Rebranding Climate: Alarmism vs. Optimism in PR

Farzana Baduel (00:05):
 Hello, hello, and welcome to The Week UnSpun, a weekly live look at the world through the eyes of PR professionals from around the world. Now, my name is Farzana Baduel, and I am sitting in London.
 David Gallagher (00:18):
 And I'm David Gallagher, also sitting in London about 2.7 miles away from Farzana.
 Doug Downs (00:23):
 And I'm Doug Downs, somewhere in Canada's Rocky Mountains, just freshly back from London. Cheers to you both. It's good to be back with my mug on screen.
 Farzana Baduel (00:34):
 It was great to have you in London, Doug. Now I would like to, first of all, talk a little bit about the Mamdani effect.
 Doug Downs (00:44):
 He’s
 Farzana Baduel (00:45):
 A surprise candidate in the New York mayoral race, and I'd love to talk about his comms approach. And we've also got loads of questions and comments from the Omnicom IPG merger. And David's got some opinions there, and he was kind of a big cheese at Omnicom. And here in the UK, we have completed our first ever contested election since 2021, and it's been a long while for the presidency of the Chartered Institute of Public Relations. And we can touch on the value of communities like this and a crafty tactic we're going to explore by the provincial government in Canada to win favor in the midst of a teachers’ strike. And it's something a little bit about the color of money now. It's juicy.
 Doug Downs (01:32):
 Juicy.
 Farzana Baduel (01:33):
 It's juicy. But before I had been watching Mamdani for a very, very long time. He burst into my TikTok world and then Instagram and then tried media. Absolutely extraordinary how he's come out of nowhere fresh faced and also just seems to be able to resonate with a wide, diverse range of audiences. And that's quite extraordinary because, obviously, New York is a hyperverse city. And there you have him always exuding that sort of positivity, that smile. And I think he's just been able to navigate diverse communities in a way that other candidates have struggled.
 Now we've discussed before the effects that politicians have on shaping communications Trump in the United States, Starmer in the UK, Trudeau in Canada. And now we're obviously hearing about Zohran Mamdani, who's running for mayor in New York City. Now, what do you guys know about him? And tell me what your thoughts are about him with a comms lens. Is he a great communicator? What's his magic sauce? Why is he polling so high?
 Doug Downs (02:44):
 He crushed the debates. If you watch the recent debates, he crushed them. Terrific speaker obviously self identifies as leaning well off to the left hand side, not moderate, but he's a big idea guy, David. He gives these big ideas even if he can't deliver them. Lots of personality, lots of undeliverable big ideas. He's taken a page right out of the Republican handbook, and it's working for him.
 David Gallagher (03:10):
 Yeah, I totally agree. I don't know him that well. As some of you may know, I'm a pretty active, vocal Democrat and active politically, but I'm not a New York voter. And we can do a whole show on how voting works I'm actually a Virginia voter but I know a lot of New Yorkers, and their opinions are kind of split on him.
 But I wanted to get a view from someone who, if he isn't a New York voter, understands the process there. So, Ellie Jacobs a good friend, very solid communications advisor runs a company called Purposeful Advisors in New Jersey. If you're not familiar, that's just on the other side of the river from New York. And I wanted his take. So I'm going to paraphrase and quote in probably equal measure, and hopefully, he'll say I got his point of view right.
 This is a direct quote:
 “He says, ‘Zohran is a force of nature.’ That's a direct quote. He did literally go from a fringe candidate to front runner in what's largely seen to be a Democratic contest. There is a Republican challenger. He is running against Cuomo who crashed out of the party due to a scandal and is running as an independent but this is essentially a center to center left race.”
 We geeked out and we did geek out over the politics of this: the structure of the electorate, the way that Mamdani restructured the voting rolls by bringing in thousands and thousands of new voters. We were talking about all the young thirty somethings who moved to Manhattan, probably registered somewhere else. He managed through door knocking to get them registered. So he changed the entire electorate, and that's how he won the Democratic primary.
 From a comms perspective, these are the things that Ellie says worked and I think I agree with all these.
 One, he's got happy warrior vibes. Any image you see, he's got a big, broad smile. He’s a positive guy. In this environment, we think that really cuts through, and it supports him in his truly breakout superpower, which is his social media. And he's using social unlike just about anybody other than maybe Trump in his way. You see California Governor Newsom using it to counter Trump; Mamdani’s doing it in his own way, in a very positive way.
 There's a great clip in which he's cycling across the boroughs of Manhattan. Somebody yells at him, “You're a communist!” and he goes, “Oh, I think it’s pronounced cyclist.” I just think he’s always on. But to your point, Doug, he appeals to voters at the core of human emotional levels.
 So when he talks about having a city run, reduced price grocery store in every borough, that's probably not that feasible but he’s speaking in very tangible ways to affordability in a very direct, memorable way. From a comms point of view, he's saying things that are easy to remember, address core human needs, and are real.
 So I don't know how he's going to do in the election. He's running a few points ahead. I did ask Ellie, “Is he emblematic? Can other Democrats take a lesson from him and apply it elsewhere?” He doesn’t think so. He thinks New York’s fairly unique and special as most New Yorkers do and he's not sure that this approach would work elsewhere. I'm not so sure. You might have a different thought on that, Doug.
 Doug Downs (06:30):
 There’s a neat article in Politico noting that federally, Democrats are starting to do everything they can to distance themselves from him because he's not moderate. And the only path to success for federal Dems is to become more moderate. And it’s the Republicans who are rubbing their hands together, preparing their messaging and their narratives, just waiting for him to get elected which looks like it’s going to happen.
 David Gallagher (06:55):
 Yeah, I hear that. And again, not to get into the politics of it, I think Ellie’s point is that there are certain types of politicians that put performance over productivity. I think those are literally his words. And he doesn’t know how viable that is and I’m not arguing with him on that. I do think that in an attention economy, performance is a lot and you don’t get to be productive until you get elected. So I think his approach has elements that a lot of people could learn from. But thanks for asking, Farzana. I think it’s an interesting story.
 Farzana Baduel (07:25):
 Can I also add one point? What's quite interesting about him he’s got this incredible mixed heritage. So, Indian heritage his mother is a very famous Indian film guru and his father is Muslim, Ugandan Indian. And what’s really interesting is that he has had to navigate all these different cultures: African, American, different faiths Hindu and Muslim. And I think, in a funny sort of way, that became his superpower.
 When you navigate cultures from a very young age, you learn how to connect with people from different audiences. So I wonder if that’s something that really plays into his superpower. His middle name’s also Kwame, chosen after the first Ghanaian prime minister. Again, quite unusual, because when you have the Indian diaspora living in Africa, it’s not always common that they take African names as well.
 So that tells you a lot about his parents and how they leaned into different cultures as well. I think his parents are assets in the way that he’s been brought up. The mother’s also a very famous filmmaker, and if you look into her her name is Nia you’ll see where he got that ability to storytell, that inclusivity, that diversity. That storytelling has been honed into someone who’s culturally literate in a way that his contenders just aren’t.
 Doug Downs (09:06):
 And that’s where CEOs are moving too, right? More personality, more style, more charisma. Mamdani is a big effect. And speaking of big effects, there’s another big story in the agency world right now: the merger between giant holding companies Omnicom and IPG. Between them, they own some of the best known agency brands in the world Weber Shandwick, FleishmanHillard, Ketchum, among others. The only thing in the way now of the approval of this merger is the European Commission. That’s probably going to happen mid November, maybe late November. So this seems a fait accompli. Combined revenue of the two companies will be $25.6 billion.
 David, I want to go to you first. You spent a lot of time on the Omnicom side, so inquiring minds want to know: what can we expect the good, the bad, and maybe a little bit of the ugly?
 David Gallagher (10:00):
 Yeah, I do have a point of view, and these are all personal opinions. Nobody should take this as investment advice. But it is technically an acquisition I was corrected. I tried to ask a few people who are on the inside, and it is technically an acquisition, or it has mostly features of an acquisition, with Omnicom being the acquiring party.
 In my day job, I talk to a lot of people on the PR agency side and on the client side. And it's always this question especially in the last few weeks, it has been the number one question partly from a gossip point of view, but also just genuine curiosity. It is big news in the PR world, but I think there’s a little bit of context we need, and then I’ll drill into a couple of maybe more relevant points.
 It’s big in PR because, as you said, these are agencies like FleishmanHillard, Porter Novelli, Portland, Golin these are well known agencies. Three of those are in the top 10 worldwide. So it’s big news.
 (10:54):
 But really, these are small agencies compared to the much larger advertising agencies that are in the group. So this whole merger is not about the PR agencies, as important as we want to be. It’s really about data and technology. It’s been moving in this direction for a while. For Omnicom to be competitive with Publicis and WPP, it really needs to up its size and capability when it comes to data and technology. Some people might argue with me on that, but I think that’s what this is about.
 In no way will this make Omnicom the new Omnicom competitive with Meta or Alphabet when it comes to total advertising revenue, but it will make them competitive with WPP and others. So that’s really what this was about.
 I’ll just go on really quickly. I do think there are implications for agencies. Right now, all parties are saying the agency brands will stay the way they are. People on the inside see that as not likely to be viable in the long run. I mean, there are a lot of brands, and it’s kind of hard to make a case for keeping all of them. My guess is that, if it doesn’t happen immediately, it will quickly move toward a consolidation maybe around two different groups of PR companies and eventually they’ll probably move to a very small number of agencies, maybe one.
 Now, the reason they’re saying they’re not going to do that is because they want to preserve culture and client relationships. But they’ve already moved back office functions into a single unit, and anybody who’s run an agency of any size knows that a lot of your culture is driven by your HR function and your financial management. So I don’t see that as being viable.
 And I guess the last thing I want to say and maybe most importantly and I want to be sensitive about this, because jobs are going to change. There’s no doubt about it. People we know, people probably listening to this show their jobs are going to change. Some are going to get bigger, better jobs, and congratulations to them. Some are going to get scooped up by competitors. Some will leave and start new agencies, and some maybe will become independent consultants.
 So there’s going to be a lot of uncertainty here. For me, the opportunity if I were a competitor is probably less about trying to scoop up disenchanted clients (that might happen, you’ll get lucky), but it’s more about finding new talent, either to fill in or add to what you didn’t have before. Because there’s going to be some really good people out there.
 So sorry, that’s kind of a long riff, but I think there’ll be a period of uncertainty. I don’t think there’ll be a whole lot of client churn maybe I’ll be surprised but there will be some good people out there. Wishing them well; it’ll be a challenging period for a while, but there’s going to be a new raft of startups and new talent to be aware of.
 Doug Downs (13:40):
 Okay, story three. This is happening right in my backyard. I live in Alberta, western Canada, so the province is about 4 million people. We have a teachers’ strike that’s going on right now. And you already know the issues the issues are pay and class sizes, right? It’s uniform probably throughout the world.
 And on pay, I would say the government and the teachers’ union are probably pretty close. They clash over that publicly, but it’s not really what they’re fighting over. It’s class sizes. And the government likes to put out a number: there’s X number of teachers, there’s X number of students. That’s easy division one to 20, right? Or 20 to one, one teacher per 20 students. And you can get into all kinds of ways you dissect that. That’s not what this story is about.
 The government’s decided to pay parents whose children are at home now $30 a month $30 a month as a stipend to help them get through this difficult time. And that’s what’s raised the ire of a few folks. My good friend, the president of the Canadian Public Relations Society Calgary Chapter, Lisa Rushka, has left us a video message.
 Lisa Rushka (14:55):
 The issue in my mind this week is the Alberta teachers’ strike. The strike has sparked a powerful public reaction. And now the government’s decision to pay families with children under 12 during school closures adds an additional layer of complexity. On the surface, it looks like support for parents, but strategically it’s also a PR move that shifts focus away from teachers’ concerns and toward the government’s responsiveness.
 That might play well publicly, but it risks seeming manipulative without addressing the real issues in classrooms. For those of us in PR, it raises an ethical question: When does a message meant to reassure the public start to cross the line into influencing perception for political gain?
 Doug Downs (15:40):
 I know you’re both going to ask me how the public’s responding, so before I get your take, I’ll let you know what’s happening. First of all, there’s an Angus Reid survey saying 58% of Albertans support the teachers, only 21% support the government. That’s the strike overall.
 When I go on Reddit for what that’s worth the comments aren’t “Oh my God, how dare they give us our own money to win our favor.” The comments are, “$30 a day is not enough.” So you can see the pressure that’s coming.
 And just supplemental to that, there’s a group called the Canadian Taxpayers Federation it’s a private group, privately funded but it is in favor of spending taxpayers’ money to cope with this. So now I turn to the two of you. What do you think?
 David Gallagher (16:31):
 Well, it was Lisa, right? Sorry Lisa raises, I think, a real question: what are the ethics of this? And from a comms point of view, trying to be balanced on this, I guess you could say in some ways the teachers are withholding a public service and taking value off the table and there’s communication to support what their needs are.
 The government, in theory, is putting money back on the table whether it’s enough or not to basically defend their point of view. So I take her point, and I think it does raise a question mark over the ethics. But I’m not sure this is really an ethical question in my mind it’s more of an effectiveness question.
 And it sounds like maybe from your results, Doug, that it’s working a little bit, but it hasn’t had the kind of effect maybe that the government thought. So sorry that’s a hot take, and hopefully it didn’t piss anybody off.
 Farzana Baduel (17:28):
 Also, the government and the teachers they’re not starting at the same starting line, as it were. Because actually, if you look at the most trusted professions and the least trusted professions, you’d often get teachers in the top 10 most trusted, and you’d often get government and politicians in the least trusted professions. So I think that’s also one aspect of framing the conversation they’re starting at different levels of public trust.
 David Gallagher (17:55):
 You are the incoming president for the Chartered Institute of PR. People who don’t know that’s the professional society for PR and comms people. Its equivalent, I think, is the PRSA in the U.S., and there are other counterparts around the world. And you’re the incoming
 Doug Downs (18:10):
 PRSA? Yes, yes, yes. IABC
 David Gallagher (18:14):
 Incoming president. But you just had the election contested election for your successor, and I just wanted to know what you thought about that. And I do have a hypothesis that, actually, for some of the reasons you were just mentioning, I think people are really hungry for a sense of leadership, a sense of community, a sense of shared direction in these times. And I just wonder if this is a moment for organizations like CIPR to have a little bit of a renaissance not that they suffered, but a renewed moment of relevance. I just wonder what your thought is on that.
 Farzana Baduel (18:49):
 Well, I think first of all, congratulations to Dan Gerrella. Dan is not her Dan is him and Dan is our 2026 president elect. And he has been a volunteer for the CIPR for a very, very long time. I’ve watched him great public ethos, public service ethos.
 Now, the CIPR I’ve been president elect for almost a year now. What have I witnessed? I’ve witnessed a huge growth actually in their corporate affiliate membership. And what I’m seeing driving underneath that is a sense that for many decades, traditional PR didn’t really move. You just had to have a handful of broadcast journalists, a handful of print journalists you take them out for long lunches and you didn’t have to change the playbook of PR.
 But now, actually, in the last 10 years, things have moved really quickly. You’ve had multiple channels, content creation. So a lot of people need to join institutes like the CIPR, like the PRSA in the U.S., like the PRCA also a very good trade body that we have here in order to equip themselves, to learn.
 So there’s that practical driver. There’s also an ethical and regulatory lens, because there’s increasing legislation coming into the PR industry. So we’ve got the Foreign Influence Registration Scheme coming in. We’ve got new stringent conditions in terms of lobbying and so forth.
 And so from a regulatory perspective, we also need to understand how to navigate. And then the third area that’s driving membership forward is that sense of community. People are looking it’s quite overwhelming sometimes to see what’s happening in the PR industry, how dynamic it is. It has great opportunity, but there’s also great fear, especially with AI coming in. And so they want to know from other people, “How are you experiencing this useful onslaught of AI tools?” and trying to riff with each other to figure a way forward.
 So you’ve got that combination: educational requirements, community connection, and also the regulatory aspects in order to be guided through. So yeah, I do think it’s a bit of a renaissance for institutes like the CIPR.
 Doug Downs (21:11):
 I’m excited. I love CIPR. It’s Jon Gerlis that introduced me to the CIPR about five years ago. Got to meet Jenni Field I think when she was president. Then there was another incoming president this is about a year ago and I found out she was incoming and I approached her, and she became my podcast cohost. So I’m thrilled that Dan, as incoming president of CIPR, will be joining Stories and Strategies as the new cohost. I’m kidding.
 I have printed the mug you can’t see it with the lighting. I wouldn’t have printed the mug if that was true. You’ve got to start somewhere.
 David Gallagher (21:47):
 I didn’t know we had merch!
 Doug Downs (21:49):
 Yeah, we are out of time, you guys. We’re out of time. It’s fast. This has been awesome some good stuff. I’m going to go to the last word. I like chrysanthemums pretty flowers.
 Farzana Baduel (22:04):
 They’re
 Doug Downs (22:05):
 Death? Oh, yes, and yes, and yes and they’re great! They save their brightest colors for the crisp air that reminds us that patience has its own kind of beauty. Chrysanthemums really flourish in what you call autumn or fall. Not all flowers bloom in spring. Maybe your season is autumn. So just keep going.
 That’s all the time we have today. Hope you enjoyed the discussion. Special thanks, as always, to our producers Emily Page and David Jeddy. The Week UnSpun is a co production of Curzon Public Relations, Folgate Advisors, and Stories and Strategies.
 We’ll see you next week. Have a Chrysanthemum kind of weekend. Cheers.