The “Transmission” Problem in Public Relations

Communications has always been built around a sender mentality. We decide what people need to know, we package it, we push it out. That model came from journalism and broadcasting, three networks, eleven o'clock news, one message for everyone. It made sense then. 

The infrastructure has changed completely since. Audiences have become producers. People choose what they consume, when they consume it, and they unsubscribe from what no longer serves them.

That transformation happened entirely in the outside world. Inside organizations, almost nothing changed. And the question this episode keeps coming back to is a simple and uncomfortable one: why are we still broadcasting when everything outside us has already moved on?

This episode was recorded ON LOCATION at IABC World Conference in Toronto in June 2026.

Listen For

4:34 How did audiences become producers of their own news and information?

6:16 Why does internal communication need to become recipient-driven?

9:33 How can communicators create identity moments that cut through white noise?

11:28 How did opening in Spanish create a powerful diversity and inclusion moment?

16:51 How is AI changing the communicator’s role from creator to prompt strategist?

Guest: Brad Whitworth

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Transcript

Lady Emily (00:00):
This episode was recorded on location at the IABC World Conference in Toronto in June 2026. It starts with a story about a company that never stopped sending and never noticed when everyone stopped receiving.

Doug Downs (00:14):
In 1876, a man named William Orton received an offer. Alexander Graham Bell had invented something new, a device that could carry a human voice across a wire in real time. Bell's people approached Western Union with a proposal to buy the patent. The asking price, $100,000. Orton was the president of Western Union, the most powerful communications company in the world. They'd built an empire on the telegram. You write your message, we send it, it arrives clean, simple, efficient. Orton turned them down. His exact words, as history has recorded them, were something close to this: "What use could this company make of an electrical toy?" Western Union had built the greatest one way communications infrastructure the world had ever seen. They were exceptional at sending. They had never once had to think about receiving. And so when something arrived that was about conversation, about two people exchanging, about the audience talking back,

They simply couldn't see it. The telephone went on to become the dominant communications technology of the 20th century, and Western Union kept sending telegrams. For decades, it actually looked fine from the inside. Revenues held. The offices stayed open, the wires kept humming. But by 1945, AT&T was generating nearly $2 billion a year in revenue. Western Union, $182 million. Same year, same market, 10 to 1. Western Union wasn't failing. They were just becoming irrelevant so gradually that nobody inside the building noticed until it was too late. They sent their last telegram in 2006. Most internal communications functions today are Western Union: exceptional infrastructure, carefully crafted messages, flawlessly delivered, and an audience that's already figured out how to talk back and doesn't understand why nobody's picking up. They're becoming irrelevant so gradually nobody is noticing. Today on Stories and Strategies, we find out what happens when public relations finally picks up the phone.

(02:41):
 My name is Doug Downs. Guest this week, Brad Whitworth. Thanks for joining, Brad.

Brad Whitworth (02:45):
It's a pleasure to be able to join you here in Toronto.

Doug Downs (02:48):
And I know you're from Northern California, but you've been to Toronto many times, including what, the mid to late 70s for the first IABC World Conference?

Brad Whitworth (02:57):
My very first IABC World Conference was right here in 1978. And I will say I was of age, but I won't say exactly which age I was. And we have had seven IABC World Conferences here in Toronto. So it's a very good stopping spot for the IABC crowd. It attracts great attention from around the world.

Doug Downs (03:18):
It does. It's a strong city for IABC. Brad, you're an IABC fellow, past chair of IABC. And if you've been to any of the IABC World Conferences and there's that voice of God, that was... Can you do a little snippet of that?

Brad Whitworth (03:32):
Sure. I was going to say the broadcast background helps a little bit. So I'm the one who gets to announce things like, "In just a few moments your program will begin. Please make sure your cell phones are set to silent as you find your seat."

Doug Downs (03:48):
Over these years, I got into public relations in the very early 2000s, was in broadcasting kind of like you before that. And I look back over my time, 30 some odd years, and it feels in so many ways that it hasn't changed. The technologies have. But one of the challenges is this sender or this broadcast mentality that we want to tell them and we want to educate. That word kind of gets to me.

Brad Whitworth (04:15):
I think some of that comes from the education a lot of people had, which was coming from sort of the mass communications, the journalism training where you go out, you get the story and you put it into the channel and get things to people, whether it was a broadcast channel or a newspaper or a magazine or what have you. So we've been storytellers and that tradition still continues. It's good.

Doug Downs (04:33):
Good.

Brad Whitworth (04:34):
I think the big switch that I've seen is that we have really put some amazing power in the hands of our audiences on many fronts. One is our audiences actually have turned into producers themselves. I mean, they're carrying around a small broadcast studio in their pocket and have the ability to create their own channel and do information. So they don't necessarily have to rely upon the few sources of news. And we talked earlier, I mean, when we were growing up, there were three networks and that was it.

Doug Downs (05:07):
Peter Jennings, Dan Rather, Tom Brokaw.

Brad Whitworth (05:10):
And if you go back before that, it was like Huntley Brinkley and Walter Cronkite.

Doug Downs (05:13):
And...

Brad Whitworth (05:14):
There were a few places, and it was all sort of the same, and it came to you at a certain time, and you had to dial in at...

Doug Downs (05:20):
11 o'clock, the 11 o'clock news.

Brad Whitworth (05:22):
Yeah.

Doug Downs (05:23):
In the Midwest, it was like 6:00 PM.

Brad Whitworth (05:25):
Yeah. So that is changing in so many ways. One is the proliferation of channels. You can choose where it is that you want to get your news. The other thing that I think comes along with that is you can choose when you want to get your news. No longer are you bound by that time restriction.

And all of that's going on in our real world, our lives outside of corporations and the work that we do, but we really haven't applied those same qualities, those same techniques inside. I mean, we still think that we, and that tends to be sort of the senior leaders and corporate communications teams, decide what it is that you need to know.

Internal audiences, we still sort of have a one size fits all approach. A lot of stuff going out to everybody in an organization, even large organizations that are multidimensional and have different lines of business.

(06:16):
 I even take it down to the individual recipient. Just because two people have the same job responsibilities and are in the same department, they may consume information in very different ways. Someone may love to live in the moment and, as soon as it happens, want to see the thing showing up on their device.

Others may just think, "Once a week summary is fine for me. I've been at this for a long time. I sort of know what's going on."

So we haven't embraced this change from what I call the provider driven, supplier driven, top down communications strategy to a recipient driven communications strategy.

Doug Downs (06:55):
And...

Brad Whitworth (06:56):
It's going to take some time.

Doug Downs (06:57):
We do look at the user journey. We take surveys. With the digital world, we're able to look at clicks, click through rates, impressions, ratios, things like that. But inevitably every comms plan that gets initiated with me, or every strategy, begins with, "We need them to understand..." that kind of thing.

So is it that we as communicators, even senior communicators, are not getting that across to senior leadership? Or is it that that is simply what is going to spark a communications effort, when we need to move the dial?

Brad Whitworth (07:33):
Yeah. Well, there are times when you rest much better at night knowing that everybody heard something. But then after that, I think we need to begin to recognize that there are differences in people, the way they consume information, the way they want information.

And the other one that I keep saying to leaders and reminding them is everyone has a different starting point and a different finish line. So just because you communicated something once doesn't mean that everybody's heard it, because you may have just hired a number of new people into your organization, and you have to find a way to reach them with some of the information that you think, "Oh, everybody knows this."

Well, not everybody knows everything.

And I would also argue that the mentality in general is that everybody needs to know everything. That was that one size fits all approach. And the answer is very few people need to know everything that's going on.

(08:25):
 And in our private lives, we have this opportunity to unsubscribe from things that we no longer find useful.

"Hey, I want to get on this."

Then it becomes, "Yeah, I've gotten about as much value from this as I'm going to get. It's repeating itself."

Whatever the reason, you unsubscribe.

(08:40):
 We really don't have that unsubscribe button for a lot of the stuff that goes on inside organizations, other than the Delete key.

There are some things that I think trigger that. I mean, if you have a message from the CEO as the header on something, people get used to, "This is not going to me. This is going to lots of people."

And then just...

Doug Downs (09:01):
Delete.

Brad Whitworth (09:02):
And we need to start putting information into bite sized chunks for people and also target it to sub audiences inside the organization.

Doug Downs (09:11):
This is really interesting because lately I've been on this tangent about creating identity moments for whatever target group. That sounds terrible. Whatever my target is, I need them to know within three to five seconds, or feel some kind of identity moment.

Is that something you go into as well?

Brad Whitworth (09:29):
Yes.

Doug Downs (09:30):
Yeah. I love that. And how do you do it? That's the more important question.

Brad Whitworth (09:33):
This is something that I don't think AI can do, but it's the creativity and it's the trying to stand out from the white noise.

I mean, while I love the idea that people go out and benchmark against others and find out what some of the leaders are doing, if you start doing what everybody else is doing, you are just adding to the white noise.

So I think the creative aspect now is: can you capture in a headline quickly what you're trying to convey? Can you put it in that lead sentence instead of burying it?

And if you go back to the traditional way we used to work on communications in the corporate world, it was like the main thing, whether the press release or the article that's going to be in the newsletter or what have you, that's where we've put all of our time and effort.

(10:16):
 And that's the thing that we sent around and got approvals on.

Then at the last second we would slapdash on a quick headline, maybe a blurb, maybe a caption that went with the photo.

And what happens is the consumers are using it in inverse relationship. They're looking at the headline, the blurb, the caption, and if it's good enough, they might dive in through the lead and get into the story.

So we're investing the least amount of time in the thing that people look at the most.

We need to turn that equation upside down so that we're putting the information up front that can pull people in.

And if they only get the headline and maybe the first sentence, they've got the gist of it.

Then write it well enough that they want to know more, and if it appeals to them, they'll dive in a little bit deeper.

Doug Downs (11:00):
Give me an example of something you saw or heard that worked really well, that stood out to you. You had that identity moment for yourself and it pulled you in and you thought, "Okay, I need to go beyond the caption, beyond the headline, and I do want to absorb this."

And did you have previous drama or previous history with this story? Because I also think we're more likely to invest our time into things we've already been following.

Brad Whitworth (11:28):
Well, I'll give you one great example.

Working with an executive vice president whom I've been supporting, she came to the United States when she was four years old speaking no English. She was born in Havana, Cuba, and has turned out to be an amazing leader. Her English is fluent.

She was asked to deliver a diversity and inclusion moment at a large gathering of employees.

I said, "Instead of starting out in English, why don't you start out in Spanish?"

Doug Downs (11:56):
Oh, nice.

Brad Whitworth (11:57):
"And go for about two minutes and just sort of see if people in the audience are squirming and asking what's going on."

Then you connect with the people of Latino and Latina backgrounds in the audience, but you're probably going to make some other people wonder, "What's going on?"

Then just break into English and say, "This is how I felt when I was four years old in this country for the first time, speaking no English."

And we need to all be aware of the need to make connections and find a way to communicate across a diverse audience.

And so I knew her background. I knew her story. And it's like, what if we turn the tables and turn it upside down?

Part of that also was my 10 years of working in Asia Pacific and Latin America, where I think everyone needs to put themselves in a position where they are a visible minority and understand what it's like to not understand the language, not understand the culture, and still have to make connections and do things right.

(12:57):
 And that doesn't happen often enough for enough people.

Doug Downs (13:01):
I love that approach of opening in Spanish because it makes people fit into her shoes in that moment very quickly.

Brad Whitworth (13:08):
And I only speak French, so I was very little help. But I didn't understand a word she was saying.

Doug Downs (13:13):
Although, I'd love to know, are you fluent in French? Because if you're fluent and you're from Northern California, and I'm from Canada, and your French is better, shame on me.

Brad Whitworth (13:22):
(Speaking French.)

My dad was a French professor.

Doug Downs (13:24):
Are we? Yeah.

Brad Whitworth (13:25):
And I will tell my one quick story.

There was a time when I was at a table with Jean Chrétien, who at the time was the head of the Liberal Party and said he had no further political aspirations. Wink, wink.

And Jean Chrétien was explaining to me, he was saying, "Let me tell you about Régis Labeaume and let me tell you about..." Well, he was naming all these people.

And I said, I actually knew a little bit more than he gave me credit for.

It was an Anglo audience, an IABC audience in Winnipeg, and a young man stood up during the Q&A and asked him a question in French.

And Monsieur Chrétien responded in his native Québécois.

Then he said, "Oh, excuse me. I must do this in English for my American friend."

And so I said out loud, as loudly as I could, "Je comprends."

And he was a bit taken aback.

But I think there's...

Doug Downs (14:18):
He would've loved that. He would've loved that.

Brad Whitworth (14:20):
Well, there's a lesson there. You cannot assume that, one, your message is getting through, or that the person doesn't speak a language.

I mean, don't make strange assumptions. Why was he even pointing out that because I was American, I probably didn't speak French?

Doug Downs (14:37):
So that leads to this: we are complex people. Everyone I have a conversation with has many, many layers. They're not simple. They're not stupid.

How do we manage to create those identity moments without... We live in a world of offending people. We're so divisive, right?

And if I manage to create an identity moment with someone, I alienate maybe a whole bunch of other people.

Do I just live with that? Do I realize that that's my target audience and, oh well, I've alienated others?

How do I be strong without estranging others?

Brad Whitworth (15:11):
I think it's an absolutely great question.

And it comes as we see this tendency to create a channel for anything and everything.

Doug Downs (15:18):
You can't. That's a channel for nobody.

Brad Whitworth (15:20):
And the sad part is the algorithms drive us to these extremes.

It's sort of like the middle of the road, the centrist position, is disappearing.

And the inoffensive part of it? It's boring.

Doug Downs (15:31):
Boring.

Brad Whitworth (15:32):
Yes.

So we have to figure out a way to communicate.

And I think the other part is just to be sensitive to human beings and put yourself in the audience's shoes.

And if you can't do it alone, one of the things that I also say is very, very helpful is the AI that we're afraid is taking everyone's job away.

AI is also a great editor.

And if you turn it into a tool, if you've prepared a script or written a story, feed it through AI and give it the prompt that says:

"This is going to be read by an audience that is..."

Then describe the audience and say:

"Would this audience find this offensive in any way, shape, or form? And how can I change it so that I'm appealing to a larger audience without losing the message that's embedded in this?"

Doug Downs (16:15):
Have you ever had a discussion with AI and said, "Okay, be offended by this and charge me with your offenses and let me see if I can stand up to them"?

Brad Whitworth (16:24):
No, but we now have AI tools that are inserting mistakes into copy because people find that if it's too perfect, they think, "This must have been done by AI."

So to make it seem human, it inserts errors, which is sort of...

Doug Downs (16:39):
It's very charming.

Brad Whitworth (16:41):
Yeah. Turn off spell check. That'll get you there too. And your thumbs on the keyboard.

Doug Downs (16:47):
Oh, that's interesting.

So it's gone beyond removing the em dash now to all these other things.

Brad Whitworth (16:51):
And punctuation.

I'm still trying to figure out if it knows serial commas and whether it does them the way I like them or not.

But it can be a tool.

And I think there are people... What I've said is that AI is not there to take away roles, but it's changing the role that we all play.

And the creativity that I used for the longest time in creating the end product, the creativity is now going into producing the prompt.

I mean, some of my prompts are so long they actually tell me I've run out of characters.

Doug Downs (17:23):
Wow.

Brad Whitworth (17:23):
But it's sort of like if you had an agency.

If you were lucky enough to have a PR agency or an ad agency doing work for you, the better the brief that you gave them, the more likely you were to get a good product back.

What we've done now is shift that process.

I'm not talking to an agency or a group of creatives.

I'm talking to this tool that produces something.

And the better and more explicit I can be in describing what it is that I hope for, the more likely I am to get something that's close.

But then the other piece is you have to own whatever it is that Claude or ChatGPT or anybody else is giving you.

Doug Downs (17:58):
Right. It belongs to you. It's up to you to scrutinize that and make sure...

How many times a day do I challenge Claude and say, "Did you dream this up?"

Brad Whitworth (18:06):
Yeah. "Can that be right?"

Doug Downs (18:08):
Yeah.

"Yep, I did. Sorry. I invented that. I thought it would fit."

I know you live basically in wine country.

I hope at some point you get down to Inniskillin where they make the ice wines in Niagara. It is a gorgeous area.

Brad Whitworth (18:25):
During my last trip, we went down to the Niagara region and had some of the wonderful wines from there.

And wherever we travel, my wife and I... She is the smart one on the wine side of things. I sort of follow in her wake.

She's got her Level 2 sommelier certification, and she's always interviewing winemakers and talking to them, and I'm sort of in her wake, let's put it that way.

But what I love about it is that every place you go, for example, all 50 U.S. states make wine.

Now, many shouldn't, but...

Doug Downs (18:56):
Alaska makes wine?

Brad Whitworth (18:57):
They do.

Doug Downs (18:58):
Really?

Brad Whitworth (18:59):
Yeah.

And I mean, you get Hawaiian wines, you get fruit wines and other things that are sort of...

They're not using the same varietals that you would find in France or Italy or Australia.

Doug Downs (19:09):
Or... I'd be willing to try it.

Brad Whitworth (19:10):
And we try them.

And I will also say that we've got a 94 point award winning wine from our own vineyard in Northern California, and sometimes the others don't quite make it to that level.

So I'm happy where we are, and I do love Russian River wines and only wish that some of that stuff could come into Canada a little bit more easily.

Doug Downs (19:34):
Yes.

Brad Whitworth (19:35):
And there will be a day.

Doug Downs (19:36):
We should have a trade agreement or something.

Yeah.

Thank you so much for your time today.

Brad Whitworth (19:39):
This has been just great, Doug.

So thank you for inviting me, and let's do it again.

Doug Downs (19:47):
Here are three things today from Brad Whitworth that you might bring up in conversation later on today.

Number one, the sender mentality is still the default.

Most internal communications functions are still built around what leadership wants to say, not what audiences need to hear.

Number two, the headline is the message.

Audiences consume in inverse order to how we produce, and we keep investing the least amount of time in the thing that people look at the most.

And number three, AI is the new creative chief.

The creativity hasn't left communications. It's just moving from crafting the end product to writing the prompt that gets you there.

If you'd like to send a message to our guest, Brad Whitworth, we've got his contact information in the show notes.

Stories and Strategies is a production of Stories and Strategies Podcasts.

If you like this episode, it's pretty easy to leave a rating, possibly a review, or a comment.

(20:40):
 Thank you to producers Emily Page and Jocelyn Floralde.

And lastly, do us a favor, a big favor, forward this episode to one friend.

And thanks for listening.