Michael Nuñez

Hey, that's me! It was a whirlwind and an honor to be part of this project, culminating in a powerhouse expo in the heart of DC pushing the AI evolution and ensuring America stays on the competitive edge. My blog of observations here: https://lnkd.in/gTih-uxk

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One of our clients is pioneering the use of AI for drug discovery -- one of the most important use cases today. Our case study below tells what they're doing and how we're helping them. #AI #drugdiscovery #medicine

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Preparing for the election battleground of 2024: where AI, deepfakes, and disinformation collide. An eye-opening read 👀🔍 #Election2024 #AI #Deepfakes https://lnkd.in/gk82cm9T

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If you don't subscribe, then you are missing out on great content! Eleanor Hawkins delivers every time! My BIG takeaway from the current installment has to do with this stat: "An MIT study found false news online reaches people about six times faster than the truth, yet 28% of businesses don't have a formal mis-disinformation response plan in place and 23% have no plan." At the very least, businesses need a single source of publicly-facing truth space online. I see so many businesses that do not have this space (and no, it is not your consumer-facing blog), so the stat is not shocking at all. This is a communication malpractice. Reach out and let's fix it.

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This article highlights the challenges reporters face when seeking comments from companies and public figures. The phrase “did not respond to a request for comment” is becoming increasingly common in journalism. This trend raises questions about the impact on journalistic integrity and the changing landscape of media communications. https://lnkd.in/e33AuQRy

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Brit Morin, Jessica E. Lessin, Sam Lessin and Dave Morin had a really interesting conversation on a podcast this week about media businesses, the tribulations of the The Washington Post and how it's losing piles of money and subs. The discussion dipped into something Chris Anderson coined 20 years ago, perhaps before their time, called "long tail" content. Essentially his thesis called on creators to hyper-focus only on their niche, becoming the expert in hacking heat pumps or the best practices of dog grooming. Now, I'm one of those always looking to appeal to the broadest audience possible so naturally I've pushed against this framework, considering it too limiting. Then I met and worked under Robert Allbritton at POLITICO, where in spite of many in the company not on board with the philosophy, he talked about starting the company to deliver value to a sliver of the audience: those most powerful in the halls of government and soup of politics (and charge significant money for it). Needless to say it was a winning approach, because it's unlikely Axel Springer paid a billion dollars a few years ago for the ad-supported general news side of the house - as terrific as that content is. It was the subscription "Pro" product that overdelivered to that wonky sliver. And while the chatters on the pod did not say so, a similar strategy could well work for the Post: Turn 80% of the operation toward finding a little white space in the "political and policy makers" space, and become an absolute authority there ... and then, of course, license all that to the LLMs ;-) (But that's a story for another post.)

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Ever heard of 'spatial intelligence'? I'm excited to share that I've been recruited by OpenWater Group to become a "founding ambassador" for their new invite-only wisdom network think tank! You can expect me to repost interesting insights from community members to help elevate their mission of fostering knowledge sharing and intellectual discourse. Open Water is a community of experience professionals willing to give back to young professionals to create collective success. Let me know if you're interested in joining. . Speaking of insightful content, Open Water's community is already producing thought-provoking analysis even in early ramp-up mode. I wanted to highlight this excellent Q&A with AI expert Daeil Kim who unpacks the recent AI announcements from OpenAI and Google. A few key takeaways from the article: -ChatGPT's low-latency multimodal model brings us closer to the conversational AI vision from "Her", while Google showcased their strengths in integrating AI across products. -These AI assistants open up new practical use cases like 24/7 personalized tutoring that understands our questions better through multimodal inputs. We can push the limits by making bold requests, like using the AI's computer vision to provide real-time coding instructions for replicating a website's design. -The next frontier is spatial intelligence to enable AI to learn from and operate in the physical world, paving the way for advanced humanoid robots. I encourage you to read Daeil's full insights and let me know what you think about the state of AI and its rapidly evolving capabilities. This is just the start of Open Water's mission to catalyze meaningful conversations and knowledge sharing!

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Over the past 20+ years, Mission North has supported companies through critical milestones and communications opportunities – such as launching out of stealth, creating a category, entering the public markets, or driving catalyzing industry movements. Many of our clients come to us for support during “champagne moments,” and stick with us to differentiate as they evolve, which often requires educating skeptics and confronting challengers. Our goal: to provide clients with a guide to what’s most impactful to their business — reputation management, thought leadership, content marketing, digital marketing, and beyond — to help them navigate and operate from a position of strength. We’ve codified our approach with Brand Navigator (unveiled today on our updated website!), which crystallizes our approach to support clients through critical moments: ⚒️ Build: Rally people around an audacious vision and category-defining opportunity. 🚀 Scale: Grow from idea to IPO with an undeniable performance narrative. 🗽Lead: Own the category and become the industry standard for your peers. 🔒Protect: Defend your license to operate while managing increased risk and stakeholder complexity. 🌱 Renew: Reclaim the lead and offer new reasons to believe your best days are still ahead. This framework helps us adapt to companies’ changing comms needs over time and partner with them for the long haul. When we all have so much flying at us at once, it can be hard to prioritize where to begin. It can be grounding to lean on Brand Navigator as a framework to guide clients, and reassure them that while their situation is unique and often decisions need to be made quickly, there are tried and true approaches we can lean on to craft a communications strategy that we are confident will work. Check out our blog on Brand Navigator and try to plot your business on the map. Where does your company fit? #communications #corporatecomms #PRstrategy #brandstrategy https://lnkd.in/eZkpTqzN

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Join us for an important conversation next week about platform design and elections with Glenn E., Ravi Iyer, Kaili L., and Nicole Schneidman - how is tech getting in the way and/or facilitating election integrity? 🤔 https://lu.ma/59uxawc5

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My inner nerd was interested in the news that is Meta ditching workplace. We see Viva Engage gaining traction with clients, and Slack remains popular, but Workplace environments have become wild wests with it super hard to search for content and the noise-to-signal ratio set to TOO LOUD. Will be interesting to see how this pans out and what AI will do to this digital collaboration space. Ok, it's not as interesting as an episode of The Responder, but it's interesting nonetheless! If you have any questions or thoughts on Workplace or your internal communication channels, feel free to drop a comment or reach out (Victoria.entwistle@hillandknowlton.com). We have helped clients such as Nestlé, Anglo American, Tata Consulting, and Haleon determine the best digital communication platforms and initiate better global matrix collaboration to improve business impact, like SIX's BOOST program. Consequently, 86% of employees reported an improved understanding of the new strategy and vision and satisfaction with communications increased by 18%!

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In this week’s Borkowski Media Trends we apply Meltwater data to Justin Timberlake’s DWI crisis to demonstrate two home truths about the new conditions. Negative publicity unfolds at mind-boggling speed and in uncontrollable volumes. BUT.. #PR Crises flare out quickly in the modern news cycle Meme culture can accelerate this process by diluting negative publicity “In the past week, 81% of non-neutral mentions of Timberlake in the media have been negative – that’s over 100,000 stories and significant social media posts. But it’s not all bad; crises these days don’t last long – overall mentions of Timberlake spiked at 132,000 on Wednesday but, as of Friday, have already dropped 93% to below 10,000. And the comedy is undoubtedly distracting from the negativity; nine of the top 10 most shared links about Timberlake in the last week have been memes – with only the first significant share of his mugshot treating his arrest as anything more than a joke. If that doesn’t illustrate the trivial nature of the crisis, there’s also the small matter that the ‘ROFL’ emoji has been used in conjunction with Timberlake’s name over 2,000 more times than ‘DWI’ since the arrest. While instructive, it’s important to note that it would have been very hard, if not impossible, for Timberlake to engineer a situation where a meme distracts the general public from his reputation crisis. Possibly the only major public figures who have done that successfully in recent times have been Donald Trump and Boris Johnson – and neither of them was able to swim against the serious undercurrent of their reputational issues forever. But it does show any errant celebrity worried about a career-ending scandal that the modern news cycle is short-lasting and easily distracted by frivolity...there's hope for us all.” For weekly insights into the PR, Communications and Reputation lessons behind the week’s top stories, delivered every Friday, subscribe to our Substack: https://lnkd.in/eB9ME6VJ #PR, #CrisisCommunications #Reputation #celebrity #reputation #riskmanagement #crisismanagement 

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📣 Exciting news for PR professionals and journalists alike! Peter Shankman's #HelpEveryReporterOut (HERO) and #MuckRack have joined forces to revolutionize the media industry. HERO connects journalists seeking sources with experts who can provide them, while MuckRack is a leading platform for PR software that helps organizations find the right journalists to pitch their stories. The synergy between the two promises to enhance the way media professionals work. With this partnership, journalists can expect reliable sources fast and PR pros can get their stories to the right people at the right time. This means more opportunities to get clients' stories out there, with the confidence that they are reaching the right audience. The HERO and MuckRack collab addresses these needs head-on, making the process more efficient and effective. In today's media landscape, speed and accuracy are critical. This new partnership is a game-changer for the industry and a testament to the power of collaboration. Kudos to Peter and MuckRack! #Journalism #PublicRelations #MuckRack #HERO #Communications #BusinessInsights #LeadershipLessons #Storytelling #Marketing #IntegratedMarketing Natan Edelsburg Public Relations Society of America (PRSA)

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Bloomberg News: "In a new partnership with Vote.org, people will be able to register to vote, sign up for election reminders and make a plan for Election Day from within Snapchat. In 2020, the app registered 1.2 million people to vote, making it a prime platform for political advertisers to reach voters. More than 80 million Americans of voting age use Snapchat every month, according to the company. Snap will also prominently feature politically focused content from NBC News, including on-the-ground coverage of key events from conventions to rallies and speeches. In order to help those users make more informative decisions, Snap launched in 2016 its Good Luck America news show, which offers perspective and explanation around key events from both political parties. This year the show will launch a new series called Campus Tour from colleges across the country. Also, Snap’s partnership with NBC News’ “Stay Tuned’ program will present a series that talks with Gen Z voters in local, state and federal elections about issues that resonate with them. Political ads on Snap are vetted through a 'rigorous human review process,' as well as fact-checking with nonpartisan partner Poynter Institute, and a registration and certification process for potential ad buyers. The app will screen for misleading information, including those using artificial intelligence to create deceptive images." https://lnkd.in/gWKJM-EF

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PRWeek's great 2024 Business Report highlights the key challenge facing our industry. Communications is more important than ever. Comms and policy leaders are being asked to play far larger roles as business partners supporting ever more stakeholders. So why did the industry suffer so much in 2023 after many years of growth? As an sector, we are not adapting fast enough to the needs. Organizations are desperate for help but also under tremendous financial strain. They now need both senior level counsel and advisory support as well as deep domain expertise to actually produce. By and large, our industry is still split by this chasm - between strategic and tactical. Clients cannot afford to separate these, either in time or money. At Bully Pulpit International our goal is to bridge this divide, building a team that can both 'think and do' at the highest levels. It's not always easy. Last year was a challenge. But if you share this vision for the future, please check out some of our open roles: https://lnkd.in/dGQwJUSG

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Impact Partners we've been talking a lot this week about "non-consensus" thinking in business and investing. This is mostly due to our venture client Paul Hsu at Decasonic, who is our community's unofficial Chief Non-Conformity Officer. Listening to Paul speak on the subject is both inspiring and foretelling. This is partly because the signals of non-conformity resonates with me personally (it's built into the foundation of our agency), but it's also because many of our LP, family office, investing, wealth management, and, of course, innovative founder clients know there's tremendous benefit from investing in and building the businesses that others either don't yet understand or simply can't see. This conversation reminds me of a quote from Robert Mercer, former CEO of Renaissance Technology (who for decades used AI to crack the code on public markets, investing, and value creation...his team created some of the wealthiest people in the world): “Some signals that make no intuitive sense do indeed work.” In fact, his team figured out that non-intuitive signals often prove THE MOST LUCRATIVE for investors. Furthermore, according to Mercer, “The signals that we have been trading without interruption for fifteen years make no sense. Otherwise someone else would have found them.” He made a TON OF MONEY.

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💡How are newsrooms using AI?💡  🌟 As AI continues to evolve, marketers and PR pros need to know how it affects journalism. Understanding how AI software influences story discovery and content creation enables teams to refine their pitching and press release strategies. 📰🤖 🔍 Consider these recent examples of AI projects supported by AP's Local News AI initiative and the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation: 🎙️ Michigan Radio, a University of Michigan NPR affiliate, uses an innovative tool that scrapes city council meetings from video sharing services, transcribes them, and generates tailored alerts. The result? Better visibility into public meetings and proactive notifications aligned with journalists’ beats and interests. 📺 Television station WFMZ-TV in Allentown, Pa., uses AI software that sorts and prioritizes news releases and story pitches from emails and other outside sources. And then, it enters the information into a content management system. 🤔 Thoughts? 👇 🔗 Learn more about the AI projects mentioned at https://lnkd.in/ep9H9QCM J.P. Escobar Jason Fink R. Kurt Osenlund Isha Kamani Hollis Daniels Melanie Shaw Chris Hayes #ArtificialIntelligence #Journalism #MarketingStrategy #PR #AIinJournalism #Innovation #FutureOfNews #TechAdvancements #Collaboration

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I shared my strategy when working with #PostPamper (San Diego's first postpartum retreat) and major podcast wins for The Life You Can Save on the Remarkable Marketing Podcast. You can listen to the full episode here: https://lnkd.in/gcvCp_nw #publicrelations #pragency

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I love it when a trend circles back around - so I got a kick out of this morning's piece in the WSJ on the resurgence of Kindle sales among younger audiences, spurred on by #BookTok, a reading group on TikTok. Years ago, I had the opportunity to work with an e-reader device company and with E Ink Corporation, which makes the screen technology for e-readers. As an avid book nerd, this was one of my favorite projects to work on - it was the nexus of technology and literature - we staged reading-focused events at The Boston Library and in Times Square, NYC. E-readers seem like a pretty simple device by today's standards - they don't fold, there's no high screen refresh rate, there's no onboard AI capabilities. But the technology that goes into making a good e-reader is pretty remarkable: - The screen needs to enable hours of focus and concentration. - There needs to be reliable but not intrusive connectivity. - The ergonomics need to be perfect for holding the device for long periods of time. - And the content sources need to be nearly endless. In a world of constant distraction, e-readers are the "anti-distraction" devices. Is there a little irony to the fact that TikTok is spurring Kindle sales and reading among younger audiences? Brandon LaBelle Valerie Motis Steve Haber https://lnkd.in/ewpvRZjJ

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