Podcamp Media

10/17/2025

Some precious metal in the "Creativity and Marketing Podcasts" category, as Lead Balloon nets a Silver in this year's Signal Awards.

Grateful to the team, proud of the accomplishment, and still having fun telling tales that matter to professional communicators and storytellers.

08/20/2025

The flooding in Wisconsin taught us an important lesson last week.

Strategic communicators from local municipalities and departments of transportation have to get with the times.

So on the latest , we explore some of the options for communicating about emergency road closures with Scott Oppmann from Esri's Arcgis.

Because it's naïve to expect people to come to you for information in 2025. You have to meet them on the platforms where they already are.

Local municipalities and DOTs need to get with the times.Most people get travel information about road closures from Google Maps, Apple Maps or a similar smartphone-based application.But when a road is closed, most transportation agencies put out a press release.And this disconnect is not only annoy...

07/30/2025

Are ChatGPT and other LLMs going to "kill the golden goose?"

Generative A.I. is trained on Wikipedia, traditional media sources, and other online sources of text and information.

But if traffic to these web pages dries up, it stands to reason that many will simply go away.

So exactly how, then, is Silicon Valley planning to train the LLMs of the future? And is a world without authoritative sources really a world we want to live in?

It's a conversation that few seem to be interested in having lately, which is why we were so pumped to talk to Wikipedia expert Bill Beutler of Beutler Ink on the latest .

Is ChatGPT killing its own Golden Goose?Wikipedia readers consume nearly one billion articles per day from the online encyclopedia. In its 25 years of operation, this compendium of human knowledge has become an integral tool for understanding the world in which we live. But artificial intelligence t...

06/19/2025

Eric Schwartzman has been reporting on this alarming rise in .And he says the answer is simple: if it’s making them money, companies just won’t bother any more.

05/28/2025

There has GOT to be an easier way to lie to people!

That was Dusty's (somewhat jaded) gut reaction when he first read Eric Schwartzman's jaw-dropping piece about how "bot farms" are being used to manipulate social media algorithms.

But Eric has got the receipts, as we learned on the latest . And these bot farms are more sophisticated than ever before.

Nation states, financial influencers, even major brands... he says they've all juiced their metrics by paying for bot-driven activity, which in turn catapults their messaging to the top of your social feeds.

As and professionals, this has major implications for the way way we do our jobs.

And as information consumers, it means--even more than you might have thought--we can't trust anything we see online as "reality."

03/08/2025

It says something about an organization’s clout when a U.S. Senator will take time from an exceptionally busy week in D.C. to champion their priorities.

The National Corn Growers Association continues to lead on issues that are critical to its members.

Couldn’t be prouder to have worked on behalf of this group for the past FIVE YEARS.

02/19/2025

We can't help but look at a tragedy like the air disaster in D.C. and marvel at the professionals whose job it is to help pick up the pieces.

First responders, investigators, and... yes... the public relations professionals who have to live that nightmare when the unthinkable happens.

There's a lost nobility in SERVING people who are in the depths of grief… sacrificing your comfort and your agenda to try and give THEM what THEY need... information and, ultimately, some kind of closure.

But they pay a price for it too. There's no way to immerse yourself in someone else's despair and emerge unchanged.

We learned all this... and gained a new appreciation for the toll of working as a PIO during an air disaster... in a really sobering conversation I had with Jennifer R. Hudson, APR. She worked for American Airlines during the Flight 965 tragedy 30 years ago.

And her story offers some rare insights into what’s happening behind the scenes right now… and lessons about empathy and transparency that we can ALL apply to our OWN professional practices.

A PR rep's on-site experience with the Flight 965 disaster in Colombia 30 years ago.Three weeks after accepting a new role as an American Airlines spokeswoman in 1995, Jennifer R. Hudson was paged out of bed in the middle of the night.The worst had happened.Flight 965 had disappeared in the mountain...

12/18/2024

Was 2024 the "Election of the Podcast?"

As evidenced by this year's presidential campaign strategy, practitioners seem to be shifting focus from traditional to new media tactics.

So in this episode of , we're joined by co-founders of the Colab Ashley Mann and Lizzy Harris for a post-mortem on the 2024 election in a context.

Podcast Episode · Lead Balloon - Public Relations, Marketing and Strategic Communications Stories · 12/18/2024 · 36m

11/22/2024

THREE of our podcast production clients have recently surpassed the 50 episode milestone! THREE!

In podcasting, what you get out is equivalent to what you put in. Consistency and reliability are the name of the game.

And all three of these organizations show up again and again for their customers and stakeholders... not JUST in their podcasts, either.

Massive congratulations (in the order they crossed the threshold!) to:

- Sally Flis and the team at Nutrien Ag Solutions

- Corey Brown and everyone at Provide

- The entire crew at the National Corn Growers Association

As we enter this season of gratitude, we remain so thankful to serve clients like these, who have the dedication to consistently tell great stories that make them trusted resources for their customers and stakeholders.

Cheers to 50 episodes!

11/18/2024

In this month's episode of the , we're going to analyze the takeaways of the Republican sweep of D.C. leadership, the effectiveness of NCGA's political strategy & the key races that will shape ag policy in the new Congress. Take a listen in as we hear from NCGA’s Vice President of Public Policy Brooke Appleton & Director of Grassroots and Political Strategy Sadie Knight: https://bit.ly/3Z89zBW.