Writing Boots

This week here we’ve been talking about how companies often spend money on communications that may or may not have a direct impact on the bottom line. Here’s a Boeing commercial from 1975 that tries to charm the American populace in such a way as to cause airlines, eventually, to purchase Boeing airplanes. I mean, it could happen!

To my claim that most leaders do not, in fact, frequently speak or write specifically to change behavior, but rather for softer purposes of making themselves, and thus the institution, better understood and more attractive to important constituencies, Mike wrote:

As Hannibal Lecter put it, “Incidental.”

Why do you think they want the public to have such an understanding?

So the public will buy what they are selling.

That’s why they flattered Janet into blogging her sincerity for Tech.EDU. The people who let her do that believe that the university is pouring money into random blogs because peace and love. Two levels above, there’s a room full of board members who are looking at the bottom line and see Janet as a means to an end: income. Plus it’s a nice thing to do that they can afford because they have income. It is an “extra” that serves a bonus purpose. But it does nothing to dispel Janet’s misapprehension of reality.

It gets worse: Janet’s handlers (and most of America) can afford to believe that the university is just tossing money to the comms department because sunshine.

I say this to every class at [the college where Mike teaches undergrads]—and now I gather you disagree with this: “If you can’t draw a line from what you do to the bottom line, you’re already a dead man walking. The company doesn’t send out comms—it doesn’t even donate to charity—simply because it’s a nice thing to do. They may admire these things greatly—yes, they are wonderful things! But executives do things because it drives profit and if they can afford a two-fer, they take it. Why do you think comms is the first place that gets cut in a pinch? Because many comms people forget that the 10K fun run was made possible first and foremost cos Acme could afford to fund it by selling stuff.”

… It works that way not because people are bastards (though a few are). It works that way because everybody wants to get paid so they can eat, including you and me and Janet. To pretend that CEOs are just wantin’ to get to know ya is to skip right over the Line One of the job description.

(Aren’t you glad this is the last day of this?) I replied:

Yes, after 35 years of observing corporate communications, I do disagree with what you’re saying.

You make my point better than you make yours.

You think they cut comms in a pinch because the communicators “forget” about the original purpose of the 10K fun run? No, they cut comms because they knew all along that the thing was good to do but not essential to the business. And now they have to cut it. And when they get fat again, they’ll bring the fucker back.

I’m glad you tell the kids to be results-oriented. But don’t expect my ass to receive that “dead man walking” shit.

I’ve known thousands of communicators—and I’ve known more of ‘em longer and better in my position than you have in yours—who have worked great and happy long careers without a nickel of generated revenue to show.

The corporate communication measurement pioneer Angela Sinickas—whose landmark manual on communication measurement I edited, way back in 1994—once told me she was once judging a speechwriting category in a prestigious communication awards program. Candidates had to include an element of quantitative measurement with their entry. One entrant wrote, “After the speech, the CEO gave me a dozen roses (12).”

Yep.

Mike:

Oh, yes, I knew that bullet was comin’ my way. I was waiting for it: “I’ve met more corp comms types than you ever will.” Indeed. I agree. I think you don’t need to meet any at all to know how a business works.

You think I’m making your point and I think you’re making mine: “They knew all along that the thing was good to do but not essential to the business. And now they have to cut it. And when they get fat again, they’ll bring the fucker back.” You just wrote word for word my point: they are not essential to the business. And I’ll add: “But down to an individual they imagine they are essential because they don’t understand the simple point I’m making about where income comes from.”

But that’s far removed from AI, though it leads there: If we were worried about what matters, which is income, we’d be insisting that people use AI—oh, wait. Outside of writing, that’s exactly what they’re doing.

But somehow writers (’scuse me, Writers) imagine they are exempt from the money-earning need of the system because … well, that’s where I’d like you to explain why you think corporate comms people are exempt from having to contribute to the bottom line. Seriously, because that’s what you just said, re years of working with no contribution to the bottom line. Really? Their existence must have provided something of value.

Me:

*There are things of value to an institution that can’t be attributed to the bottom line*—this quarter or next or ever. A lot of corporate communication is comprised of stuff like that. Always has been and always will be.

And you know it too, even though you pretend not to. Others pretend not to as well. They include: comms directors trying to justify more budget, communications measurement gurus and people trying to scare college students into being a little tougher-minded. Some of these purposes are well justified.

But you can’t scare me, Bub.

And let’s give Mike the last word:

All I have for you to that is, No.

(Now I shall write more than No. Heh.)

Everything is reflected in the bottom line. That’s why “image” is factored into a sale. So forgive my bluntness but you’re incorrect.

Writing Boots readers, Mike and I thank you for following us to this bitter end. And we invite your comment.

Meanwhile, if you’d like to learn how Mike Long uses AI in and around his writing work, he’ll talk a lot about that in this month’s webinar, Strategic Speechwriting: The Method and the Art, September 29-October 2. And if you’d like to participate in a live conversation on AI and speechwriting, Mike is appearing on an all-conference debate panel on this topic at the 2026 World Conference of the Professional Speechwriters Association, October 26-29 in D.C.

During the email exchange last week that we’re rehashing here this week, I asked Mike Long why he cared to tell AI skeptics off even though he thinks we’re all doomed dinosaurs anyway:

First, I comment so little anywhere these days because my actions have caught up with my aspiration: I really have stopped caring to change people’s minds. We are entrenched in a culture that believes “what I feel” somehow changes how reality operates. If people can’t agree on objective reality, they can’t debate. …

For instance, when I wrote below that the purpose of professional comms is to communicate (actually, to effect change by this communication), I was stating a fact. One can argue otherwise forever but it’s still objectively correct at the end of every single day. Yet here’s Tech.EDU, where Queen Reason is alleged to keep an apartment, talking about authenticity and “lived experience”—well, if the purpose of the blogs they offer is to get to know somebody’s daily hot take, then sure, forbid AI—and dictionaries and phone calls. (Hell, let’s forbid people from preparing for job interviews. Authenticity!) 

But if the goal of the blog is, like the site it lives on, to give people a favorable impression of Tech.EDU so they might apply, then asking Janet to barf up whatever crosses her mind—with any support she likes but God forbid she use electronic support—is a hill to die on … if your goal is to let Janet rattle.

Then we zip across town to Speech Land: If Jimmy the speechwriter needs info on how a plumber fixes a leak or how an attorney files an objection in a civil trial, AI is a faster and more accurate source than anything else, including asking a plumber or an attorney (who relies not on broad research but on their own experience alone, I must add). Will the plumber or the attorney give you a more colorful, edge-filled answer? Almost always. But that’s not how it was getting done before AI; it’s disingenuous to insist we “go back” to what never was, now.

I could go on and on in other directions but I think the bottom line is this: Writers’ objections to AI (aside from concern about losing their line of work, and that’s a different discussion) are ironic because for all our vaunted claims on first principles, I have not met many (any?) writers who begin this inquiry from the ultimate first principle: We write professionally so others will understand, be persuaded, and act. AI helps us do that. If we write so someone can get to know us—a fine thing, that—then you can make the anti-AI case, though it’ll be hard to do it without indicting thesauruses and experts, too.

In the pro comms world, the people who read or hear what we write would not have wondered how we wrote it (did they use AI?) unless someone prompted them to ask—this is curiosity masquerading as ethics. They have no legitimate interest in how we did it any more than I care how the electrician wires my house or the therapist fixes my outlook. 

I replied:

I disagree with your entire premise—the FACT you cite—about the purpose of most professional communication.

The motto of my company is, “Professional leadership communication to promote greater social understanding.”

Except for pure marketing and sales writing, that’s what most corporate communication is—and certainly it’s what most leadership communication is.

Generally, CEOs and university presidents don’t give speeches or write blog posts to get people to do stuff “with their arms and legs,” as you colorfully put it in your speechwriting teaching.

They give speeches mostly so that customers, employees and relevant other members of the public understand what kind of people they are. They do this by getting across the various ways they personally are brilliant, relatable, charming and magnetic. [And, I should have added in the hot moment, but didn’t, something like: “And by articulating their point of view and purpose, as they want the world to know it.”]

That is what we do for a living. When we say we’re trying to change behavior, that’s to hornswoggle the Board of Regents to spring for a new speechwriter. But Janet IS trying to give people a favorable impression of Tech.EDU so they might apply (even if they would otherwise be intimidated by the terrifying, cold image we all have of that place).

I think you know all that, and I think your basing you whole argument on it is disingenuous. And anyway, I’m not the Board of Regents.

In your teaching about communication, you talk a lot about how people come to their opinions by how they feel, and then they backfill with evidence and argument, to justify.

You seem to exempt yourself from that bovine approach.

I think your argument here is one of the most powerful examples I’ve seen of it.

Look, Mike. I believe you love to use AI. When you talk about it it’s like you’re telling me about a new friend. Where has he been all your life?!?

But just because you love him doesn’t mean Janet at Tech.EDU—or David Murray, at Writing Boots—would be better off using him in their daily work … or even that we ought to love him too.

And finally. I’ve heard AI enthusiasm from you and many other communicators for long enough now that I’m about to ask for receipts. You say it makes you far more productive and gets you more clients.

Where’s the yacht?

You say it makes you more creative and your writing richer and better.

Where’s The Great Gatsby?

Maybe it’s coming.

But until it comes, you know what to do with your tech stack.

Join us for tomorrow’s exciting conclusion, where Mike brings Hannibal Lecter into this.