Agency Leadership Podcast

AI has evolved enough now that one-shotting entire deliverables is tempting, and many people online claim to be doing just that. In this episode, Chip and Gini discuss why that’s a bad idea, and how you can train your AI tool to give you less slop-like content. Chip is fed up with receiving one too many pieces of material with no human thought applied to them, not in preparation, not in editing, not even in the decision to hit send. His take on the broader one-shotting trend is that when the result is actually good, it’s rarely a true one-shot. The person usually spent months feeding their AI tool context first, the same way a good off-the-cuff article draws on years of accumulated expertise. Gini suggests treating AI like a capable intern. You wouldn’t send an intern’s first draft straight to a client, so don’t do that with AI either. She describes going back and forth with her tools so much that Claude once asked her to batch her edits instead of making them one at a time. Chip pushes back on the intern comparison, arguing that with enough context and consistent feedback, AI has moved closer to a capable mid-level colleague. That feedback loop is also the focus of Gini’s internal training program, Slack sessions where the team is currently learning to push back, reject, and refine AI output instead of just accepting it. However, don’t make the mistake of thinking that because it needs your guidance, AI isn’t worth using. Being the human in the loop doesn’t make you the savior of your business. Owners who rely solely on humans without using AI are making as grave of a mistake as people who think they can replace themselves entirely with AI. Key takeaways Chip Griffin: “As excited as we are about AI, we need to figure out how to balance in the human judgment piece.” Gini Dietrich: “We have to, have to, have to, have to review what the output is.” Chip Griffin: “If you rely only on yourself without the help of AI, you are in just as bad a condition as those people who think they can just one-shot and substitute themselves with AI.” Gini Dietrich: “You have to train AI, you have to teach it, otherwise it’s gonna keep giving you the same slop that it’s giving to everybody else” Related AI should be your agency’s friend, not foe Agency owners need to get their hands dirty with AI In the age of AI, people skills matter more than ever How agency owners can use AI as an always-on thought partner View Transcript The following is a computer-generated transcript. Please listen to the audio to confirm accuracy. Chip Griffin: Hello, and welcome to another episode of the Agency Leadership Podcast. I’m Chip Griffin. Gini Dietrich: And I’m Gini Dietrich. Chip Griffin: And Gini, I think we should just walk away and let AI handle this entire episode, and I’m sure it will all be fine. We don’t- Gini Dietrich: I’m sure it will. Chip Griffin: We just need to say- Yeah … give us an episode, we can move on. Gini Dietrich: I like it. Let’s do it. Chip Griffin: Publish it, and it’ll be great. Gini Dietrich: Yep. I like it. Let’s do it. Chip Griffin: Actually, it could be an interesting exercise at some point, just to, just to- Gini Dietrich: It could be, actually, yeah. Maybe we should do it … Chip Griffin: just, just, just, just tell Claude- Yes. Yep … “Hey, you’ve got all the transcripts, you’ve seen all of the episodes, just create an imaginary episode from start to finish.” Gini Dietrich: Actually, we should do that. Chip Griffin: That, I, um, I’m- Gini Dietrich: Not today, but in the future. Chip Griffin: No, not today. Not today. We should, we should do that. But you know what? We will not just publish it without looking at it. Gini Dietrich: Right. Chip Griffin: And that’s what we wanna talk to you all about today. Oh. Because you all know that Gini and I are huge champions of AI. We strongly believe that it is, it is valuable, it is essential even for the success of agencies moving forward. Gini Dietrich: Mm-hmm. Chip Griffin: However- Gini Dietrich: Mm-hmm … Chip Griffin: you still need the human in the loop. You still need to use some judgment. And you need to figure out what you’re putting out actually makes sense, whether that’s to an internal audience, whether you’re digesting it yourself to make decisions, whether you’re giving it to a client or publishing it. Whatever it is, you need to be paying attention to it. And I have gotten one too many bits of material sent to me in recent weeks that has had no human intelligence applied to it whatsoever. Gini Dietrich: Mm-hmm. Chip Griffin: Not in the preparation of it, not in the editing of it. I guess in the delivery, the hitting of send. Gini Dietrich: Maybe. Maybe AI did that too. I mean- Chip Griffin: I don’t, I don’t- It will … I don’t think so. I mean, that’s- That’s a st- generally speaking, the people who are at that level where you can actually send it have at least given it some of the context in advance to, to help guide it. But there is this whole concept out there of one-shotting things with AI. Uh-huh. Uh-huh. And you see all these people talking about how, “I one-shotted this website. I one-shotted this landing page.” Mm-hmm. First of all, in many cases they didn’t, because when you see it and the result is actually good, chances are they built up a whole lot of context within their own personal AI in advance. Right. So it’s- Right … is it one-shotted? Sort of, but it’s based on a whole pile of information. That’s like saying that, that you one-shotted an article on the PESO model. Okay, sure, you sat down and wrote it all at once, and it’s great, but that’s because of all of the years you spent developing it. Gini Dietrich: Yeah, yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Chip Griffin: Yeah. And, and we’re just, we, we need to, as, as excited as we are about AI, we need to figure out how to balance in the human judgment piece. Gini Dietrich: Yeah, I mean, we talked last week or the week before, recently, about critical thinking skills and judgment, and those are the things that we should be interviewing for and hiring for, right? Well, the same thing goes for you and your use in AI. It’s great. As you said, big, big fan. I use it every single day. I’m not afraid to admit that I use it. I do use it, but I use it as a thinking partner, not as a create this draft for me and then I send it off. Like, that’s just not how I use it, and that, that’s what you have to be thinking about, is, like, how do you say to it, “Okay- This is good, this was not, you didn’t cite this correctly. Like, you have to, you have to go back and forth with it. To the point, I do that so much to the point that Claude said to me the other day, literally said, “If you’re going to continue making changes to this deck, please do it all at once so I don’t have to keep redoing it.” Chip Griffin: Wow. Gini Dietrich: I was like, “I’m sorry, you’re a robot, and you’ll do it every time.” Yeah. Chip Griffin: Wow. Gini Dietrich: Yeah. Chip Griffin: I, I- Mm-hmm … I can’t say I’ve had that experience myself yet. Gini Dietrich: Yeah, I had- So- Just the other day. Happened just the other day. Yep. So all right, fine. So I went through the whole thing and I wrote down all of my notes and I said, “Here are all the things I want you to change, with the caveat that when you change this, you may not do some things correctly, and I may have you redo it again, but here it is.” And so you, you go back and forth, and it’s totally fine to have it make the updates and have it do all those things for you, but you have to use it, and review what it’s giving you because you can’t just, to your point, one-shot it and send it off. You can’t. Chip Griffin: Yeah, and look, I am perfectly happy for you to use the tool itself to do all of the work, and then you just, you know, send that final deliverable on to whoever, whoever you’re sharing it with. However, it needs to have that critical bit of thinking, and you need to give it the feedback just like you would give it to an employee so that it continues to refine and develop it. And I mean, look, sometimes, sometimes the one shot does work out. I’m not gonna sit here and say it never happens because I’ve had it happen too. But usually because I’ve given it that context in advance. And I think you really need to think about this throughout the entire life cycle of the information that you’re sharing with your AI tools in order to get the best quality. You need to give it the background information so that it’s not necessarily as smart as you are, but it has a large chunk of the context and knowledge and experience that you have fed into it. And it takes time to do that. Yeah. I mean, I’ve been doing it for a couple of years now and it’s still not where- Yep … it needs to be. Yeah. I still am constantly giving it more material, and there’s all sorts of stuff from my pre-digital days that it’s much more difficult to give it. I give it to it by having it interview me, which I’ve talked about, I think, here before. And so I will, you know, give it sort of an oral history of things that I did in the ’80s and ’90s and early 2000s before I had files that I could feed it. And, so that’s all helpful, but you’ve got to give it that, and then you’ve got to read whatever it’s giving you or watch it if it’s a video or what… Just you cannot just run with it. You need to actually look at it just like you would look at something from an employee and give feedback to get it where it is, is ideally should be, and not just throw it out into the ether and say, “Good luck, let’s have at it. Gini Dietrich: Yeah, absolutely. I think that’s exactly right. And what I kind of tend to think about it as is it’s a really smart intern. So you would not just take what the intern creates the first shot and send it off. You wou

If you’re screening candidates on experience or technical skills, you may be making a mistake. In this episode, Chip and Gini make the case that curiosity and problem-solving are the two traits that separate great hires from mediocre ones, and neither one can be taught from scratch. Most agency skills, from writing a press release to running Google Ads to using AI tools, can be picked up on the job. Curiosity and problem-solving are different: people either arrive with some baseline capacity for them, or they don’t. Gini makes it about AI, where ever-evolving tools and audience behavior reward the people who keep asking questions instead of coasting on routine. The two discuss how to actually screen for these traits in a couple hours of interviewing. Gini leaves 15 to 20 minutes at the end for the candidate’s questions and reads a lot into what they ask, or whether they ask anything at all. Chip changes up the order entirely, opening by asking the candidate what questions they have for him before he’s asked anything himself, and he’ll throw a candidate’s own question right back at them to see how they handle being put on the spot. Both dismiss scenario-based questions and interview theater like “what animal would you be” as close to useless. Gini also flags a habit she’s trying to break on her own team, being “Gini-GPT,” where people default to asking her for the fast answer instead of working through problems themselves. Key takeaways Chip Griffin: “Curiosity and problem-solving in my experience are things that most people either have or they don’t. And they can perfect it, they can improve it, but starting with a clean slate there is gonna be much tougher than teaching someone how to write a press release.” Gini Dietrich: “You can teach how to write a release, how to use AI, how to pitch to media, how to write content, how to do Google Ads or social media ads. Those are skills you can teach. The innate sort of curiosity and wanting to know more, that can’t be taught.” Chip Griffin: “If the questions are all about, ‘Well, how much does it pay, and what are my hours? And do I have to work weekends?’ And that kind of thing, then clearly they’re not curious. They’re just looking to punch their ticket.” Gini Dietrich: “I think problem-solving and curiosity are two of the most important things that you can hire for, because like I said, you can teach many skills. You might be frustrated if you’re teaching a seven-year professional how to write a news release, but you can still teach it.” Related Hire people who understand how to solve problems Rethink entry-level hiring to succeed in the AI era Balancing skills and personality when hiring a new team member View Transcript The following is a computer-generated transcript. Please listen to the audio to confirm accuracy. Chip Griffin: Hello, and welcome to another episode of the Agency Leadership Podcast. I’m Chip Griffin. Gini Dietrich: And I’m Gini Dietrich. Chip Griffin: You know, Gini, we have a problem today with this recording, and I’m curious as to how we’re going to solve it. Gini Dietrich: Oh, boy. I live, I live for your intros ’cause I never know what they are. They’re always really bad. You come up with them on the literal fly. Chip Griffin: On the fly as I watch that five, four, three, two, one on the screen … I dream something up, which is, uh… I mean, that’s more thought than we sometimes give to what we’re gonna do for an episode. Although we have- at some point we’ll talk about our new system for this, because we have- Gini Dietrich: We do have a new system, and it’s very good … Chip Griffin: it, it is- Gini Dietrich: It’s very, it’s very good. Thanks to you. Chip Griffin: You know, thanks to me with a little, little assist from Claude, so, Gini Dietrich: It’s very good … Chip Griffin: but we’ll talk more about that in a future episode. But no, today, normally we, to record this episode, or each episode, we get together, we kibitz for a bit and talk about the world, and then we end up recording as soon as we look at the clock and say, “Oh my God, we’re about to run out of time- Right. … to actually record something before our next meeting.” Gini Dietrich: Yes. Chip Griffin: Um, because really, this show is just an excuse for us to have social hour. I mean, let’s, let’s be honest. That’s- Gini Dietrich: Right, yes … Chip Griffin: we happen to end up with content out of it. But today- Gini Dietrich: We do happen to end up with content because of it, Chip Griffin: but today it turns out you’re getting a grocery delivery right in the middle of when we would normally be having that panicked conversation about how we’re gonna record in time. Gini Dietrich: Correct, yes. Chip Griffin: So- Gini Dietrich: There, there was a- Chip Griffin: We’re flipping the script as they like to say … Gini Dietrich: that was like an hour early, so- Chip Griffin: Yes … Yes. But- Gini Dietrich: Although right now it says five stops away even though it’s only four block- … the, the GPS shows they’re only four blocks away, so maybe it’s five stops in between four blocks of- Chip Griffin: So, so basically, if all of a sudden Gini disappears in the middle of this episode- Gini Dietrich: You’ll know why Chip Griffin: you’ll know why. It’s because she didn’t want her milk to spoil, so. Anyway- … we’ll do our best to muddle through as we always do, but we are gonna be talking about curiosity and problem-solving, because I firmly believe that those are the two qualities that agencies should be hiring for first and foremost, not worrying so much about what experience do they have working with the particular industry that you serve, or even their specific technical capabilities for whatever role they may have. Because a lot of those things can be taught, but curiosity and problem-solving in my experience are things that most people either have or they don’t. And they can, they can perfect it, they can improve it, but starting with a clean slate there is gonna be much tougher than teaching someone how to write a press release or teaching someone about the industry that you’re primarily working with. Gini Dietrich: Yeah, it’s, it’s the things, like when you think about the type of people that you want on your team and the things that you can teach versus the things that kind of come innately, and I think you’re right, curiosity and problem-solving are the, the critical thinking skills are the things that you can’t really teach. You, they, people have to come with those. They either have it or they don’t. You can teach how to write a release, how to use AI, how to pitch to media, how to write content, how to do Google Ads or social media ads. Like, you can teach those. Those are skills you can teach. The innate sort of curiosity and wanting to know more, like that’s, that can’t be taught. That’s, that’s just something that people either come with or they don’t. Chip Griffin: And, and curiosity is taking on increasing importance in the age of AI- Gini Dietrich: I think so, yeah Chip Griffin:… because things, things are changing so quickly and so we need to be not just creative, but we need to understand, you know, how to take advantage of all of the tools that we have, how the audience behavior is shifting right under our feet, and all of those things benefit from curiosity. But I think as we look at problem-solving, I mean, that’s fundamentally agency-client relationships are about just a continuous cycle of problem-solving. Gini Dietrich: Yeah. Chip Griffin: Right? I mean, you… From the problem-solving to acquire the client, to onboarding the client, to keeping the client, to dealing with team members, look, it’s all problem-solving just over and over again, and I think most agency owners, if they looked at how they spent their week, they would be spending a lot of it solving one problem or another. And, and problems don’t necessarily have to be bad things, right? Problems can be just challenges. Gini Dietrich: Yeah, yeah, of course. Chip Griffin: But you, you gotta try to figure out how to surmount whatever is in front of you. Gini Dietrich: Yeah. You know, I think, I think a good way to think about this, especially for agency owners, is when you think about the work that you do with clients, which kinds of clients are really fun to work with, and which ones kind of make you wanna poke your eyeballs out? For instance, we have a client who, their chief communications officer is so incredibly curious that he’s constantly… He– like, he and I are always like brr, to the point where our teams are all like, “What’s happening here?” But be- but he’s- he and I are at the same curiosity level where we’re constantly asking questions, and for me, it’s so fun to work with him. It’s so fun. Every time I get an email from him or he texts me and he wants to call, I’m like, “Yes,” because I know we’re gonna have a really good conversation, versus the clients who are like, “I don’t understand why we would use social media for the business when, you know, social media is for the kids,” even though it’s been 15 years, right? It’s the, like the, the kinds of… It’s a different kind of working relationship. And those are the people you want on your team, the ones that are curious and ask lots of questions and want to understand and want to grow and want the professional development to be able to do that. That’s who you want on your team. Chip Griffin: Yeah. I mean, it makes all the difference in the results that you’re producing for your firm and also for the clients because if all you do is show up and do the exact same thing day in and day out and you don’t bother to learn and you’re not curious about, you know, how can you continue to improve what you’re producing, I mean, you’re right, it’s boring- Yeah and it doesn’t

Some advisers are telling agency owners they don’t need to know AI all that well themselves. They suggest owners go deep on AI for a month or three, then pass the day-to-day to the team and move on with life. In this episode, Chip and Gini explain why that’s backwards, and how owners who step back from AI are making a mistake. Chip’s argument is that AI doesn’t fit the usual delegation model because it’s moving too fast and touching too much of the business to hand off after just a few months of study. Gini agrees, noting that advice which made sense six months ago is often stale today. Both connect this to credibility with the team: Chip compares the situation to a non-technical manager overseeing developers, who then gets disrespected because they don’t speak the language. Gini says her own coaching works because she’s in the tools constantly enough to give specific workable advice. They also describe pushing AI into something closer to a personal operating system than a work tool, from Chip wanting an assistant that catches him contradicting his own past positions, to Gini’s agent that calls her out when she takes on work she said she’d delegate, telling her flatly it’s not the best use of her time. The episode closes with the advice that staying curious personally is what keeps owners sharp enough to lead a team through a tool that keeps rewriting its own rules. Key takeaways Chip Griffin: “You need to be in the trenches on AI, at least for the foreseeable future.” Gini Dietrich: “I honestly and truly do not know how I did my job five years ago.” Chip Griffin: “You just don’t come across as confident if you haven’t tried it yourself.” Gini Dietrich: “If you simply get a general knowledge and then leave off in delegation, you’re not getting anywhere near the value that you ought to be.” Related AI should be your agency’s friend, not foe Stop chasing AI tools: Start with what actually hurts Using AI the right way for agency biz dev View Transcript The following is a computer-generated transcript. Please listen to the audio to confirm accuracy. Chip Griffin: Hello and welcome to another episode of the Agency Leadership Podcast. I’m Chip Griffin. Gini Dietrich: And I’m Gini Dietrich. Chip Griffin: And Gini, I have no creative introduction whatsoever. Gini Dietrich: That’s fine- So maybe- … because I’m gonna phew. Chip Griffin: So maybe, maybe we should just take a, a deep dive for w- you know- … couple of minutes here and try to figure out what it is that we’re gonna talk about today. Gini Dietrich: We’re gonna talk about the bro culture who told agency owners to use AI for three months and then not again. Chip Griffin: Yes. apparently, agency owners need to, to really get up to speed on AI, but then just to hand it all off to the team and move on with their lives. Gini Dietrich: This is the most ridiculous, ludicrous thing I’ve ever heard, and I understand that I don’t have context ’cause I didn’t watch the bro video, but that’s ludicrous. Chip Griffin: And in fairness, I watched it a while back, so my context is a little bit off too. But it- look, this is, this is not, this is not one-off advice. I mean, frequently I hear people advise, you know, agency owners to, to have some general knowledge of something but then to let go. And, I think in some cases that may be worthwhile. But I think AI is moving so fast- … and has such an impact on our businesses that, that we need to … as leaders, we need to remain curious, we need to be hands-on. We cannot simply rely on our teams to do this because it is transformational to our businesses and to our industry, and that’s not something that you leave in the hands of somebody else. Gini Dietrich: Yes, and I know I’ve said this before, but I honestly and truly do not know how I did my job five years ago. Chip Griffin: Yep. Gini Dietrich: Because, it’s such a huge thinking partner for me to help me figure out what I’m missing, what holes I need to fill, what’s overly complicated, what’s too jargony. Like, I don’t know how I did my job without it. So the idea that you would do a deep dive for three months and then be like, “Okay, everybody else take over,” like that doesn’t, that doesn’t make any sense at all. Chip Griffin: No, it does not. Now, in fairness, I think, I think what they were saying was sort of hand over the day-to-day of it, and you can certainly still use it to help you with your own writing and the basic stuff. But I, think you still need to be beyond that. I think you need to be pushing- Yes … the envelope yourself- Yes … experimenting, innovating- Gini Dietrich: Yes. Yes … Chip Griffin: inspiring your team. Gini Dietrich: Yes. Chip Griffin: And, if you’re not doing that, you’re not getting the most out of it that you can. Gini Dietrich: Absolutely. Like, yes, because this is one of those things that if you’re not using it, you don’t know what has changed, and it’s changing so fast, right? I mean, a couple of weeks ago, Claude came out and said that they’re watermarking everything, and you can’t just retype it into a new document because the watermark is in the tokens and how it thinks, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, whatever. And everybody freaked out. Like, everybody’s using AI. So, okay, so it’s watermarked. Like, we all know we’re using it. Everybody’s using it. I use it, you use it. Everybody uses it. Like, okay, so it’s being watermarked, but like, if you’re not using it and understanding it and evolving with it, then you might freak out about that. But it’s not that big of a deal. Chip Griffin: It is absolutely not that big of a deal. It’s stupid, in fact, but, you know, if it, if it amuses somebody to, do that, fine. I’m sure that somebody will figure out how to, to reveal those watermarks and post gotchas, kinda like in the old days when people were like, “Gotcha, that CEO didn’t write their own blog post.” No, duh. Gini Dietrich: Really? Yeah. Chip Griffin: And, and, and, their shareholders don’t want them to do that either. Gini Dietrich: Correct. Right. Yes. Chip Griffin: Not, at their hourly rates. And- No … and that, and that was 20 years ago before their hourly rates got to where many CEOs- Right … have their hourly rates today. But in any case, so you Chip Griffin: need to be learning and experimenting and understanding how it’s evolving, because, I mean, even some of the advice that, you know, someone might have given you or I might have given six months ago is not the same advice I would give today. Gini Dietrich: Right. Chip Griffin: And, in fact, you know, some of the things about, you know, the importance of providing instructions and guardrails and all that kind of stuff, that may be shifting. You know, we’re now seeing Anthropic saying, “Well, that’s, that’s not really the best way to get things out of the, the more recent versions of Opus and Fable and that kind of stuff. You actually wanna give it more freedom than you did before, otherwise you may not like the results.” And- Yeah … and those things are changing. You know, a, a couple years ago, everybody was like, “You need to tell it what kind of mindset to have. Act as a social media strategist.” Nobody will tell you that today, because that’s not the best way to get stuff out of it. But if you’re not continuing to experiment and roll up your sleeves and be in there day to day and figure out not only how it can help your business, but how it can help you personally, and that’s beyond just the thought part of it. That’s figuring out how do I make it my own personal operating system, my second brain, which I am extremely passionate about, and I think that, most agency owners should really be thinking about this whole, you know, whether, you wanna call it that operating system or second brain concept, having something that really knows you and as much about you as possible so that it’s really there, not even just as a thinking partner or a sparring partner. I mean, it’s, there as a mini you- Gini Dietrich: Yep. Chip Griffin: That can help you to think things through and not forget stuff, which- Yep … as I get older, is more and more important. Gini Dietrich: Well, and one of the things that I’ve done is I do– I’ve done exactly like that. I’ve done exactly that, and I think I’ve talked about this before, that I have a co-CEO agent that I’ve built, and it will s- it kinda, it kinda makes me mad sometimes. But one of the goals that we have inside my organization is to have everything less dependent on me, because right now the, the business is very founder-led. It’s, you know, I’m the thought leader, I’m the brand, all of those things, and it’s a big, big goal over the next three to five years to extract me from some of that and start to build other leaders inside the organization that, you know, can help us scale and do all of those things. So my AI knows that, and I will do something, and it will say Is this the best use of your time? I thought you were trying to extract yourself, and I’m like, “Ugh. Fine!” Chip Griffin: See, yours is more polite than mine because mine will just straight up tell me that it’s not a good use of my time. Yeah, yeah, sometimes it will do that, yeah. and, that I shouldn’t do it. Yeah. Or, my other favorite is it will say, “Well, this does not, you know, match what you said in, you know- 2022.” Gini Dietrich: Yeah, yeah. Chip Griffin: You know, “Why are you saying this now?” Or something like that. Gini Dietrich: What has changed, or yeah. Yeah, yeah … Chip Griffin: yeah, what has changed, or just it’s, it’s not consistent. Yeah … and, so having it call me out, the, I mean, it … Sometimes it’s caught me on things where I’m just not thinking it through, right? In, the moment I give a quick answer and say, “Yeah, let’s go in this direction,” it’s like, “Wait a minute, hold on

Times change, but somehow the job hasn’t. In this episode, Chip and Gini dig into what’s stayed constant across their combined decades in PR and marketing, and why chasing the latest platform update is a losing game if you’ve lost sight of the fundamentals underneath it. The episode was sparked by a LinkedIn series from Doug Simon, who asked longtime PR pros what has remained constant in their careers. Gini was asked the question of whether the PESO Model still holds up, and her answer is that the four media types haven’t gone anywhere, and earned media’s third-party credibility now matters more to how LLMs learn. Chip extends the logic to SEO and its successors, advising to chase the people, not the algorithm or the platform. Other changes may also have less of an impact than you might think. Influencer marketing is the latest version of celebrity TV endorsements, but with a YouTube channel. The agency-client relationship continues to run on the same dynamics it did 70 or 80 years ago. Gini brings up the story about a UK agency reportedly running AI agents to pitch journalists undetected for eight months. Chip’s take is that just like with interns and inexperienced team members, there are well-managed AI agents as well as poorly managed ones. It’s the human factor that matters most. Key takeaways Chip Griffin: “If you lose sight of the fundamentals, you can have all the technology in the world, and you’re still gonna have rubbish results.” Gini Dietrich: “If you create content for humans, you will win the SEO game. You will win the AEO, GEO game. You will win whatever comes next game.” Chip Griffin: “Chase the people. Don’t chase the algorithm.” Gini Dietrich: “Your job, especially as a communicator, is to protect reputation, build brand, and create thought leadership. That has not changed.” View Transcript The following is a computer-generated transcript. Please listen to the audio to confirm accuracy. Chip Griffin: Hello and welcome to another episode of the Agency Leadership podcast. I’m Chip Griffin. Gini Dietrich: And I’m Gini Dietrich. Chip Griffin: And Gini, I’m gonna have to try to rack my memory from way, way back, and as I get older, that, that distance gets longer and my memory gets poorer, so we’ll see how this works. Gini Dietrich: Ok- okay. Well, I have the same afflictions, so let’s see what happens. Chip Griffin: So we thought that this was, this was spurred by something that our friend Doug Simon did recently on LinkedIn where he did a video series and talked to a bunch of people who have been in the PR industry for a long time and asked a series of questions, one of which was, what has- Remained constant over the course of your career in PR. Obviously we talk a lot these days about everything that, that has changed, is changing. There’s no shortage of those things. I’ve talked about it here on the show, you know, how we started with fax machines and mailed press releases and things like that, that just kind of blows the mind of a lot of the younger listeners that we have. But, but even with all of that change and with everything that AI is doing to our industry today, there are a lot of things that have stayed constant. And I think that as we think about how we run our agencies, it’s important to remember the fundamentals that have remained the same no matter how much technology has changed in PR and marketing. Gini Dietrich: Yeah, I mean, I think you’re right that the, probably the way that we do things has changed, but not the strategic reason. Like I say to people all the time that the reason you do your job has not changed. The strategy, the strategic reason behind it has not changed. The tools have changed, for sure, but your job, especially as a communicator, is to protect reputation, build brand, and create thought leadership. That has not changed. Yeah. The way that you go about it has changed, but not, not the actual doing of the job has changed. Chip Griffin: Yeah, I mean, the tools have changed. The landscape certainly in media has changed. Gini Dietrich: Yeah. Yes. Chip Griffin: The landscape in terms of the public and where they go for information and where they receive messaging and all of that, obviously that has changed substantially over the 35 plus years that I’ve been in communications. But it is still about communicating the right message at the right time to the right people. Yeah. And building relationships with the people that you are trying to influence, whether that’s a member of the media or a member of the public or potential client or whomever. And if you remember those fundamentals, it helps you to figure out how to use all of these technologies for their greatest impact. Gini Dietrich: Yeah, I mean, I had a convers- I was on Zoom with Fred Cook of former GolinHarris, now at Annenberg Center. I was on Zoom with him last week, and he’s like, “So has PESO changed?” And I was like, “No, because we still do those things, right?” Like, the way that we implement it today versus the way we implemented it in 2014 are completely different, for sure. But we still use earned media, we still use shared media, we still use owned media, we still use paid media. The way that we use it has changed, but we still use the four media types. And to your point, media has changed, so earned media has changed, like the, the recipient of our earned media has changed, but the outcome of third-party credibility is probably even more important today than it was back then because that’s how the LLMs learn too, is by citable information. So yes, the way that we go about it has changed, but the actual work itself, the outcome itself has not. Chip Griffin: Yeah, and I think the, the important thing to think about here is that, that ultimately all of these tools and publications and platforms are all designed to connect one human to another. Gini Dietrich: Yep. Chip Griffin: And, and so you know, when you think about public relations, for example, it’s got relations right there in the title. And so you really need to think about how you are building those relationships between whoever the person is on your end and the person that you’re trying to reach. And, if you, if you take the humans out of this entirely, then you’re missing the plot, and you really need to be thinking about how do these tools and how do these techniques allow you to do more of that, to do it better, to do it at greater scale, all of those kinds of things, but not, not just, you know, chuck everything that you knew out the window, have the machines do everything on their own, for you. Gini Dietrich: No. No. Chip Griffin: Abandon proven approaches. None of those things make any sense. Gini Dietrich: No. Please do not do that because that has not changed. Like, the way I- we talked about this last week, like, AI is making us far more productive and far more efficient, but you still have to know how to, to your point, relate to other human beings. Are you creating content and engineering your visibility to show up in AI? For sure. But that’s also because human beings are using AI to get the answer, so you still have to build those relationships with other human beings. Chip Griffin: Yeah, and if you follow the fundamentals, then it allows you to evolve with whatever tools and technology- That’s right come along. It’s similar to what I’ve always said in terms of SEO in the old days and now AEO, GEO, which is chase the people. Don’t chase the algorithm. Yep. Don’t chase the platform. Yep. Chase the, the people because ultimately all of the tools are designed to do that anyway, right? Right. I mean, Google for years has been trying to figure out what is the user actually looking for and trying to deliver that in the results. And so if you are sitting there trying to say, “Hey, I need to figure out how to reach that same person,” you’ll probably be okay no matter how they change the algorithm. If you sit there and say, “I need to figure out what was the latest Google algorithm update, and what does that mean?” “How should I move things around on my page? What should I bold?” If you start thinking in those terms, you may win the short-term battle, but you will lose the war because you do not understand what you’re actually trying to do, and that has not changed over the course of our careers. Gini Dietrich: Yeah, I mean, I’ve said for at least a decade, if not longer, that if you create content for humans, you will win the SEO game. You will win the AEO, GEO game. You will win whatever comes next game. Because human beings are still the ones that are purchasing your services. The robots are not. Chip Griffin: Right. Gini Dietrich: And so if you create content, if it’s whatever content it is, it’s earned media, it’s video, it’s audio, it’s written, whatever it happens to be, if that audience, number one audience is human beings, you will win all the other games. Chip Griffin: And look, even most of the things that we look at today as new, they aren’t really. They’re just, they- they’re packaged differently. I, you know- Right … we, we have all of this talk around influencers- Yes, yes … and the rise of influencers. Yes, yes. Which to me is one of the silliest things in the world. Not the influencers themselves, I mean, some of them can be silly. They’re certainly useful to us as communicators, marketers, et cetera. But that’s no different than three decades ago when we had celebrity endorsements. Gini Dietrich: Right. Chip Griffin: Right? The, it is just the modern-day equivalent of it, and we just define celebrity a little bit differently than we might have back, you know- Yep in the ’80s or ’90s, but ultimately it’s the same thing. It’s just they have a YouTube channel now or an Instagram account- Right … instead of, you know, you put them in a TV commercial or a print ad or something like

Most agency owners probably haven’t thought much about shadow AI (the name for when employees use their personal ChatGPT, Claude, or Gemini accounts to do work). In fact, owners may be doing it as well. In this episode, Chip and Gini walk through what the risks are and how to respond without overreacting. The instinct to crack down is understandable but wrong. Employees are going to use their own tools regardless, often because personal accounts are better trained or more accessible than whatever the company has set up. The goal should be education, not elimination. Most employees don’t know that personal accounts default to feeding data into training sets, or that a single toggle can turn that off. That one fix alone is worth a conversation with your team. Vibe coding and a plain-language AI policy get discussed, in addition to educating your team. Gini’s team runs weekly micro-learning sessions to help people use AI as a thinking partner, not just a drafting tool. Both Chip and Gini advise that owners and employees who aren’t using AI meaningfully within the next year or two are putting their careers and businesses at risk. Key takeaways Chip Griffin: “You’re probably not going to stamp it out. So at a minimum, you need to educate employees, because a lot of employees don’t realize the risks in what they’re doing.” Gini Dietrich: “I also think that shadow AI is one thing, but there are plenty of people who are not using it at all. And I was actually kind of shocked to find that in my own organization.” Chip Griffin: “We need to avoid the knee-jerk reaction when you hear an episode like this, shadow AI, oh my God, I need to shut this down. You cannot have that reaction.” Gini Dietrich: “The real value is that AI helps you operate at a completely different level.” Resources The Birthday Dirge View Transcript The following is a computer-generated transcript. Please listen to the audio to confirm accuracy. Chip Griffin: Hello and welcome to another episode of the Agency Leadership Podcast. I’m Chip Griffin. Gini Dietrich: And I’m Gini Dietrich. Chip Griffin: And Gini, I, think it’s appropriate that it suddenly got dark, in, in- Yeah. … in your office as we were trying to begin this recording- Mm-hmm … because we’re gonna be talking about being in the shadows. Gini Dietrich: Yes, we are. In the dark. But before we do that, happy birthday. Chip Griffin: Oh, thank you. Thank you. You’re welcome. I appreciate that. I thought maybe we’d escape that since- Nope … ’cause we were on hiatus during my actual- Nope … birthday month, so. Gini Dietrich: Nope. Ah, come on. Yeah. It was just a few days ago. Happy belated I guess. All right. Thank you. Especially by the time people hear this, but. Chip Griffin: Yeah. Well, nobody will really know, so. Gini Dietrich: I know. Chip Griffin: I, I, appreciate it, and I mostly appreciate that you’re not singing, so, Gini Dietrich: I can. Do you want me to? Chip Griffin: I do not. I- Okay, well- ‘Cause, ’cause isn’t, don’t you have to license “Happy Birthday,” I think? I think that’s- Gini Dietrich: Well, I have a different song. It’s a song that- Oh … the kids learned in third grade that we sing instead of “Happy Birthday.” Chip Griffin: Is, is this the dirge? Gini Dietrich: No. Chip Griffin: Oh. See, I like the birthday dirge. Gini Dietrich: I don’t know the birthday dirge. Chip Griffin: Oh, it, it, it’s, uh, it goes something like, you know, uh, another year closer to the grave or something. I mean, it’s very more… But, the- I wouldn’t- Our kids learned it, learned it at a kid’s party, you know, 20-some years ago. Oh, that’s so good. I’ll have to look it up and share it with you. It, or- I’ll look it, yeah. I’ll delete it … or maybe, maybe Jen can do that because, and maybe sh- b- maybe she can include a link to it, in, in the show notes, ’cause it is somewhat entertaining, but I, I don’t remember the lyrics, nor do I want to try to, to invent them or sing them even if I knew them. Gini Dietrich: All right, fine. Chip Griffin: But, no, the, the- Gini Dietrich: Maybe for my birthday. You have s- you have several months to, to learn it. You could sing it to me for my birthday. Chip Griffin: Well, more than several, but yes. Anywho, so moving on from that. We, are going to talk about the shadows, the deep, dark shadows of the PR world. No, we’re gonna be talking about, shadow AI, which is, in a lot of organizations, you have employees who are using their own ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini, whatever accounts to do work. They are not using corporate accounts. A lot of them do not understand the implications of it. The employees do not understand the implications. The employers do not understand the implications. And I’ve seen it, either bite people or potentially bite people of late, so I thought I would raise it as something that, that owners ought to be thinking about in the current environment. Gini Dietrich: I will tell you, not to get anyone in trouble, but almost every one of our clients, and they’re big clients, people do that. Could be, and they’re doing it from their personal devices. It could be because it’s blocked at work. It could be because what they have at work isn’t sufficient. It could be because CoWork is significantly better than, Copilot. It, like, there are lots of reasons, but people will full on pull out their phone or their iPad and do it on their personal device at work all the time. Chip Griffin: It is incredibly common, and, from my perspective and what I advise owners is that you’re probably not going to stamp it out. So at a minimum, you need to educate employees- Yep … because a lot of employees don’t realize the risks in what they’re doing, and they haven’t set up any kind of a, a process to make sure that they’re, you know, doing it as intelligently as possible at least, if they’re- Right … gonna use their own accounts. And, look, I, mean, I, don’t necessarily think that, that it’s awful for them to be doing this. I wouldn’t try to eliminate it. But you do need to educate them because a, a lot of times when I talk with rank and file employees of agencies, they don’t realize that, for example, that their personal accounts, by default, all of the data leaks out for training purposes. And it’s in many cases, depending on which tool you’re using, as simple as a toggle to make- Yep … sure that that information- Yep … does not go straight into the training sets- Yep … of these providers. And that’s the default setting on your corporate accounts if you’ve got them as an agency, but it is not the default on most personal accounts. And so just that one change can make a big difference. But I have yet to talk to any individual employee using their individual account who knows that that’s even something they can or should do. Gini Dietrich: Yeah. I agree with you. I think that having just a really easy AI policy is the right way to go because I don’t– I think you’re right. I don’t think you’re gonna stamp it out. I mean, heck, I use my personal one for lots of stuff too. Mostly because I trained it before we had the corporate account, and I don’t wanna go back and retrain what I’ve already worked, what I’ve already created. So, but we just created a one-page, like, bullet points AI policy that says exactly what you said, like toggle it off. If you’re gonna be vibe coding, here’s what you need to be thinking about. You know, all of the things. I think it’s probably 12 bullet points. It’s not a huge lift, but it just helps them understand. And one of the things that we did is we spent some time building the cowork Instance for the organization, and it has, you know, our OKRs and our plan and our vision and, you know, all of the stuff, our brand kit, all of the stuff. So it’s easier for, my team now, it wasn’t six months ago, but now it’s easier for my team to use the company one because it has all of that stuff in there and it’s already been trained. Chip Griffin: Yep. Yeah, I mean, it’s, you know, so I think there’s, this is a multi-stepped process. You know, part of it is the policy, part of it is education. Gini Dietrich: Yep. Chip Griffin: Part of it is you should have a standard corporate tool that you are using. It doesn’t mean that it’s the only one, but, it should be– If you do that, it will allow you to do a lot of the information sharing, skill sharing, things like that, that ensure the consistency across the organization and make sure that everybody doesn’t have to reinvent the wheel constantly. But I think the you brought up two things that I think are worth exploring more. One probably is a separate episode in addition to this, but the other, I think, makes sense within this context. The one to sort of put a pin in and come back to is your fear of moving from your personal one to the corporate one because of the lost, you know, memory and context and all of that kind of thing. And, I think that there is, I, I, think there’s a lack of knowledge in the agency community generally about how best to capture all of the, the knowledge and things that you’re developing alongside these AI tools and making it as portable as possible. So, you know, one of the things I’ve been focused on in recent months is really making sure that, that my second brain, if you will, in AI is portable across multiple tools. And so I’ve now built it so, for example, I have one brain that I share across both my Claude and ChatGPT accounts- Gini Dietrich: Yep. I do the same thing. Yep. Chip Griffin:… so that you have consistency, and, I think it’s worth sort of exploring that, maybe not in technical detail, but, you know, how you can share it amongst your own accounts, how you can share it more effectively with your colleagues and coworkers and that kind of thing. So I think that’s worth revisiting in more depth because I