The PR Week: 8.6.2026 - Ann Melinger, Bink

0:00Ann Melinger: On this week's podcast, we're joined by Ann Melinger, CEO of leadership advisory firm Bink, to dive into their new culture of work study. We discuss the pervasive say-do gap, eroding employee trust, the four organizational culture mindsets, and how internal communications functions can step up to drive real business transformation. And in the news, major leadership exits ShakeUp ConAgra, Edelman, and Airbnb. M &A activity picks up with acquisitions by FGS Global and OneStrategy Group. And Signal AI alums launch synthetic audience platform Kumquat AI. All this and more coming up.

0:51Ann Melinger: Hello, everybody, and welcome to the latest edition of the PR Week. That's PR Week's weekly podcast for everything going on in the world of PR and communications. My name is Frank Washkuch. I'm your host for this week, and I'm joined by a terrific guest host in PR Week's news editor, Diana Bradley. Diana, how are you today? I'm great. Thank you. How are you? Seems like another busy week for you and the team, huh? Lots of stories going on. Lots of big people moves. Summer is definitely not a time of relaxation for us. No, it definitely isn't anymore. A lot of big announcements happening all summer long now.

1:24Ann Melinger: No time off like it used to be. And maybe some of those people moves are driven by company culture. And we'll get into that in a second with our guest for this podcast. And that is Anne Mellinger, the CEO of Bink. Anne, thanks for joining us.

1:39Diana Bradley: Thanks so much for having me, Frank. Yeah.

1:42Ann Melinger: And so tell us, some of our listeners might not be familiar with Bink. Tell us a little bit about your organization, what you do, and then we'll get into this culture work study that is coming out this week that I think has some really fascinating findings that a lot of our readers and our listeners are going to be interested in. Great.

2:00Diana Bradley: Yeah. So Bink is a leadership advisory firm. We are grounded in communications. I came up in my career in internal communications, but I always say our clients don't hire us because they need better communications. They hire us because they want to build a stronger culture or a more aligned organization and really bottom line, a company that can navigate change more effectively. So we help leaders close the gap between what they want to achieve and what their employees are experiencing day to day.

2:29Ann Melinger: Yeah. And you're a veteran of Fleischman and some other agencies, I know. So you've seen both sides of this. I think both your study and what you're trying to do as a group is really interesting because if you go back six years and you think about where we all were doing COVID, I mean, internal communications become so incredibly, incredibly important during that time. The way that companies are treating their employees become more important than ever. And then in, you know, 2021 and 2022, you see so many companies making hires, it feels like left to right across the company. What do they call it?

3:01Ann Melinger: The great rehiring or the great, something like that, right? And so you have this really fascinating dynamic coming out of COVID. And I think, you know, to this day, you hear a lot of people talking about how internal communications is the first layer of external comms. And I think that's right. So really interesting survey. You talked to about 300 people. 300 exactly.

3:22Diana Bradley: Yep, 300 exactly. And it was largely communicators, but also HR. The only real requirement was that you sit inside an organization in a function that touches culture.

3:33Ann Melinger: Gotcha. And one thing that you got at in this study was something called the say-do gap, which I found really interesting. And the study also found that more than nine in ten of respondents found that there's a disconnect between leadership messaging and leadership behavior. And that can be really damaging. So tell us a little bit about that, because I wouldn't have thought that would be that high.

3:56Diana Bradley: Yeah, it was definitely validating to see that. And I think, you know, what it really speaks to is the fact, I don't think leaders don't care. I don't think they are doing this out of malintent in any way. But I think that a lot of times what they say and what people actually experience, there's a huge gap. And unfortunately, the knee-jerk reaction when employees are not responding or changing their behavior in ways that leaders want, the knee-jerk reaction is often, well, we need better communications or we need another campaign. Let's remind everyone what our values are. And as we know, employees aren't deciding what the values are based on what's hanging on the wall.

4:37Diana Bradley: They're deciding based on what they actually see. What are the decisions that are happening day in and day out? And when you have that disconnect, it erodes trust, it erodes productivity, it erodes engagement, whatever metric you're looking at, all of those things erode when that gap exists.

4:52Ann Melinger: I think that's a really, really interesting point that you're making. How do companies fix it, though? I mean, what do you advise in terms of, I mean, it sounds like it's easy to say just change the way that leadership behaves, but probably a lot easier said than done, right?

5:08Diana Bradley: Absolutely. And I'm a big believer in start with one thing. A lot of times you can see something's not working and it can feel a bit overwhelming. So one of the biggest things that I say with anyone that's digging into this research or trying to make a change is try to find one thing, identify one action or decision that was made recently that was out of alignment with a stated value or a stated belief that leadership has expressed. I think that's one way to start coming at this. I think the bottom line for me that this research tells us is it's really an opportunity for us as communicators to step up and wield our influence.

5:46Diana Bradley: One of the other really interesting findings in the study is that a lot of times people that are asked to fix culture problems don't have the authority to fix it. But that's not an excuse. That doesn't mean that we shouldn't do it. I think we all know it and we live it and we feel that, that lack of authority. But the real directive, I believe, is that we need to step up and ask for that authority. We need to identify these are business challenges and business problems. They're not going to be solved with more words.

6:11Ann Melinger: Yeah, I think you make a great point there. What would you say to somebody like a middle manager who has to then go to their boss and say, hey, there's this issue here or this came up during a review. How do we fix it?

6:22Diana Bradley: Yeah, it's tricky. I mean, it's one of the reasons why we undertook this research at all was to give people that ammunition to be able to take. Here's some external, you know, validated research that you can bring to a conversation. And again, I always say try to start small. Identify one leader that is maybe being kept up at night about a business problem. Most likely they're not thinking about it as a culture problem. I don't think a lot of leaders are sitting around wringing their hands about a broken culture. they're wringing their hands about some change, some shift in behavior, some new strategic priority that's not being pursued properly and really come at it that way.

6:59Diana Bradley: Identify that leader, what's keeping them up at night and how can I help you make a difference? How can I help you understand why this isn't landing with employees the way you want it to?

7:08Ann Melinger: Yeah. Was there a reason that you and your organization decided to undertake this study right now? Like, was there something happening culturally across the country?

7:20Diana Bradley: Yeah, a lot of reasons. I mean, first of all, I think that the fact that culture is everywhere, this topic of culture is everywhere. Every other month on the cover of Harvard Business Review, and there's conferences about it, books about it, it's everywhere, but there's not a lot of consistency about what to actually do about it. One of the things that we found in the research was that there's pretty broad belief that culture matters and recognition that it can actually help with business outcomes, but still a lot of companies aren't doing that much about it. So that was, I would say, the big reason.

7:51Diana Bradley: And the other reason, quite frankly, is that the way that our industry and our practice is evolving, right? I think that it is less and less about we are going to be successful communicators because we're good writers. That's not what's going to preserve the future of our work. I think what's going to really preserve the future of our work is making a difference at a business performance level. and the goal of this research was to help give us some ammunition to get that, to move communications upstream.

8:19Ann Melinger: Yeah, and it's interesting, and not to go back to COVID for a second, but I think we found just very anecdotally, talking to some people at the time, even if people who are CCOs or people running communications departments, they're not leading HR, but they were in a lot of cases the people driving culture across the company. Absolutely. You know, really the people who were in some cases left with fixing it, which was, you know, if it was broken or damaged by the pandemic or anything like that. So there is a huge overlap there, isn't there? But when you see when you see things like like what you're mentioning and, you know, some of these stats in your survey, what would you advise a comms team to do to step up and fix it?

9:05Ann Melinger: for these broader issues, broader problems that happen all the way across an organization?

9:10Diana Bradley: Yeah, I think it is a matter of identifying where that disconnect exists between what leaders are saying and what employees are experiencing. We as communicators have a lot of visibility into those things. We have connection. We see what employees care about. We can hear what they're concerned about. And I think our job is to really elevate that to leaders to position ourselves as really sort of their eyes and ears within the organization to say, hey, this isn't why it's working. And you always want to come to those conversations with, like I've said, ammunition. I think another great way to think about it is, all right, what's a value or a priority that our CEO keeps going back to?

9:50Diana Bradley: Maybe it's customer focus, customer focus. Identify a decision or an action that has not actually been in alignment with that and be able to bring those tangible, specific examples can really elevate the conversation. And if you don't have them within your own organization, or you're afraid that you're going to be met with some defensiveness, pick an outside organization that's done it and that's already getting reamed in the media and use them as a cautionary tale. Sometimes that can, you know, create a little more openness among leaders.

10:21Ann Melinger: Tell us a little bit about these mindsets that you identified. There's four of them and I'm going to read them off. So there's blocked advocates, culture activators, strategic believers and reluctant realists. And tell us a little bit about those groups and which ones, do the comms folks, do the people in PR departments tend to fall into one of these or are there the people fixing all of these people in general?

10:47Diana Bradley: It's a great question. It was one of the most interesting parts of the research was uncovering these attitudinal segments. We didn't go in knowing that we were going to uncover four mindsets. The way it happens is the data is just organized and grouped around specific attitudes. And it was from what people answered that we were able to identify these four mindsets. And what's consistent across all four is they all care about culture. They all believe that it's important. They all get why it matters. The difference is some of them are seeing it in action and most of them are not. And so that's really the differentiator.

11:23Diana Bradley: The group that had the most representation from communication specifically was those blocked advocates. And we named them that. Yeah, we named them that because those are the people that really believe in it very strongly, but are in an environment where they're not able to make progress for various reasons. They're frustrated. So I think that that will resonate a lot with our communications colleagues. We contrast a lot of what they were experiencing with those culture activators who are kind of the other end of the spectrum where they do also believe strongly in the importance of culture and they're seeing it in action.

12:00Diana Bradley: They're seeing that alignment within their organizations between what leaders say and what they do.

12:07Ann Melinger: When you take a look at your study, but also just the things that you read in the headlines every day or the things that you get news alerts on, do you see any organizations out there that are a model for how companies should behave? Or, hey, do you see any that are the opposite? I mean, And do you see any organizations you want to put in the organizational culture dunce chair, so to speak?

12:32Diana Bradley: Well, there are plenty of, unfortunately, there have been a lot of what not to do's, I think, especially this year and recently with AI related layoffs and how leaders are talking about those in a really sort of cold, inhumane way. And we're seeing the blowback from that externally. So I think there's plenty of negative out there, but it is, it's useful to talk about the positive examples because they're pretty tangible. And they listen, no company's getting it exactly right, of course. But there are some specific things that some companies are doing that often make a really big difference. One thing that we found in the research across the board was publicly admitting a mistake, simply saying we got something wrong, made a really big difference.

13:17Diana Bradley: So back to those segments within the culture activator segment, the segment that was seeing the best results in terms of culture, almost 70 % said a leader publicly admitted a mistake in the last year. And that is, I think, again, as communicators, we understand the impact of that, of being able to say, you know what, we got this wrong and we are fixing it X, Y, Z. It goes such a long way in building trust and credibility. So that's just like a very specific, tangible thing. Another one that we found that was very common among culture activators was that culture was discussed at the board level.

13:54Diana Bradley: That's a really important action that companies can take. It's showing like, you know what? This actually matters. We see this as a business lever. It rises to the importance of a board.

14:06Ann Melinger: How do you see AI impacting culture and organizations across the board? I mean, you just mentioned one issue with it coming up here with, you know, people just really being almost obnoxious in laying people off in some cases. What are some other areas in which AI has had a negative impact or even a positive impact in organizations?

14:26Diana Bradley: I think I look at it less about the impact and more about the challenge of adoption, right? So much, so many companies are struggling with that. There's so much fear around it. And, you know, they're making these massive investments, but really struggling with that adoption. And I have been saying for a long time to anyone who will listen, it's a culture issue. It's not a technology issue. It's a culture issue. Are you creating an environment where people feel safe experimenting? Are you sending signals that it's okay to make mistakes and that it's okay to actually have a temporary loss in productivity, which you have to have when you're testing out new tools?

15:03Diana Bradley: So it's, again, about closing that gap between what we say is important. We say we want to be innovative. We say we want to maximize new technologies. But are we actually creating the conditions for that to happen? and are rewarding those employees who are actually doing that.

15:20Ann Melinger: So this one data point is, this one's dicey. I want to talk about this because you found that almost 7 in 10 respondents, they find that structural systems matter more than messaging, but also that nearly 8 in 10 respondents, and this is, again, higher than I thought it would be, think that the real culture in their organizations is driven by people watching what kind of behaviors senior leaders tolerate. So that's eight in 10 people. That's quite high for something like that. What did you think?

15:54Diana Bradley: It felt validating. It definitely felt validating. And again, it feels like more ammunition for us to have these real conversations that a communications campaign around values is not going to mask a broken system of incentives. incentives and sometimes when we say the word incentives people think like oh you mean what you bonus people on yes that's a part of it there were some really interesting findings about when bad performer high performers are allowed to violate values because simply because they're delivering results we have to do away with that companies have to stand up and say no we're not going to keep promoting the guy who hoards all the information and doesn't work collaboratively we're actually going to say if collaboration matters, then we're not going to reward that kind of behavior.

16:42Diana Bradley: I think, again, it just keeps going back over and over again to that say-do gap. Yeah.

16:48Ann Melinger: Okay. Fair point. So you know you've worked in the industry, you've worked at an agency. Measurement is the thing that people in our media are always chasing, right? And there still is no one great answer across the board for all of it. So how should companies be measuring culture and whether it works? Should it just be surveys that, you know, HR is putting out there? Or what are the other ways they can actually measure culture and see if it's making a difference?

17:14Diana Bradley: Yeah, I think the other big piece is really looking at behaviors. That's such an important thing. It's not just looking at what we're saying, but it's looking at what we're doing and making sure that we're measuring that as well. I also say, you know, and the data really found that culture can make an impact on business results, on things like retention, on things like financial results, but it's not treated with that same rigor as other things that feed those. And so the first thing is just let's actually care. Let's actually create a scorecard, a dashboard where we are measuring these things first and foremost, and then also make sure that it's not just being dismissed as HR data, right?

17:56Diana Bradley: We have to make sure that we're looking at it with that same rigor. and looking at it through not just surveys, I think one-on-one, skip level meetings, focus groups, that's really important. Doing spot checks within your communications, looking for how are we talking about these things? How are these things being received? How are people treating one another? And is that actually in alignment with what we're hoping to achieve? So a lot of this really just has to do with creating more rigor around the fact that you're measuring it at all.

18:31Ann Melinger: You know, it's funny because you're our podcast guest today and Diana and I were chatting earlier today offline a bit about, let's call it certain toxic behaviors on LinkedIn. And I'm kind of curious how you think that social media and I think especially LinkedIn for professionals, you know, what kind of impact it has across the board, positives and negatives.

18:53Diana Bradley: I think it goes back to this idea of a disconnect. You know, what your CEO says on LinkedIn, for example, if it completely doesn't match what they're saying in the town hall, then what they're saying in town hall doesn't matter. You know, it's all one experience for employees. They're seeing and hearing this one person, this one perspective, and they're not differentiating between am I paying attention to what he says on LinkedIn differently than what he says in this meeting? No, it's all the same. So I think being really thoughtful about having that consistency and that connection, it has to happen.

19:27Diana Bradley: And it's, you know, I think that bringing our functions together, internal, external, I don't even like calling them two separate functions. They need to be more integrated because it is all one experience, as we've been saying.

19:39Ann Melinger: All right. And tell me what I'm missing about this survey. What else do you want to add?

19:44Diana Bradley: I think, as I've said, it really, you know, it really gives us some fodder to fight for bringing our function further upstream. I think that it helps us, you know, really hone in on the importance of alignment. I'm not so hung up on the definition of culture or what culture means or why people should care about culture. What I want is for organizations to close that gap between what they're saying and what they're doing. And by doing so, you're much more likely to be able to navigate things like AI transformation, like layoffs, like organizational reorgs. You can navigate those things better when the gap is closed.

20:24Diana Bradley: And I think the one other thing that I will say, I'm putting a lot of onus on us as communicators, but a lot of the onus sits on leadership as well. And they can no longer look at a function like communications and give them responsibility for fixing problems without giving them the authority that needs to come with it. And that was another really important finding that, you know, very often we're asked to fix problems that we don't have the authority to address. And so bringing those two things closer into alignment is really what's going to make a difference. Mm hmm.

20:57Ann Melinger: All right. Last question for you, Anne, anybody that you want to point out, whether it's in the business world, the sports world, entertainment, cultural, politics, whatever it is, who is a great leader in terms of forging a great culture at an organization?

21:12Diana Bradley: Gosh, that's a great question. And unfortunately, so many of the examples that we see out there are not the greatest. It's sort of like we tend to see when things are falling out of alignment. I get really excited about new leaders when they come in. And I think when you have a new leader, there's a real opportunity to sort of start fresh. So that's what I'm looking most at right now at some of these organizations that have new CEOs. There's a company in the life science space that I've been following where the new CEO is a woman who came up from executive assistant all the way up to now rising to the CEO.

21:47Diana Bradley: And I think that when you have that level of experiencing all the different realities of the organization, you can hopefully bring that to your communication. So I wouldn't say there's anyone that stands out right now, but there's people I have my eye on in the hopes that they are going to rise to that level of closing that gap.

22:06Ann Melinger: All right. And Melinger from Bink, thank you very, very much for joining the podcast. Healthcare marketing is changing fast. So why are we still doing conferences the same old way? Enter MMNM Transform, a declaration against the status quo. On March 30th, MMNM Transform takes over Philadelphia's National Constitution Center for a bigger, bolder healthcare marketing festival packed with bold ideas, interactive experiences, live demos, and candid conversations. And here's the best part. In-house pharma marketers can attend for free. MMM Transform, March 30th in Philly. Register now at MMMTransform.com.

22:42Ann Melinger: Coming to chat with Diana Bradley, our news editor, about some of the biggest marketing, PR, and communications news that has happened this week. And Diana, we have a lot of people moves happening all of a sudden. I don't know what it is, but suddenly there are a lot of high-profile exits to cover this year at Edelman, Airbnb, and ConAgra. Yes. So at ConAgra, ConAgra Brands, their chief communications and networking officer, John Harris, is leaving the company next month to pursue opportunities outside of the company. We don't know any details on what those are as of now, but his exit follows leadership changes at the company.

23:26Ann Melinger: In June, ConAgra named former J.M. Smucker executive John Brace as its CEO and president, replacing Sean Connelly. And ConAgra has hired Amy Held as its first chief administrative officer. She will oversee HR and corporate communications and serve as chief of staff reporting directly to Brace. And just a little bit of background on Harris. He's been with Conagra for 11 years and. Set a stellar career. He's a PR Week Hall of Famer too. Yes, he's a PR Week Hall of Famer. He will also serve as chair of jury for the PR Week U.S. Awards 2027. And he was recently recognized on our Power List. Yeah, and I'm sure we're going to see him pop up in a high profile role sometime soon.

24:16Ann Melinger: John is, of course, one of the best networked people, probably in business, not just communications. He is quite well known and well liked out there. So I'm waiting to see where he's going to pop up next. And then in his Hall of Fame testimonial video, he had a testimonial from John Hamm. That's right, he did. Not everybody has that on their Hall of Fame videos. So fair point. Fair point. Tell us about a big exit at Edelman this week. Yeah. So Edelman's global president and chief operating officer, Minardo DiNardis, is stepping down. He decided to leave his full time executive role at Edelman, but will remain a member of the firm's board.

25:00Ann Melinger: He succeeded Matthew Harrington in the role last October when Harrington moved to the executive vice chairman position. and he's been a member of Edelman's board since joining the firm in 2020. You have me thinking back to the Hall of Fame a couple of years ago when John Harris went in now. And if you've never been to our Hall of Fame dinner, the people who are inducted every year tend to have great testimonials on their videos from various boldface names across whatever industry you're talking about. We've had... American presidents? Yes, we've had George W. Bush. We've had doing it on the video, not in our Hall of Fame, to be totally clear about this.

25:47Ann Melinger: But I have to say, people, audience-wise, they were probably not more enthused about anybody else than Jon Hamm. It's true. Just throwing that out there. All right. Okay, so you mentioned Maynardo DiNardis leaving Edelman. And Jay Carney, Airbnb. Yes. So after four years with Airbnb, Global Head of Policy and Communications, Jay Carney, is leaving the vacation rental company. He will remain in his current position through August and will continue as an advisor through the end of the year. At Airbnb, he oversees five teams, including comms, public policy, global crisis management reputation, and the company's nonprofit, Airbnb.org.

26:34Ann Melinger: The teams under his remit will now report to Airbnb's co-founders. Communications will now report to co-founder and CEO Brian Chesky, while Policy Reputation and Airbnb.org will report to Chief Strategy Officer Nathan Blacharczyk. And an Airbnb spokesperson confirmed upon Carney's exit that Fallon O 'Connor, VP of Global Communications, will lead comms for Airbnb. be. And do you have an opinion on how PR communications or whatever the department is called should report up? Because, you know, we'd always advocate it should go straight to the CEO. Is that it sounds like from your research, you might be on the same page.

27:14Diana Bradley: Absolutely. People ask me that question all the time. Where should it sit? I don't care where it sits as long as it has a close connection to the CEO and to be able to have that decision-making influence. Absolutely.

27:26Ann Melinger: So Diana, back to you for a second. Interesting thing here, a lot of deals happening, not necessarily with the major legacy traditional PR firms, but they do tend to be happening in a bit of what you'd call the specialist space. We have one by FGS, one by one strategy group this week. Yeah. So FGS Global has acquired Washington, D.C.-based government affairs firm Rich Feuer Anderson. The deal adds Rich Feuer Anderson's advocacy expertise and regulatory access to FGS Global's focus on strategic communications, transaction advisory, and crisis management. And just a little bit about Rich Feuer Anderson.

28:07Ann Melinger: It was founded in 2003 by Peter Rich and Mitchell Feuer. And in 2012, John Anderson joined the firm as a partner and the agency took on its current name. Okay. Tell us about the One Strategy Group deal as well. One Strategy Group has acquired Gottlieb Group Consulting, which has offices in Denver and Seattle. The deal, which was effective August 1st, brings founder Steven Gottlieb, his agency brand and clients under the One Strategy Group umbrella. Gottlieb has run his solo practitioner firm for 20 years, working with clients across industries and sectors such as technology, energy, healthcare, biomedical research, government, and professional sports.

28:57Ann Melinger: And his firm was founded in 2006. Okay, and we have a product launch this week to talk about. So some veterans of some other organizations came together to launch Kumquat AI. Not the name I would have chosen for an organization, but to each the room. The name definitely stands out. So Signal AI. As a one-time Wegmans produce boy, I could not agree more. So Signal AI alums Danny Gaynor and Shane Biglione, along with former Dow Jones and KK, our executive Dylan Roy, have launched synthetic audience platform Kumquat AI. The platform simulates various audience and consumer groups to predict how these groups would react to different decisions, messages and campaigns made by corporate communications, investor relations and public affairs teams.

30:02Ann Melinger: This is really big. People talk about it all the time in terms of the synthetic audience testing, how they build it into all of their campaigns, how they test campaigns. It's a really big area right now. So they are where the action is, so to speak. So we'll see how it turns out for them. Okay. Few public service announcements for our listeners. The PR Week Awards US are open for entries. The standard deadline is September 26th. That will be here before you know it. So get your entries in soon. And of course, the PR Week Awards. Some people call it the Oscars of the PR industry. That's going to be in March of 2027.

30:40Ann Melinger: And the PR Week Conference is October 15th in Chicago. AI Deciphered is November 12th in New York City. You can get tickets to both on PRWeek.com. And that's about all we have time for on this week's episode of the PR Week. We will see you again next week.

31:23Ann Melinger: We'll be right back. healthcare marketing festival packed with bold ideas, interactive experiences, live demos, and candid conversations. And here's the best part. In-house pharma marketers can attend for free. MMM Transform, March 30th in Philly. Register now at mmmtransform.com.