Your Comms Team Isn't Your Airbag. It's Your Engine

Meet people where they are, add value, make it travel

I’ve been in that room a hundred times. The lights are dimmed and the “big idea” is revealed to a round of applause. It’s bold, beautiful and expensive. And just before lunch, someone says: “Okay, let’s bring in comms to get a press release out and prep for any negative feedback.”

In that moment, the comms team isn’t a creative partner. They’re the airbag. The risk-mitigation function brought in to protect an idea they had no hand in shaping.

I’ve seen this from every angle—from learning how big ideas are made at global ad agencies to understanding the science of amplification in media. I ultimately landed in communications because I saw that the most powerful and culturally relevant ideas weren’t always the ones with the biggest media buy. They were the ones that had to survive on their own.

Today, that kind of survival is harder than ever. The old model is gone. A high-visibility ad placement or a single story in a top-tier publication no longer guarantees influence. We now operate in a fragmented universe where everyone is the editor-in-chief of their own feed. With trust in national media plummeting to a historic low of 28 percent, according to Gallup, audiences are forming their own narratives from a mix of niche communities: AI chatbots, podcasters, independent journalists and social feeds.

This is where the power of an earned-first mindset becomes a creative springboard, not a safety net. It forces you to answer the hardest question first: Why should anyone care? You can’t buy a headline or force a cultural conversation. You have to earn it. This demands an “outside-in” perspective.

Today’s most important conversations catch fire organically on social platforms, where, per Pew, news influencers—now trusted by 65 percent of Americans on current events and civic issues—are setting agendas. The brand playbook is clear: Listen first, contribute meaningfully and get invited back.

Second, it forces radical simplicity. An idea that must travel through a journalist, an employee and a skeptical consumer must be potent and portable. It’s the art of turning a business challenge into an idea so clear it can move through this complex web on its own.

Finally, it demands more creative courage. When you don’t have a massive budget to guarantee eyeballs, your idea must be twice as compelling. It needs a hook so strong it generates its own gravity.

AI is the latest disrupter. It’s a news distributor, shopping assistant and content creator all in one. Crucially, as Muck Rack found, 85 percent of AI citations are from earned media. So, your earned placements are directly training the models that inform your customers. This makes the comms engine more critical than ever. It’s not just about shaping a news cycle. It’s about building the base layer of public knowledge for a new era.

So how do we shift comms from the airbag to the engine?

To client partners: Invite your comms team to the very first brief. Don’t just ask them to identify risks. Instead, ask for the “outside-in” perspective to spark new thinking. Ask the question that unlocks it all: “If we ignore budgets and formats, what idea is powerful enough to earn its place in the world?”

To agency colleagues: Humans follow ideas, not agency lanes. Our power is in orchestrating media fragments into a cohesive story. The future belongs to teams that build out their ideas integrated and earned-first, not just amplified as an afterthought.

And to communications frontliners: We must raise our craft from risk mitigation to creative instigation. An earned media strategy isn’t an idea, but it’s the fuel that ensures a great idea can travel.

In a fragmented world, it comes down to this: Meet people where they are, add value, make it travel. That’s not a format, it’s a mindset—and it’s the future.

To be a true engine for creativity, reputation and growth, we must evolve. Let’s stop building ideas that need protection and start forging ideas that can fly.