Public Relations Stories and Strategies

Every organization has a story people believe about it. Most leaders didn't choose that story. They inherited it, stumbled into it, or lost control of it somewhere along the way. Stories and Strategies is the podcast that changes that. Host Doug Downs talks with the communicators, executives, and strategists who understand that narrative isn't a marketing function. It's a leadership one. Each episode unpacks what actually shapes reputation, trust, and public perception at the highest levels, drawing on behavioral science, media intelligence, and the ethics that keep persuasion honest. This is public relations at the level serious leaders need it. Not tactics and press releases. The thinking behind why some stories win and others disappear. Ranked among the most listened-to public relations podcasts in the world, Stories and Strategies reaches leaders and communicators across six continents every week. If you a

Public Relations Stories and Strategies is a business podcast hosted by Stories and Strategies https://storiesandstrategies.ca/, with 277 episodes on record and a Required Pod Score of 80.

Stories and Strategies https://storiesandstrategies.ca/ hosts Public Relations Stories and Strategies, a business show with 277 episodes published.

Our AI reads these to draft pitches. Use them as grounding for a pitch that cites a real guest and a specific topic.

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  Episode #248

  World PR Forum Wants Your Say on Public Relations Rules

  Sep 22, 202621 minS5

  Take the Global Alliance Survey before October 2, 2026 Who actually makes up the rules for public relations? Who decided what counts as good measurement, how you're supposed to structure a comms team, what you tell an executive when they ask "why does this function even exist"? Your local or national association has a voice in that, but the actual standards, the ones you're governed by and quoted to and inspired by, came out of delegate rooms in Madrid, Melbourne, and Stockholm. The US sends delegates to those rooms. You don't get a personal say in what they bring back. Well, NOW you do. You… personally!! The Global Alliance has opened 15 questions to the entire profession, not just the delegates, asking what society actually has the right to expect from a communication professional. This episode looks at what's being asked, why regions like Africa and Asia are answering in force while North America stays quiet, and what happens to the next set of rules if you skip your turn to answer. Listen For 5:02 Why Should Communication Professionals Care About the Abuja Declaration? 7:30 Should Public Relations Professionals Be Licensed or Regulated? 9:44 What Should Society Expect From a Professional Communicator? 14:29 How Will the Abuja Research Prevent Regional Bias From Shaping the Results? 17:20 What Happens After the Abuja Declaration Is Created? Guest: Adrian Cropley, Centre for Strategic Communications Excellence, Website | LinkedIn | Adrian’s Podcast A View from the Top | CSCE Website Doug Downs Substack | Website | LinkedIn Subscribe to the Stories and Strategies PR podcast newsletter Are you a brand with a podcast that needs support? Book a meeting with Doug Downs to talk about it. Apply to be a guest on the podcast Connect with us LinkedIn | X | Instagram | You Tube | Facebook | Threads | Bluesky | Pinterest Send us a note about this episode. We'll reply and thank you on a future episode Support the show

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  Episode #247

  Cognitive Surrender and What it Means to Public Relations

  Sep 15, 202621 minS5

  For decades, PR professionals have tried to influence what people think or how they think it. AI may be changing something even more fundamental: whether people do much of that thinking themselves. Researchers call it “Cognitive Surrender.” The tendency to accept an AI-generated answer without really scrutinizing it. And if AI increasingly sits between your message and your audience, or starts doing the thinking for communicators themselves, the implications for trust, persuasion and professional judgment could be enormous. Listen For 4:30 What Is Cognitive Surrender and How Did Researchers Test It? 7:44 Why Did People Accept Wrong AI Answers 80% of the Time? 9:53 Can Cognitive Surrender Weaken Critical Thinking Skills? 12:47 What Happens When AI Sits Between PR Pros and the Public? 15:14 Why Should Communicators Think First and Prompt Second? Guest: Dr Steven Shaw, PhD, King’s College London and Wharton School, University of Pennsylvania Website | LinkedIn | Google Scholar page Doug Substack | Website | LinkedIn Subscribe to the Stories and Strategies PR podcast newsletter Are you a brand with a podcast that needs support? Book a meeting with Doug Downs to talk about it. Apply to be a guest on the podcast Connect with us LinkedIn | X | Instagram | You Tube | Facebook | Threads | Bluesky | Pinterest Send us a note about this episode. We'll reply and thank you on a future episode Support the show

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  Episode #246

  Turn Small Talk Over Drinks into Your Best Public Relations Tool

  Sep 8, 202623 minS5

  Every PR person knows the moment: you're holding a coffee or a glass of wine at a networking event, the small talk has dried up, and the person standing next to you outranks you by a lot. Shawn Spitaleri has spent years collecting the kind of beverage trivia that fixes exactly that problem, real, verifiable stories about why your coffee tastes the way it does, why tea sparked a geopolitical crisis, and why every champagne bottle opens with the same number of twists no matter who made it. This episode is a toolkit, not a lecture. Shawn walks through coffee, tea, champagne, wine, and beer, pulling out the one fact from each that's actually worth repeating out loud, the kind that gets a genuine reaction instead of a polite nod. If you've ever needed something better than "so, how about this weather" to say to a stranger holding the same drink as you, this one's for you. Listen For 4:17 Why Did Governments Try to Ban Coffee? 6:08 How Did Britain’s Love of Tea Fuel the Opium Trade and Corporate Espionage? 9:41 Did Dom Pérignon Really Invent Champagne? 12:16 What Does the World’s Oldest Beer Recipe Reveal About Ancient Drinking Culture? 17:29 How Did Franklin Roosevelt Help Popularize the Dirty Martini? Guest: Shawn Spitaleri, The Architect, Obscura Meridian Co Distillate Podcast | Website Doug Substack | Website | LinkedIn Subscribe to the Stories and Strategies PR podcast newsletter Are you a brand with a podcast that needs support? Book a meeting with Doug Downs to talk about it. Apply to be a guest on the podcast Connect with us LinkedIn | X | Instagram | You Tube | Facebook | Threads | Bluesky | Pinterest Send us a note about this episode. We'll reply and thank you on a future episode Support the show

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  Episode #243

  Can this AI Tool Spot Your Next PR Crisis Before You Do?

  Aug 18, 202623 minS5

  As a communications professional you’ve used ChatGPT, Claude, or Copilot in the last 30 days. Probably in the last week. Probably earlier today. And at some point you’ve had the same experience: you put in a prompt, you get back something that’s technically competent and completely generic. You spend the next 20 minutes re-prompting, editing, wrestling it into something that actually sounds like your organization, your voice, your situation. A Workday study found that 40% of the time saved by using generative AI tools is immediately lost reworking the outputs. You traded one kind of work for another. The reason is simple and almost nobody is saying it out loud. Those tools were built for everyone. Which in communications terms means they were built for no one in particular. They don't think like a communicator. They don't have access to what a communicator needs. They don't know what’s being said about your organization right now across 4,000 TikTok videos, each with modest view counts, each repeating the same damaging narrative, each flying completely below the radar of your existing monitoring tools. Stratum is the tool that needed to be built three years ago. Watch the YouTube Video of this episode to see Stratum demonstration Listen For 3:29 Why do communications teams need AI built around use cases instead of tools? 6:30 What is Stratum and how is it different from ChatGPT or Copilot? 12:18 What is the difference between an AI agent and an agentic workflow? 17:29 Can AI detect a reputation crisis before it goes viral? 19:45 How can AI identify the right influencers for a campaign? Guest: Matt Collette, Sequencr.AI Website | LinkedIn | Stratum Platform Doug Substack | Website | LinkedIn Subscribe to the Stories and Strategies PR podcast newsletter Are you a brand with a podcast that needs support? Book a meeting with Doug Downs to talk about it. Apply to be a guest on the podcast Connect with us LinkedIn | X | Instagram | You Tube | Facebook | Threads | Bluesky | Pinterest Send us a note about this episode. We'll reply and thank you on a future episode Support the show

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  Episode #242

  Two Thirds of the Room but Almost NONE of the Corner Offices

  Aug 11, 202620 minS5

  In Canada, women make up roughly two thirds of the public relations profession. They are the majority in the classrooms, the majority in the entry level roles, and the majority climbing through the middle ranks. And then somewhere around the senior level, the numbers flip. The leadership tables in PR firms and communications departments across the country look nothing like the profession they are supposed to represent. This is not a new observation. The data has been there for years. Here’s what’s new. Two researchers decided to stop describing the problem and start asking a harder question. Not how do we get more women to the table? But why does the table keep failing the women who get there. Because what the data also shows, and what too many PR women know personally, is that the exit is often quiet and deliberate. Not a firing. Not a failure. A decision. A moment where a woman who is absolutely capable of leading looks at what it costs and says this is not worth it. This episode is about what is driving that decision, and what it is going to take to change it. Listen For 4:15 Why Do Women Hold Fewer Than 30% of Senior PR Leadership Roles? 7:11 What Does It Mean to Rethink the Leadership Table? 9:15 How Can PR Organizations Create Sustainable Leadership Careers? 15:06 What Can Women and Men Do to Change PR Leadership? 17:03 Why Won’t Teaching Women to Play Golf Solve Workplace Exclusion? Guests: Amy Thurlow Website | LinkedIn Colleen Killingsworth LinkedIn Book Rethinking the Table on Amazon Doug Substack | Website | LinkedIn Are you a brand with a podcast that needs support? Book a meeting with Doug Downs to talk about it. Apply to be a guest on the podcast Connect with us LinkedIn | X | Instagram | You Tube | Facebook | Threads | Bluesky | Pinterest Send us a note about this episode. We'll reply and thank you on a future episode Support the show

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