@pr.bobpickard.com
Principal, Leadership Communication Inc. Public relations for public figures. 30+ year comms career @ 🇺🇸🇨🇳🇯🇵🇨🇦🇰🇷🇸🇬 Served as CEO of Burson in Asia and North Asia of Edelman. Former MDB global comms chief. PRC state media says I perform “purely sensational hype.”
“I still don’t really know whether the internet as we now experience it – constantly, on our phones – has made it impossible for any narrative to stick with the public, and whether this, in turn, makes it impossible to tell any story that might inspire abiding dissent.”
– @jaycaspiankang
Trump tells AI companies they need ‘PR help’ after backlash over data centres ft.trib.al/ZoGjS5g
Kaitlin is the best – Leavitt is the worst.
Moonrise over the Bow River and downtown Calgary.
A candid communications style is refreshing, but when comments are undisciplined, a sense of overwhelmed uncertainty can result.
In volatile times, leaders are expected to absorb turbulence, not amplify it.
giftarticle.ft.com/giftarticle/...
To avoid unhelpful headlines, CEOs should refrain from making comments like this:
"So many things happen every morning it’s scary."
Media tend to put fear statements into their headlines to attract attention and sell advertising. The FT, in particular, has a reputation for doing this routinely.
Just the look on his face communicates more than anything the McDonald’s CEO is actually saying.
Frosty hillside illuminated city view
@anthropic.com
Throughout my career, I’ve been in rooms where public statements get drafted under pressure. All too often, timid executives fold, and what starts as a decisive declaration gets watered down into insipid soup.
Anthropic chose clarity over comfort. That’s so rare. And this time, it really matters.
With corporate cowardice so depressingly commonplace these days — and corporate communication so couched and hedged — it’s refreshing to see a company with spine communicating courageously to protect such important ethical boundaries.
Principle under pressure is a real test of corporate leadership. That is why I find this statement from Anthropic so inspiring:
“No amount of intimidation or punishment from the Department of War will change our position on mass domestic surveillance or fully autonomous weapons.”
In an era of state influence operations and adversarial corporate manipulation, AI as a PR threat vector is no longer theoretical. It is strategic. And leadership teams need to treat it that way.
If distorted content can poison the information foundations of LLMs, reputation risk starts long before flawed output goes public. Reputational safety must be engineered upstream — through data governance, oversight, transparency, and accountability — not just managed downstream as crisis response.
AI misinformation isn't just a hallucination problem. Increasingly, it reflects a governance challenge; one that starts in training data, not only in outputs. Recognizing that distinction reframes the entire risk calculus for leaders and communications professionals.
Still, if the outgoing WEF CEO really wants to focus on himself, then why is he not taking responsibility for his links to Epstein which have brought about his departure?
Well, it’s nice to know that this man found his time at the World Economic Forum “profoundly rewarding.” Looking at the statement through a leadership communication lens, a public communication like this probably shouldn’t be so focused in a boasting way on one’s own achievements.
The latest batch of Epstein files reveals a previously hidden history of spin carried out by some high-profile flacks in Hollywood’s reputation management game.
I know many of the names in this story, which in some cases are the 'usual suspects' infamous in the PR trade for money-over-morals work.
"Jeffrey Epstein has kept public relations professionals busy with crisis management work. The latest tranches of Justice Department documentation provide fresh insight into who they were, what they did and how much they were paid."
— The Hollywood Reporter
This crazy-making communication is pure projection from the podium. Accusation as confession. Narcissistic abuse wildly applauded by flying monkeys.
“When plaintiff's attorney Mark Lanier asked if people typically use something more when it's addictive, Zuckerberg responded: ‘I’m not sure what to say to that. I don’t think that applies here.’”
“The CEO also faced more personal questions after the jury was shown a document titled the 'Zuckerberg comms plan,' which includes advice on how to avoid appearing 'fake, robotic, corporate and cheesy.'”
Power isn’t just proximity to famous people. It’s the ability to shape public perception. The Epstein files reveal how the billionaire class tries to engineer its own reputation.
So Epstein wasn’t just ‘networking.’ He was engaging in manipulative and often unethical forms of proactive and reactive reputation management.
Epstein positioned himself as a ‘node’ intermediary: coordinating potential publicity, shaping media stories, and attempting to massage press coverage.
The emails show Epstein discussing press suppression, what to do/say if media call, attempting to remove names from coverage, and even conspiring with journalists on narrative framing. Media reports show Epstein explicitly soliciting PR advice and getting suggested messaging/positioning in return.
For example, Epstein provided Bill Gates with comms coordination input, while also receiving PR counsel from Richard Branson about managing his own reputation. PR topics such as image promotion, issues handling, reputation protection, and relationships orchestration are common threads in the files.
An underappreciated angle to the Epstein files is not just who met him, but how much dialogue about public relations ran through his elite relationships. And these communications exchanges went in both directions.
His self promotion has always smacked of narcissism and grift.
The well-deserved PR disaster for ‘guru’ Deepak Chopra continues to compound. Sharing a split TV screen with Jeffrey Epstein is the most dreaded adjacency framing in the media today – radioactive reputational positioning for a public figure.
It is a milestone moment Charles is choosing to address in his own voice. The King's declarative statement signals seriousness, personal gravity, reasserted authority, institutional neutrality, procedural restraint, and public duty.
