Cross-posted from the FIR Podcast Network

Chris Abraham, Cindy Crescenzo, and Steve Farnsworth join host Shel Holtz to talk about these topics:

• An update on the latest news about fake news, including a boycott of the new Star Wars movie, companies waking up to the threat, and data showing most Americans believe fake news headlines when they see them.
• PR is still saddled with a reputation as spin doctors, liars, and sharks circling startups in order to take a chunk of their flesh.
• As automated systems replace real people, what happens to the human-fueled customer experience?
• Do marketers need to move beyond branded content if they’re going to contribute to the company’s revenue stream?
• Corporate values used to be fairly mundane but today they can provoke partisan anger and blowback. “Pretty much every charitable donation, advertising dollar, and policy position has become a political statement with the potential to anger a sub-section of the company’s employee and customer base,” writes Paul Holmes.
• Advertiser excitement over Snapchat Live Stories is waning while Instagram Stories are producing massive swipe-throughs.
• One company has introduced a bot as an influencer while another is looking to a team of influencers with less clout than the big go-to celebrities. Is the shape of influencer marketing changing?
• In his Tech Report, Dan York looks at WordPress 4.7 and JetPack 4.4, as well as Telegram’s new “Telegraph” lightweight blogging service.

Connect with our panelists on Twitter at @MarisCallahan, @JGoldsborough, and @TheTimHayden.

Links to the source material for this episode are on Contentle.

Special thanks to Jay Moonah for the opening and closing music.

About today’s panel:

Maris Callahan is director of Public Relations atDonuts Inc., the world’s largest registry of new gTLD’s (or as the folks at Donuts call them, “not-com” domain name endings). With over 10 years of experience in public relations on the agency side and as an independent consultant, Maris is responsible for the planning and execution of Donuts’ B2C and B2B public relations strategy. Before Donuts, she was an independent consultant to small and mid-size businesses seeking brand awareness. She also worked for some of the top PR agencies in the world, including Edelman, Burson-Marsteller and Lippe Taylor. Maris is also the creator and writer of In Good Taste, a food and lifestyle blog founded in 2008.

Justin Goldsborough is a senior vice president and social media lead at FleishmanHillard Kansas City and is a member of the agency’s Social Innovation Leadership Team. During his 7.5 years at FH, he’s led communications strategy for clients such as Sleep Number, Hallmark Cards and Children’s Mercy Hospital. Before coming to FH, Justin was at Sprint for two years where he managed the company’s employee social network, Sprint Space, and led efforts to improve customer outreach via social media, specifically Twitter. Justin also spent some time in the food biz when he managed employee communications, including the company Intranet and initial social media efforts, for Applebee’s International. Justin is a past president of Kansas City IABC, where he led his local chapter to the highest honor IABC bestows – International Chapter of the Year. Justin is also a diehard Kansas City Royals fan and is much more eager to talk baseball these days than he was from 1986-2013.

Tim Hayden has two decades of experience in leading high-growth technology firms and marketing agencies. Before Brain+Trust, he was head of marketing at Zignal Labs, a real-time media intelligence platform, and produced marketing technology and process improvement programs for clients of TTH Strategy, a consultancy Tim founded. He is also former head of the Mobile program at Edelman Digital in North America, and been founder of agencies and technology ventures (NION Interactive, GamePlan, Captix) serving as a catalyst for innovative change in some of the world’s leading brands (CafePress, Dell, Bacardi, AMD,ExxonMobil, Hilton Worldwide, Kraft Foods, Edison Research and others). Tim serves on the advisory boards of Zignal Labs, Rivet Works, Wonder Technologies and Captix, and is co-author of The Mobile Commerce Revolution (QUE Biz Tech, October 2014).