Holtz Communications + Technology

The 2025 Edelman Trust Barometer characterized the current communication environment as one infected by grievance. Another commentator claimed that we are living in an age of ubiquitous malignancy. Communicating with a broad audience of stakeholders is especially challenging in this landscape. While the Trust Barometer identifies business as the only one of the four sectors trusted enough to do anything…

The world’s biggest PR agency laid off five percent of its global staff. It’s a sign of the headwinds facing the industry, including reduced opportunities for earned media, which is what PR agencies spend a lot of their time trying to achieve. We’ll explore what’s happening in the PR agency world in the long-form FIR episode for December 2024. Also in this episode, an…

Research finds that corporations no longer see AI as a novelty; it’s a full-blown business tool, one that is so critical that its development is mostly being done in-house. In the November long-form episode of “For Immediate Release,” Neville and Shel review new research about AI’s place in the business world and among employees. Also in this episode, we take a look at social media…

Blogs have been with us for 30 years, which qualifies as “something old.” In this long-form episode of FIR for October, we’ll examine the state of the oldest social media category. We’ll also examine the state of generative Artificial Intelligence, which has been around, for all practical purposes, since November 2022, which makes it “something new.”

In this episode, we’ll also explore Reddit’s potential as a channel for…

Much of the content in this monthly long-form episode of FIR spotlights rising trends in marketing, including employee influencers, Gen Z’s rising power as influencers, the role of influencers in the 2024 U.S. presidential election, and AI’s growing presence in the marketing space. All of this is raising alarms about the need for marketers to be transparent and laser-focused on what matters to…

The desire to stand out has declined significantly over the last 20 years, according to a new study. That has serious implications for society, business, and communicators. Meanwhile, shutting off comments on your social media channel could have worse repercussions than putting up with comments you don’t want to see. Also in this episode, The fediverse is gaining traction, which leads one…