the year ahead. As you consider priorities, campaigns, resources and team needs, we encourage you to make professional development part of that conversation. Investing in your growth is not a nice-to-have. It is how we stay sharp, responsive and ready for what is next in a profession that continues to evolve quickly.

That is where CPRS Toronto continues to play such an important role. Our community offers opportunities to learn, connect, exchange ideas, access professional resources, pursue recognition and stay current with what is happening across the public relations and communications landscape in Toronto. Membership is not only about attending events or reading updates. It is about being part of a network of professionals who understand the pace, complexity and impact of the work we do.

As we move into this new season, we hope you will take time to refine your routines, set meaningful goals and choose the supports that will help you keep growing. Think about the kind of communicator, colleague and leader you want to be this year—and then make space for the learning, relationships and community that will help you get there.

On behalf of CPRS Toronto, we wish you a productive, energizing and inspiring September. We look forward to seeing how our community continues to learn from one another, support one another and strengthen the profession together in the year ahead.

Sincerely,

Andrea Chrysanthou, APR & Erin Griffin

Co-Presidents, CPRS Toronto

As the PR profession continues to expand beyond traditional communications roles, practitioners are increasingly being called on to collaborate across disciplines, advise business leaders and help shape decisions. For September’s In Conversation With blog series, we connected with Jennifer McCormack, Vice President and Practice Lead, Healthcare, and Interim Managing Partner, Toronto at NATIONAL Public Relations.

With 24 years of communications experience, including 11 years at Johnson & Johnson Innovative Medicine Canada and four years at AstraZeneca Canada, Jennifer brings a wealth of experience in healthcare communications and senior leadership. We spoke with Jennifer about the evolution of her role, the value of cross-functional collaboration, the continued impact of AI and why communicators need to see themselves as business leaders and advisors.

How has your role as a PR practitioner evolved in recent years?

In recent years, my role as a PR practitioner has evolved into senior leadership and greater management of our business at NATIONAL. I am still very involved in the day-to-day management of client work but have added this greater responsibility.

What major shifts have you seen in the PR profession, and how are they shaping your work today?

I am so proud of our profession. I have seen the shift and evolution to so many areas of expertise. In my case, I have been in healthcare communications for some time, but there isn’t a day when I don’t work with my colleagues in public affairs, strategy, social or Indigenous relations etc. To do our work well, we need to collaborate with experts beyond our individual skillsets. As PR practitioners, we are also critical advisors within businesses. This wasn’t always the case, but we are making progress.

Looking ahead, what trends or changes do you think will define the role of PR practitioners in the future?

AI will continue to change the way we work and will improve efficiencies, but nothing can beat human counsel and advice. We always need to have our audiences in mind and remain empathetic and human-centric in what we do. What we do matters, but how we say it matters most.

What is your biggest piece of advice for PR practitioners moving forward?

My biggest piece of advice is to stay curious and learn the businesses you are in, whether it be in-house or on the agency side. As communicators, we are business leaders and advisors and need to see ourselves beyond tactical support. We can shape business decisions and policies, and it’s important we believe in that.

About CPRS Toronto’s In Conversation With blog series

Once a month, the In Conversation With series spotlights voices from across the communications field, featuring leaders and rising professionals who share their perspectives on industry trends, the future of the profession, and their own career journeys. These conversations aim to inspire, inform, and highlight the diverse experiences shaping the future of public relations.

If you would like to share your story or nominate a colleague, please contact us at communications@cprstoronto.com.

Reputation Isn’t Built in a Crisis, It’s Tested There

By Oluwayemisi Mafe

On a Friday afternoon, an organization’s carefully built reputation can be reduced to a single headline, a viral social media post, or a statement from a regulator. Within hours, executives are called into emergency meetings, communications teams are drafting holding statements, lawyers are reviewing messaging, and stakeholders are demanding answers. From the outside, it can appear that reputation is won or lost in those intense moments. In reality, the outcome was determined long before the crisis began.

After more than two decades working in strategic communications, public affairs and stakeholder engagement across healthcare, sustainability and highly regulated industries, I have observed a consistent pattern. Organizations that emerge from crises with their credibility intact are rarely those with the cleverest messaging. They are the ones that have spent years investing in trust, equipping leaders to communicate authentically, understanding their stakeholders and fostering a culture where employees already believe what leadership says. The crisis simply reveals whether that investment was made.

Reputation Is a Reserve, Not a Reaction

Reputation functions much like a bank account. Every transparent conversation with employees, every honest interaction with customers, every respectful engagement with policymakers, every fulfilled commitment to communities is a deposit. Every broken promise, delayed response, inconsistent message or perceived lack of accountability becomes a withdrawal. When disruption occurs, organizations draw upon whatever balance already exists.

Too often, communications strategies treat reputation as something to protect only when a crisis emerges. By then, the opportunity to build credibility has largely passed. This is particularly evident in sectors where trust is inseparable from public confidence. Whether communicating about public health, environmental policy or corporate responsibility, audiences are increasingly asking the same question; Why should we believe you now if we haven’t heard from you before? The answer cannot be manufactured during a press conference.

Trust Is Built Between Crises

One lesson that has remained constant throughout my career is that trust is not built during moments of uncertainty. It is built during ordinary days.

Organizations often invest significant resources in crisis simulations, media training and response protocols. These are all important. However, they sometimes receive greater attention than the everyday behaviours that determine whether stakeholders will extend the benefit of the doubt when challenges arise.

Trust grows when organizations:

• communicate consistently rather than only when necessary;
• acknowledge uncertainty instead of pretending to have all the answers;
• demonstrate that stakeholder concerns influence decision-making;
• honour commitments, even when no one is watching; and
• explain not only what decisions were made, but why they were made.

These practices rarely make headlines. They do, however, shape how stakeholders interpret every headline that follows.

Executive Communication Shapes Organizational Credibility

In nearly every significant communications challenge, attention eventually shifts to leadership. People do not simply evaluate what an organization says. They evaluate who is saying it.

Executives often assume that visibility is enough during a crisis. In reality, credibility matters far more than visibility. Employees, customers, regulators and communities look for leaders who demonstrate three qualities:

Clarity. Can they explain complex situations in language people understand?

Consistency. Does today’s message align with previous actions and commitments?

Authenticity. Do they sound like human beings acknowledging genuine concerns rather than reading carefully crafted talking points?

The most effective executive communicators understand that trust is not earned through perfection. It is earned through honesty. Leaders who acknowledge uncertainty while explaining what they know, what they do not yet know and what they are doing next often strengthen credibility rather than weaken it. Communications professionals have a critical role in helping executives find this balance. Our responsibility extends beyond drafting speeches or preparing media notes. We help leaders communicate with transparency, empathy and strategic intent.

Stakeholder Mapping Should Never Begin With the Crisis

One of the most common weaknesses I encounter is treating stakeholder mapping as an emergency exercise. When organizations first ask, who are our stakeholders? after a crisis begins, they are already behind. Effective stakeholder mapping is continuous because; stakeholders evolve, community expectations change, influence shifts, new advocacy groups emerge and employees become increasingly influential voices online. Communications teams must continuously reassess not only who stakeholders are but also:

• What matters most to them.
• How they prefer to receive information.
• Whom they trust.
• Which issues create concern.
• Where potential misunderstandings may arise.

Equally important is recognizing that stakeholders are interconnected. Employees influence customers. Community leaders influence policymakers. Professional associations influence media narratives. Investors increasingly evaluate environmental, social and governance performance alongside financial results. Understanding these relationships before disruption occurs enables organizations to communicate with greater precision when it matters most.

Internal Communication Is Your First Reputation Strategy

One of the most underestimated lessons from both public affairs and health communication is this; employees are rarely the last audience; they are often the first. When employees learn important news through social media before hearing from leadership, trust begins to erode immediately. When internal messaging differs from external messaging, credibility suffers. When leaders underestimate employees’ ability to recognize inconsistency, organizational culture becomes vulnerable.

Strong internal communication accomplishes far more than sharing information. It builds ambassadors. Employees who understand organizational decisions are more likely to explain them accurately, defend them appropriately and reinforce organizational values through everyday interactions.

External reputation often reflects internal reality. Organizations that communicate honestly with employees before speaking publicly consistently place themselves in a stronger position when scrutiny intensifies.

Lessons From Health Communication and Public Affairs

Working in health communication and public affairs reinforces one fundamental principle that facts alone do not build trust. People evaluate information through emotion, experience and existing relationships. Scientific evidence may be strong, policy decisions may be justified, operational reasoning may be sound, yet if stakeholders feel ignored, excluded or unheard, even accurate information may fail to persuade.

This is why effective communicators recognize that engagement is not simply about transmitting information, it is about listening. The organizations that maintained confidence during periods of significant uncertainty were often those that created genuine opportunities for dialogue rather than relying exclusively on one-way communication. Stakeholder engagement is not an activity that pauses during difficult periods, it becomes even more important.

The Strategic Opportunity for Communications Leaders

The communications profession has evolved significantly. We are no longer expected simply to write news releases or manage media inquiries. Today’s communications leaders influence executive decision-making, advise on organizational risk, shape stakeholder relationships and protect long-term reputation. This requires us to ask different questions, instead of asking How do we respond to this crisis? We should also ask:

• Have we built sufficient trust before today?
• Do our executives communicate with credibility?
• Do we truly understand our stakeholders?
• Are employees informed before external audiences?
• Have we earned the confidence we hope stakeholders will extend to us?

These questions are not crisis questions; they are leadership questions.

Final Thought

Every organization hopes it will never face a significant reputational challenge; few are that fortunate. Whether the catalyst is a public health emergency, a policy shift, a cybersecurity incident, a product issue or a leadership transition, disruption eventually arrives. When it does, the quality of the response certainly matters but the strength of the response depends on something much larger than a well-written statement. It depends on years of trust intentionally cultivated, relationships consistently nurtured, leaders prepared to communicate with authenticity and employees who believe the organization lives the values it communicates. Reputation is not built in a crisis; it is tested there because the real work begins long before the headlines.

Oluwayemisi Mafe, MCIPR, ACIM, MNIMN, ANIPR, is a strategic communications and public affairs leader with more than 15 years of experience helping organizations build trust, strengthen stakeholder relationships, and navigate complex reputation and policy issues across Africa and Canada. She specializes in corporate communications, public affairs, health advocacy, stakeholder engagement, and inclusive communications.