In the past few days, at least three companies including RiseGuide, Joi AI, and Gradient Labs have had to tell reporters they had no idea their PR agency completely made up the people pitching on their behalf.

Futurism reported on July 31 that Movchan Agency, a UK PR agency, had been pitching journalists through at least 15 fake PR people. We're talking invented names, invented bios, AI-generated headshots. "I was not aware they were using such practices," the Gradient Labs CEO told Tech.eu (whose Cate Lawrence ran a terrific piece on the situation). "That's disappointing."

Here's why I think this one deserves more than a shake of the head.

Our profession sells trust. A reporter opens an email from a PR person on faith, faith that the person is real, faith the client is real, faith the information can be fact checked. Every pitch anyone in the industry has ever sent draws on that faith, and it only exists because, for the most part, we've all kept the deal. Fifteen fake people is counterfeiting the one thing we sell and every journalist who got one of those emails now has a fresh new reason to doubt the next real person who pitches them including yours.

We've spent two years arguing about whether AI wrote the pitch, does it need a disclosure line, is the writing any good. Fair questions, but now we need to talk honestly about AI fraud. And it's too big a question for any one agency to solve on its own, it's an industry question we collectively need to grapple with. So raise it with your own agency, but also with the other comms leaders you talk shop with. Start with this: if this happened to us, would we even know?

Three and a half weeks after the XBOX reset moment, the one we covered here for its unusually candid comms, CEO Asha Sharma sent a follow-up to staff on July 30 articulating the company's next phase of its turnaround strategy and The Verge published excerpts.

In my experience, turnaround comms usually die in the silence that tends to happen from leadership after layoffs; execs go dark, the survivors stew, the org carries on generally as it did before.

Sharma instead crafted a well-timed follow-up framework featuring four new corporate priorities (Core, Content, Creation, Connection), a phased plan (return to growth in fiscal 2027, acceleration through 2028–29, a 2030 target), and a big goal of half a billion daily players by 2030. In a turnaround, ambition is itself a strong message because it tells the people still there (and the talent you're trying to keep) that the layoffs and cuts were really just a crouch before a jump, not a slow decline.

But a turnaround comms strategy has two jobs.

Sharma did job one well. Job two is thinner because the dream is quantified, but the bridge to getting there mostly isn't. Of course, big caveat there because all we can see is what The Verge chose to quote. It’s possible job two was articulated internally but was not included in media coverage.

Here's the grace worth extending, though. A turnaround doesn't get communicated in one email, and it shouldn't be. The CEO's job at this stage is to set the vision and the direction of travel: where we're going, why it's worth staying for. The how mostly belongs to the next wave of communications, say division leaders translating the priorities into actual plans, the budget cycle that puts real resources behind them, the first progress report with actual numbers in it. And the excerpts do show the start of a how: the biggest franchises expanding into film, TV, and live experiences, deeper investment in Minecraft and Candy Crush, new partnerships in China. As an opening move, this is what a smart turnaround looks like.

So the real test is what follows this initial email and how fast. Employees will give a new CEO one vision statement on faith but the next thing they hear has to start answering how, and with what staff/resources, or the ambition begins to feel like a wish.

If change or transformation comms is under your purview, don't stop at making the vision announcement good. Pull the single announcement into a long-term campaign. And before it goes out, ask leadership the questions employees will ask when they read it: how are we going to get this done and when do we hear about whether we’re making any progress? If there's no answers yet, that's the agenda for your next meeting.