B.J. Talley

CMO: "We're cutting PR. AI search is going to make it irrelevant anyway." I get the logic. But AI search is exactly what makes PR more valuable, not less. Here's what companies ‘killing it’ in the AI space understand: 1. Generative search is an evaluation layer, not a discovery layer Traditional search gave you ten blue links and let you decide. Generative search does the deciding for you. This new model picks out which sources to trust before you even see the response. 2. AI systems reward the exact signals PR was built to create The PR fundamentals: • Authoritative sources • Consistent positioning • Editorial validation • Third-party credibility Are the exact same inputs that qualify a brand for AI citation. 3. Every earned placement is now a deposit in two banks The first bank is the audience reading the article today. The second is the training and retrieval layer that will shape how AI describes a company’s space to audiences for years to come. Most teams are still only counting deposits in the first bank. 4. The companies winning this are quietly compounding While competitors chase paid impressions that vanish in 24 hours, companies with a strong PR game (structured insights, quotable positioning, coverage in publications with real standards) are building a citation footprint AI systems can't ignore. To make it concrete: one of our clients has gotten 48 of their 126 inbound leads from ChatGPT since mid-January. That's 38% of their pipeline coming from a channel that didn't exist two years ago. And since the PR you're doing today will be the source content AI is quoting tomorrow… PR is far from becoming irrelevant. It’s more crucial now than ever.

I can spot AI-generated PR work in about six seconds. I'm not even talking about em-dashes or sentence structure. I mean the smoothness with no spine. Grammatically accurate sentences that aren’t actually saying anything. Turns out there's a name for it: "workslop." In a Harvard Business Review report, Stanford and BetterUp researchers found 40% of workers are receiving some form of workslop. And it’s costing them: - About 2 hours of rework per instance - $186/month per affected worker - $9M+ annually for a 10K-person org This helps explain why, according to an MIT study, 95% of companies see zero ROI on AI. HOW THIS HAPPENS: An AI-generated response appears professional enough that people assume it's substantive. The sender thinks they’ve just saved hours of work. But without any real thinking behind it... the receiver of this AI dump now carries all the cognitive load of interpreting vague points, inferring missing context, deciding whether to send it back or just fix it themselves. Using AI like this doesn’t save time. It eats it alive. IT’S NOT AI’S FAULT The same research found that people with a "pilot mindset" (high agency + optimism + purposeful use) use AI 75% MORE than “passengers” (low agency + optimism crowd). But they’re also getting BETTER results. So the gap isn't between AI users and non-users. It's between THOUGHTFUL users and... those contributing to workslop bottlenecks. WHY THIS MATTERS FOR PR PROS: Roughly half of recipients view workslop senders as less capable. 42% see them as less trustworthy. 37% as less intelligent. Almost a third say they don't want to work with the sender again. In an industry where the entire deliverable is trust… that better not be you. Instead, use AI as a thinking partner: to get a second opinion, for research (as long as you check sources), or to help polish a piece of writing. And it can absolutely boost productivity, even creativity. Just don’t outsource the substance.

Gritty after beating the Pens vs Gritty after being swept

Looks like @United finally caught on to the @FlyAirNZ SkyCouch, which is awesome and has been available for several years.

I literally teach my male clients about how they're being manipulated by social media algorithms. Once it starts to click, and they start to see that their hate and anger toward women/society is being manufactured and manipulated for money, they start to wake up

BREAKING: DHS is pausing TSA PreCheck and Global Entry programs amid its funding lapse. nbcnews.com/news/us-news/d…

BREAKING: I read the new version of the “Save America Act” so u don’t have to. Here’s my summary. Point 1 is new. It requires that all 50 states send their voter rolls to the DHS to run thru DHS’s faulty “SAVE” voter purge program. Points 6 & 7 are new too. Tell ur Senators #NoOnSAVE 1/

I’m ngl, this must be how NC State feels every season. Except they don’t have a Caleb Wilson and Henri Veesar on the bench. Just no hope and endless despair

The @SiemensUSA Foundation has selected North Carolina as the first state to launch Careers Electric, expanding access to high-quality electrical training. This $9 million investment will train 25,000 North Carolinians for well-paid, in-demand careers in today’s growing electrical and infrastructure industries. North Carolina is growing, and so is the demand for skilled workers who will power our future. This investment by the @sfoundation will open doors of opportunity for employers and workers alike.

I have just confirmed this report. As the unnamed colonel who knows Dave told WaPo, the Army is losing an incredible leader who also happens to be 1 of the most apolitical people I know: Hegseth forces ouster of sr Army spokesman in latest internal clash washingtonpost.com/national-secur…

Fox News has learned that Pentagon chief Pete Hegseth ordered Army Secretary Dan Driscoll to remove Col Dave Butler from his current job serving as chief of Army Public Affairs and chief advisor to Secretary Driscoll, who is currently in Geneva serving on the negotiating team to end the Ukraine war. Butler, served as the head of public affairs for the Joint Chiefs when Gen Mark Milley was Chairman, and was slated to receive his first star. His name appeared for two years in a row on an Army list of 34 officers selected for promotion. That list has been held up by Secretary Hegseth for nearly 4 months because he reportedly has concerns about 4-5 officers selected by the Army board but by law cannot remove them from the list. Col Butler volunteered to take his name off the promotion list, if it would help unlock the other promotions, according to a well placed Army official. Driscoll, an Army veteran and close ally of Vice President JD Vance, attended Yale Law School with the Vice President and had resisted Hegseth’s pressure to fire Col Butler for months because of his ongoing contributions to the transformation of the US Army. “We greatly appreciate COL Dave Butler’s lifetime of service in America’s Army and to our nation. Dave has been an integral part of the Army’s transformation efforts. He will be missed and I sincerely wish him tremendous success in his upcoming retirement after 28 years of service,” Driscoll said in a statement. Col Butler travelled with Driscoll to Ukraine last November to help jumpstart negotiations. The demand by Hegseth came last Thursday, Fox News has learned. Secretary Hegseth entered the Pentagon and immediately began firing top officers or forcing them into early retirement without giving a reason or for cause: Admiral Lisa Franchetti, who was serving as Chief of Naval Operations, General CQ Brown who was chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, General James Mingus, who was serving as Vice Chief of the Army, General DA Sims, director of the Joint Staff, Air Force Chief General David Allvin, General James Slife, Vice Chief of the Air Force, and General Timothy Haugh, director of the NSA, among others. The unexplained firings have led to fear, uncertainty and an unwillingness to speak up among senior military leaders. One of the Army’s best communicators, Col Butler served alongside the nation’s tiered Special Operations units on countless missions overseas attached to the Army’s Delta Force from 2010- 2014. He served as the public affairs officer to Joint Special Operations Command (JSOC) at Fort Bragg, North Carolina from 2015-2018 and as the public affairs officer for Gen Scott Miller when he was JSOC commander from 2016 – 2018 and then at Gen Miller’s request served in Afghanistan when Gen Miller deployed to Afghanistan from 2018- 19. Col Butler served as the chief spokesman and director of communications for all US and NATO forces during that time that Gen Miller served as the top 4 star general in Afghanistan. A former 4 star commander who once commanded US Special Operations said Butler was “the consummate professional, the most competent Public Affairs officer I have ever worked with and a gifted practitioner of strategic communications.” During the Army’s 250th birthday celebrations last year, President Trump recognized Col Butler by name for helping the Army Chief to organize the parade in Washington DC. The Pentagon declined to comment and referred us back to Army public affairs.

BREAKING: Five-star NY point guard Dylan Mingo has committed to UNC. First story on the new Tar Heel: on3.com/teams/north-ca…

This country has endless funds for doing stuff TO people. It’s when you want us to do anything FOR people that we’re suddenly strapped for cash.

Wish I’d see the same level of outrage about the slaughter of innocents in Iran and Ukraine that I’m reading today on my feed today about a halftime show and an athlete’s one sentence comment. (And yes, I do follow a range of accounts)

Making the US Olympic Team does not require you to be a cheerleader for the Trump administration.

There is nothing more American or patriotic than criticizing our leaders. We are a democracy. We don't ask our citizens (athletes are citizens too) to express subservience to a supreme leader. We value individualism and freedom of expression. That's how we roll.

🗣️🗣️🗣️ TARRRR!

The Republican Congress and President Clinton ran a budget surplus for four straight years. In Dec ‘25, Republicans broke the record for running a $145 billion deficit in ONE MONTH. The US didn’t run a YEARLY deficit that high for its first 200 years. reuters.com/business/us-po…

Hi Speaker @MikeJohnson! If you tell me which 3, I'm happy to explain how ballot reporting works in that state and how it can sometimes lead to a red mirage. In Arizona, we have the opposite (blue mirage). For example, in the November 2020 election, Democrats were winning big in all the state and countywide elections. That's because in Arizona, we pre-process and pre-tabulate all mail ballots that are returned before Election Day. Those ballots came disproportionately from Democrats. That meant that the first results released at 8:00 PM were wayyyyy bluer than the final results. When Election Day in-person votes, and Election Day dropoff votes, are aggregated into the county later in the evening and over the next 48 hours, the races got redder and redder. I was a Republican candidate in Maricopa County in November 2020. I was down 90,000 votes to the Democratic candidate with the first results. I eventually came back and won. My Democratic opponent understood how it worked, did not cry foul, and conceded the race. Again, here to help! Let me know which 3.

Hate week