Abbie Fink and Adrian McIntyre look back at their Top 10 most popular podcast episodes of 2025 to identify the key themes, trends, and industry shifts that will impact public relations in 2026.

They talk about how PR and media are undergoing rapid transformation due to technological advancements and societal changes. Issues such as authenticity, trust, and influence are recurring themes in the discussion, along with the manipulation of public opinion, the impact of AI on the profession, and the decline of traditional journalism.

Read the transcript and notes for this episode on our website.

Key Takeaways

• The media landscape is shifting with the decline of traditional journalism and the rise of niche digital platforms, requiring new strategies for engagement.
• Building genuine trust through authentic storytelling and transparent communications is crucial for brands in the current climate.
• Public relations strategies must adapt to focus on influence and relationship-building rather than traditional celebrity endorsements.
• AI is changing how media and communications are handled, presenting both challenges and opportunities for growth.
• Developing leadership skills and fostering a culture of trust within organizations can enhance both internal and external communications.

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Credits

Copper State of Mind, hosted by Abbie Fink and Dr. Adrian McIntyre, is brought to you by HMA Public Relations, a full-service public relations firm in Phoenix, AZ.

The show is recorded and produced by the team at Speed of Story, a strategic communications consultancy for PR agencies and marketing firms, and distributed by PHX.fm, the leading independent B2B podcast network in Arizona.

If you like this podcast, you might also enjoy PRGN Presents: PR News & Views from the Public Relations Global Network, featuring conversations about strategic communications, marketing, and PR from PRGN, "the world’s local public relations agency.”

We live in a world of infinite noise, and it seems to be getting louder all the time. And I guess we’re part of the problem. I mean, every year we produce hundreds of hours of conversations and podcasts and media interviews. So we’re contributing to the noise. But we were wondering, what sticks? What gets through? And so for this podcast, Abbie and I went back and looked at our data. We looked at our top 10 episodes of this past year, 20 25, and there were some interesting patterns that emerged. It seems that PR and media aren’t just changing, they are fundamentally shifting. And we’ve talked about some of these things. Abbie, what’s on your mind?

Well, you know, it was fun to kind of think about what we would do on this episode, our last one of the year, and doing a little bit of reflecting back, and that probably came to mind me as well, is that, you know, so much of what we do in communications is evolving and changing, and we have so many opportunities ahead. New tools, new platforms, other things. In a lot of ways, it still starts with a good story. We still have to have something to say, although, as you said, sometimes we’re just saying things for the sake of saying something. But we had some really great conversations over the past year. Some were very timely, others were a little bit more evergreen, meaning they would have some staying power over the course of time. And I was excited to take a look and see what really kind of jumped to the top of the list in terms of, you know, most listened to. They may not necessarily have been the ones that we thought were the best to talk about, but the ones that resonated most with our audience. And really, some of the commonalities in what those topics were made this kind of fun to take a look at. So what’s on your mind when it comes to this? What popped up to you when you were doing the analysis?

Well, I mean, I agree with you. I’m not sure I would have picked these particular episodes, but two of the Top 10 most downloaded episodes this past year were on current topics. #1 was “A Pop Star and a Football Player Walk into a Cracker Barrel,” which was an episode where we just said, hey, we never talk about what’s going on in the news. Let’s talk about Taylor Swift and Sydney Sweeney and the Cracker Barrel fiasco and the Coldplay kiss cam. And, you know, it’s kind of worked all that stuff in.

And another top episode this past year was talking about the Blake Lively - Justin Baldoni brouhaha, which raised some really interesting and troubling issues. What we called "The Dark Side of Public Relations," which is not just trying to make your client look good, but trying to make someone else’s client look really bad. And just what this exposes about, not the industry as a whole—I think that would be extremely unfair to say—but about the fact that within this field of managing public opinion or influencing public opinion, there are some nefarious actors using a bag of dirty tricks, including bot farms and others, to skew public opinion. Meaning, we can’t get on our high horse about misinformation and disinformation when, in fact, some of our colleagues are doing that.

Yeah. And very troubling, actually. I had a conversation earlier with a prospect, and it’s for an advocacy campaign, and we were talking a little bit about the industry that he’s in and that there are some bad actors, which is universal to any industry. But he was focusing, at least at the beginning of the conversation about, we want to talk about the bad actors, we want to talk about the bad things. And I said, well, if you could let me flip that conversation and let’s talk about what’s good and about you and let’s use these tools that we have to advance your position versus push down their position.

And I think I turned them around a little bit. But the Blake Lively scenario is certainly one that showed that there is responsibility in using these tools that we have. And in my view, it should be for the better, not for the worse. And, and as the communications folks, I think we have to own that responsibility and to be able to use it to advance the better in our society. Not always focusing on the negative, but, you know, there’ll be some.

Yeah. After we got back from our trip to the Public Relations Global Network meetings in Nairobi—which we talked about on an episode; it wasn’t one of the Top 10 episodes, but I thought it was good—I ended up having an extended conversation with Gilbert Manirakiza, our PRGN colleague in Kenya who hosted the meetings. He and I were going to actually record a podcast episode about something else, but we spent about an hour and a half beforehand talking about the future of influence, which I think is a very interesting way to frame some of these challenges.

Whether you’re looking at it from the perspective of a PR practitioner who’s wanting to represent a client, preferably in an above-board and ethical way, you’re playing a game of influence, which gets played out in the same environment as we’re talking about. It’s not just played out anymore on the front page of the paper of record or on, you know, the biggest television news programs. It’s playing out in the darker corners of the Internet, on social media.

In one of the episodes, we talked about this concept of dark social, which is unattributable because marketing departments don’t have pixels that tell you something happened, but unattributable conversations that produce results. People recommending something to a friend in the group chat results in a sale for a company. That company doesn’t know where that came from. So the game has changed in so many ways, and it does require us to think differently about our own skill sets, the tools we rely on. You know, Peter Drucker said, “what gets measured gets managed.” Or it’s said that he said that.

Somebody’s out there right now Googling it to see if we said it right or not.

Someone’s like, “actually that wasn’t Drucker.”

It was attributed to him, but he didn’t do it. Yeah.

Thank you.

I’m sure, whoever you are, we’re grateful.

Thank you. Dear reader, please leave us a five-star review on Apple Podcasts or Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts. And mention Peter Drucker. You’ll win a year of free episodes of Copper State of Mind.

Woo hoo.

Yeah. Amazing, right? I’m feeling so generous. But this brings up a really important issue, and we have talked about this in the context of the Cision/PR Week study that comes out every year, which includes concerns about how we measure success, what tools do we have and what does that tell us about how our campaigns are working. So anyway, a recurring theme, but I think really urgent and important. And I just like this idea, the future of influence. That’s something I’m going to be thinking more about.

Yeah. And along with influence, there needs to be a continued focus on trust and what are we doing about trust and where trust. And there a couple studies we spoke about, the Edelman Trust Barometer and others, showing that our trust is collapsing and we are less trustful of our government, we are less trustful of the media, we are less trustful in the businesses that we interact with. How do we flip that and be seen as trustworthy, full of trust and you know, who is it that leads that charge? And if we align it with the concept of influence, then who is influencing these decisions and are they trustworthy and I’m not sure where we’ll land when it comes to this. There are the external efforts to be seen as trustworthy. We have our internal messaging we need to do. We need to create a culture in our organizations of trust as the communications individuals on our teams. We have to be strong in our convictions when we are talking with our CEOs and our organizational leaders, when we suspect that something may not be seen as trustworthy or authentic or transparent, and be willing to push forth the importance of what that is.

And we did spend a couple episodes and actually almost every episode at some level factors in the concept of trust and authenticity and verifying and how do we verify the information? And again, who is trustworthy? And that’s a very complicated discussion, but one that I suspect we are going to see in our episodes into the new year as well. I don’t think it’s magically going to fix itself. It’s going to require all of us to take that on and see what we can do to enhance the trustworthiness of the organizations we represent and the ones we want to invest our time engaging with.

Squeaking in at #10 in our Top 10 list of episodes was Episode 47, “Rebuilding Trust in Government NGOs in the Media: Is It Even Possible?” We dug into those questions there. We had a great conversation with Nikki Little, our colleague from Franco, an agency in Detroit, where she talked about internal communication and the importance of listening to employees. Because building trust in a brand begins ... it’s an inside job.

If you don’t have solid communication internally, if you don’t listen as much as you broadcast, how can you then expect the general public to get a clear picture and have a trusting relationship with your brand or your leadership? And then, of course, I think the most interesting angle on this was #5 on our list, Episode 50, "The End of Celebrity Endorsements." Again, this came out of that study you mentioned.

People don’t believe celebrities anymore. I mean, look, we still see them in the commercials for insurance or apps on your phone or banks or whatever. But increasingly, people believe the internal brand champion, the everyday employee, so to speak, who’s speaking as themselves, not PR’d and media trained and perfected message discipline, et cetera, et cetera, but just naturally and authentically representing the brand in some way. And we gave some examples there of social media campaigns where, you know, the everyday employee on the line was the one whose communication the audience believed the most.

Right. And I think that’s, that’s an evolution in our industry. And what, you know, celebrity endorsements, celebrity testimonials, was the win. You wanted to have that. And however you got there, whether they did it organically or whether that was a paid endorsement, that’s what you wanted. That was what you were striving for. And to some extent we still do. I mean, we want the authentic endorsement that just naturally occurs. And that brand ambassador concept from within really makes that endorsement or testimonial feel more natural and more authentic.

But it’s not, as you said, we’re not paying somebody to say it. They just genuinely believe it. And oftentimes, as you know, we’re not managing campaigns to think about it that way. And we probably need to be doing a little bit better job about looking at our own teams and what they can bring to the table in helping us bring forth the message. And externally and internally, we can have these champions within an organization that helps us spread information within the organization as well. This isn’t about necessarily always a big public display of, of, you know, affection for the, for the business. It really can be an internal conversation and, and recognizing, you know, everyone has an opportunity to lead, everyone has an opportunity to be in the limelight and be pushing forth information.

And that I think, not because it was my sister, but it was one of my favorite conversations we had as well, which was when we talked about developing leadership. And my sister is a middle school teacher, Sandra Fink, and she manages a program at school called Where Everyone Belongs. And one of the things that she talked about was recognizing, even at a young age, leadership qualities and how to nurture those and how to put individuals in scenarios where they can excel based on their leadership qualities and their leadership style. And that we all have the capacity to be a leader, regardless if we have the title.

I am the boss; I am the leader. And I think the commonality with leadership, trust, authenticity, listening, all blends. And maybe those were why they resonated with our audience as well, because these are all smart, critically important lessons for business leaders, for owners and managers of businesses, for your teams. Whether you lead a team or you are the individual on the team, we all have the capacity to be a leader. We all have the capacity to be an ambassador for those things that we believe strongly in, to be an advocate for. And we all strive for an authentic, trustworthy, transparent voice in whatever the conversation is. And if that leads to the new dynamic of what public relations should be and the importance of developing these relationships, then I’m all for it.

And this brings us to what was one of my favorite episodes that made it into the Top 10. It was #2 out of 10, Episode 59 about launching the Knight Center for the Future of News at Arizona State University’s Walter Cronkite School of Journalism and Mass Communications. That’s such a mouthful.

It’s a big mouthful.

The leadership of the Cronkite School, in collaboration with the Knight Center, are trying to lead the future of, you know, people training, whether they’re college students or graduate students, people earning a master’s in one of the related fields, lead into a world where the rules have, have redefined the game. Yes, traditional generalist journalism and many of the legacy media outlets are in decline. They have been for a decade. That decline is continuing. Yes, we have talked about the path to extinction of local news outlets, which are clearly on the endangered list, although nobody’s put together a campaign trying to raise money for the elephants or the whales. But this is very much the same kind of thing. Local news is clearly headed towards extinction. And at the same time, there is a lot of entrepreneurial journalism, there are new digital media startups that are very exciting and interesting.

Specialized niche publications are increasingly important. And this means that all of us, both on the media producer side and on the media relations side, on the PR and communications side, need to understand the way in which our world has changed and our practices need to meet the moment. We need to be AI focused. We need to be small and nimble. We need to understand the dynamics of niche audiences, the way we pitch and to whom we send those pitches, and how we train our clients to communicate effectively in an environment where long-form interviews on a YouTube show or a podcast are just as important as short-form social clips. And that’s a whole different game. So I think there’s a lot of exciting things happening. And that episode in particular pointed to how one leader in the training of future journalists and PR practitioners is thinking about that future and trying to intervene in a constructive way to help create the future that we want.

Right. And, you know, I for one am excited about what opportunities there are looking ahead, with the increased usage and understanding of AI, what AI is doing for businesses, from an awareness building, the GEO, Generative Engine Optimization, AEO, Answer Engine Optimization, was a term I heard the other evening at a Public Relations Society event. And, you know, we are at the forefront of so much opportunity and it’s exciting to think about being involved in those types of things and really helping to shape how we use these, these communications tools and how businesses large and small are being impacted by it, what it means for the organizations themselves.

How are we incorporating AI? Is it, you know, one of the topics we talked about is AI becoming the new entry level employee that we’re all, you know, thinking about. I don’t agree with that topic and we’ll dive into that again in the, into the new year. But you know, there’s so much available to us. And you know, someone had said to me recently about, you know, you’ve been doing this work for such a long time and said, yeah, but it’s always, there’s always something new to learn. There’s always something exciting that’s happening.

And as long as I continue to like it, I still want to keep doing it. And right now there are so many things to like about what this is. And even with all the challenges with shrinking newsrooms and, you know, layoffs happening all over the place in our industry and in our related organizations that we work with. Will AI replace our employees? Will AI take over all these things is still an exciting challenge and something that I continue to be excited to be a part of. And so as we think about the wrapping up this year in 20 25 and some of the great conversations that we had, some of them were easier to have, some of them were a little more difficult based on the topic. But the year ahead is looking very exciting, and I think there’ll be a lot to talk about into the new season of Copper State of Mind, and I’m just grateful to have had you along for the ride and look forward to continuing those discussions and want to wish you a good holiday season and a happy New Year.

Thanks to you and thanks to everyone who listens. It’s only because of you that we know which episodes were in the Top 10. So thank you so much. As we shift our focus from the rearview mirror to the road ahead, let’s put some good tunes on the radio and we’ll see you in 20 26.

Thanks for listening to this episode of Copper State of Mind. If you enjoyed the conversation, please share it with a colleague who might also find this podcast valuable. It’s easy to do. Just click the “Share” button in the app you’re listening to now to pass it along. You can also follow Copper State of Mind in Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or any other podcast app. We publish new episodes every other Friday. Copper State of Mind is brought to you by HMA Public Relations, the oldest continuously operating PR firm in Arizona. The show is recorded and produced by the team at Speed of Story, a B2B communications firm in Phoenix, and distributed by PHX.FM, the leading independent B2B podcast network in Arizona. For all of us here at Speed of Story and PHX.FM, I’m Adrian McIntyre. Thanks for listening and for sharing the show with others if you choose to do so. We hope you’ll join us again for another episode of Copper State of Mind.