Writing Boots

Woody Allen famously said 80% of success in life is showing up. I think most of us assumed that meant, “To an audition you didn’t feel like going to.” And then you get your big break, and you’re pretty much good to go. No—even if you do get your big break—you still have to show up every time in countless ways in this life—like 20 times a day over like 50 working years, which amounts to more than 365,000 fucking times. Oh, and then there’s also the other 20% of success, which Allen didn’t even bother to tell us about. Well, maybe he didn’t want to discourage us.

It was close to Miller Time late last Friday afternoon when I stumbled across a LinkedIn post by veteran corporate communicator John Clemons that almost made me spit out my High Life.

“TAKE NOTE,” Clemons commanded. “CEOs prefer AI over Human Speechwriters.” That may read like some communicators’ clickbait, but Clemons is a credible messenger: an International Association of Business Communicators Fellow, and one of the best-networked communicators in all of corporate communications. Clemons and I have 102 mutual connections. So if Clemons is sharing it, lots of my connections are reading it, too.

I have 106 mutual connections with Ray Day, the 2025 Chair of the Public Relations Society of America. In a LinkedIn post of his own, Day shared the statistic that begat Clemons’ clarion call, from the newly released 5th Annual HarrisX & Ragan Survey of Communications Leaders.

“Let that sink in,” wrote Day, vice chair at the global marketing firm Stagwell, who was previously CCO at IBM and a comms VP at Ford Motor Company. “We’re witnessing a fundamental shift in executive confidence that extends far beyond efficiency gains.”

I didn’t let it sink in long before I reached out to the survey sponsors with a few questions. Story at ProRhetoric.com.