Jordan Cohen

SPQR was built on a single observation. The most consequential communications problems do not sit inside a holding company's service menu. They sit in the gap between what an industry believes about itself and what the evidence actually says. That gap is where reputation risk lives. It is also where the most durable communications value gets created: for clients who are willing to operate in contested territory rather than retreating from it. We call the space between received belief and evidential reality the Belief Gap. Our work begins there. If you are navigating a category that is under pressure, whether from regulation, public health debate, environmental scrutiny or structural market change, and you want a communications partner that starts with the evidence rather than the narrative, we should talk. Rishad Tobaccowala Michael Farmer PRovoke Media The Drum #corporateaffairs  #SPQR https://lnkd.in/e3-9Shz9

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An interesting read. Lots of food for thought. Over the years, firms have made attempts to quantify the value of reputational goodwill as a buffer in times of crisis. This is one of the more convincing studies. Guessing it is quite US-centric but as a crisis comms practitioner, my sense is that the dynamic is the same in Japan/Asia. Curious to hear what other think…

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Recent developments in the Red Sea and the Bab el-Mandeb chokepoint underscore a critical strategic vulnerability: the systematic weaponization of global trade routes by revisionist actors. For Washington decision-makers, the ongoing escalation is no longer a localized security issue it is a direct challenge to the rules-based international order and the principle of freedom of navigation. In my analysis for Algemeiner : "The War for the Sea Routes: The Lesson from the Hormuz Crisis," I examine how Iran and its proxies leverage geography to inflict economic pain and rewrite global trade norms. Securing these vital corridors requires moving beyond reactive defense toward a comprehensive maritime strategy that integrates hard power, allied cooperation, and long-term economic resilience. Read the full perspective here: 🔗 https://lnkd.in/d9hN2JBm #ForeignPolicy #NationalSecurity #Geopolitics #MiddleEast #DefensePolicy #GlobalTrade #Strategy

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Worth a read and an issue worth keeping an eye on. Key takeaways include: Moral and Ethical Concerns: Religious groups, including prominent evangelical and Catholic leaders, are expressing alarm that "no regulation" allows for the unchecked development of technologies such as Artificial Intelligence (AI) and biotechnology that could undermine human dignity or religious values. Protection of the Vulnerable: The distancing is driven by a belief that complete deregulation benefits large corporations at the expense of families and the "common good." Leaders cited in the story argue that some level of regulation is a "moral necessity" to protect workers, children, and the environment. The "Elon Musk" Factor: The FT notes that the heavy influence of figures like Elon Musk (who co-leads the Department of Government Efficiency, or DOGE) has pushed the administration toward a "techno-libertarianism" that many religious conservatives find incompatible with their socially conservative views. A Shift in Alliance: While these groups were instrumental in Trump’s 2024 victory, the story suggests they are now pivoting to a "pro-family" regulatory stance. They are calling for "guardrails" on digital safety, online pornography, and corporate environmental responsibility, directly clashing with the White House’s goal of "gutting" the regulatory state. Political Implications: The FT suggests this internal friction could complicate the administration’s legislative agenda, as religious conservatives in Congress may no longer provide a rubber stamp for the wholesale repeal of federal oversight.

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POLITICO claims AI is a “fad” we’ll get past in 2026. And honestly, I can’t blame them. Over the last two years, a lot of public affairs teams rolled out ChatGPT or Copilot, encouraged some experimentation, maybe formed a working group (or two), and then saw very little change. We hear this all the time at Delve - AI for Public Affairs. A few curious people found some edge-case wins. One “AI wrangler” got pretty good at prompting. Everyone else kept doing the work the same way. Leadership shrugged, or commissioned another working group, and moved on. If that is what AI adoption looks like, then yes, it probably does look like a fad. But that’s not a story about AI failing. It’s a story about treating the future like the past. Most teams treated AI the way they’ve learned to treat SaaS: give people access, do some training, encourage adoption, and wait for value to show up. That playbook worked for a long time. But AI isn’t another SaaS tool that sits alongside the work. It changes how the work gets done. It reshapes how information is evaluated, how judgment gets applied, and what teams actually trust enough to act on. If it’s optional, something people use when they have time, it never becomes consequential. That’s why the results for so many teams were modest. Not because the technology wasn’t powerful, but because nothing about the operating model changed. AI only really starts to matter when it becomes part of how a team operates day to day. It has to be embedded into workflows, grounded in domain judgment, and reliable enough that people don’t need heroic prompts or one-off experimentation to get value out of it. And that’s where general-purpose tools fall down for public affairs. They’re fine for drafting and summarizing. They weren’t built to see the full policy landscape, weigh source credibility the way experienced practitioners do, or consistently surface what actually matters across legislation, regulation, and stakeholders. Training people to prompt better doesn’t fix that. As we head into 2026, the gap I keep seeing isn’t between teams “using AI” and teams that aren’t. It’s between teams still dabbling at the edges and teams that have rebuilt how AI fits into the core of their work. If you’re thinking seriously about what real AI readiness looks like for public affairs, beyond another pilot or working group, we spend a lot of time helping teams work through exactly that.

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Fragmentation might be the most important force influencing communications in 2026. That’s the reductive summary of the first prediction in my 2026 Corporate Affairs Trends Forecast. (Link to the full report in the first comment.) Way back in 2014, my friend Nicco Mele wrote an incredibly prescient book called The End of Big. He foresaw how changing dynamics of communications driven by digital and social would influence society, putting pressure on institutions, enabling populism, and driving polarisation. The result, he suggested, would be greater fragmentation. Applying that thinking, we can see how audiences are becoming smaller, more fragmented, and increasingly gathered around narrow — even niche — interests. Reach, impact, and trust continue to decline for traditional and social media. Audiences are getting smaller, more fragmented, and harder to reach. But niche media — including titles like the FT, Economist, and Wall Street Journal — podcasts, and subscription services like Substack are on the rise. Audiences are fleeing to quality, high-value, trusted outlets, often with greater specialisation. Polarisation and the echo chamber effect are also driving shifts in consumption behaviour. Substack and other subscription platforms are growing swiftly, with paid subscriptions through Substack now totalling an estimated $450 million* while publishers report rapid growth in paid subscriptions. In 2026, fragmentation will accelerate. Trusted, specialised channels and publishers with niche audiences will be as important in corporate communications as more traditional, general audience news sources. Corporate Affairs leaders will need to consider engagement and relationship-building with a wider range of voices, including on platforms like Substack and Tik Tok, where even a creator with a relatively small following could influence the influencers and have disproportionate impact on a communications outcome or reputation. To address this, think practically. Double down on relationship building but go wider than the usual suspects. Focus more on publishers, platforms, and channels with deeper connections into your most critical audiences. Invest in deep understanding of audience channel behaviours and information source preferences. Traditional assumptions are almost certainly, at best, incomplete. This effort can be enabled, hastened, and improved by AI tools. Continue evolving measurement frameworks to value relevant reach and impact among specific audience segments more than traditional, broader reputational metrics. Read more in the full report, and let me know what you think.

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