The Spin Sucks Podcast with Gini Dietrich

Hosted by Gini Dietrich, Founder of Spin Sucks

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408

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Aug 2026

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About the show

We're your one-stop shop for modern communications. The lines between PR, marketing, search, advertising, social, and content continue to blur, making it difficult to decide what belongs where. Rather than decide, let’s come together and work as one to grow organizations. We can change the PR industry...together.

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60 recent

August 18, 202616 min

The PESO Model® Diagnostic: Duolingo Built the Internet's Favorite Brand on Rented Land

Duolingo built the internet's favorite brand on rented land—the best shared media engine on the planet, run through one green owl on platforms it doesn't control. In this month's PESO Model® Diagnostic, Gini Dietrich looks at what the legend leaves out: an owned media record too thin to defend the brand when the 2025 "AI-first" backlash hit. You'll learn why Duo's chaos is actually disciplined character work, why AI engines ignore your funniest channel and cite your machine-readable record instead, and the three fixes that apply to any brand being told to "just go viral." Read the full article: https://spinsucks.com/communication/duolingo-peso-model-diagnostic/ Links: Take the free PESO Model® Diagnostic: https://spinsucks.com/self-peso-diagnostic/ PESO Model® Certification: https://spinsucks.com/peso-model-certification/  The series so far: Budweiser, Liquid Death, Peppa Pig, and HubSpot at spinsucks.com

August 11, 202615 min

Your Org Chart is Sabotaging Your Brand

Your best work goes into review sounding like your brand, only to come out sounding like a terms-of-service update—and legal isn't actually to blame. Nearly 80% of CMOs tell Lippincott that bureaucracy regularly interferes with decision-making, and that's not a culture problem—it's a brand-erosion mechanism. In this episode of the Spin Sucks podcast, Gini Dietrich breaks down the difference between compliance bureaucracy and the self-inflicted kind, and shares the quarterly content pod system regulated teams use to ship fast without skipping review. Links: Full article: https://spinsucks.com/communication/org-chart-brand-sabotage/   Lippincott CMO Outlook 2026: https://www.lippincott.com/cmo-outlook-2026/  Free PESO Model® Diagnostic: https://spinsucks.com/self-peso-diagnostic/  PESO Model® Certification: https://spinsucks.com/peso-model-certification/

August 4, 202617 min

Reputation Management Now Includes What AI Says About Your Brand

AI tools are already answering questions about your brand—to your buyers, your board, and the journalists who cover you—and they're confidently wrong often enough that one Minnesota company is suing Google for as much as $210 million over a lawsuit its AI invented. To make matters worse, Muck Rack research shows that in 29% of organizations, nobody owns this at all. In this episode, Gini Dietrich shares the four-move discipline for governing what AI says about your brand—baseline the narrative, fix your source of truth, correct the record with infrastructure, and give the work an owner—and make the case that this is reputation management, which means it belongs to communicators. Read the full article: https://spinsucks.com/communication/ai-reputation-management/  Take the free PESO Model® Diagnostic: https://spinsucks.com/self-peso-diagnostic/Explore the PESO Model® Certification: https://spinsucks.com/peso-model-certification/

July 28, 202618 min

How to Defend Your Marketing Budget in Language the CFO Actually Speaks

Gartner predicts that more than 40% of CMOs who push for bigger budgets this year will lose influence with the C-suite—because their asks never connect to what the business runs on. Here's the thing: your CFO's language has only four words—pipeline, risk, retention, and cost-to-acquire—and 'reach' isn't one of them. In this episode, I show you how to translate your work into those four numbers, which budget lines to cut before someone cuts them for you, and why one traceable story beats 12 metrics in any budget meeting. Read the full article: https://spinsucks.com/communication/defend-marketing-budget Take the free PESO Model® Diagnostic: https://spinsucks.com/self-peso-diagnostic/  PESO Model® Certification: https://spinsucks.com/peso-model-certification/

July 21, 202619 min

The PESO Model® Diagnostic: How HubSpot Turned Owned Media Into a Moat

HubSpot lost roughly 75% of its blog traffic to AI search—and grew revenue 19% anyway. Everyone wrote the obituary for content marketing, but the traffic that died was the content HubSpot never had the right to own, and everything built on real authority held. In Episode 4 of the PESO Model® Diagnostic, I break down what survived, what didn't, and how to tell which of your own content is an asset versus exposure—before AI makes the call for you. Take your own PESO Model® Diagnostic: https://spinsucks.com/self-peso-diagnostic/ PESO Model® Certification: https://spinsucks.com/peso-model-certification/ Full article: https://spinsucks.com/communication/peso-model-diagnostic-hubspot

July 14, 202617 min

How to Show Up Inside the Answer: A Visibility Engineering Playbook

Your buyers are asking their AI tool of choice who to trust—and if AI doesn't cite you, you don't exist. Communicators missed SEO once because it felt "too technical," and the Lippincott data says we're on track to repeat history with AI. In this week’s Spin Sucks podcast episode, Gini Dietrich shares the five-move visibility engineering playbook, plus the moment Martin Waxman ran his own organization through the PESO Model® Diagnostic live and turned a 50% score into a blueprint. If you're determined to own AI visibility before someone else does, this one's for you. Take the free PESO Model® Diagnostic: https://spinsucks.com/self-peso-diagnostic/  Get PESO Model® Certified: https://spinsucks.com/peso-model-certification/  Read the article: https://spinsucks.com/communication/visibility-engineering-playbook 

July 7, 202617 min

CMOs Don't Have an Influence Problem. They Have an Operating System Problem.

A new Lippincott study says only 28% of CMOs feel they have real influence in their organization—and your CEO has probably already seen it. Most people blame short-term thinking, but Gini Dietrich argues that the real problem is structural. CMOs are managing a pile of channels rather than running a system. You'll learn why the brand-versus-performance debate is a trap, why dumping budget into AI while starving owned media makes you less visible inside AI, and how the PESO Model® works as the operating system that earns C-suite influence back. If you're working hard and still can't prove your value, this one's for you. Links: Free PESO Model® Diagnostic: https://spinsucks.com/self-peso-diagnostic/ PESO Model® Certification: https://spinsucks.com/peso-model-certification/ Full article: https://spinsucks.com/uncategorized/cmo-operating-system-problem

June 30, 202616 min

Inside the PESO Model® Certification

You understand the PESO Model®, so why does it still feel like a pile of tactics instead of a system that runs? In this episode, Gini Dietrich takes you inside the PESO Model Certification® she tore down and rebuilt—what changed, what she refused to touch, and who it's honestly not for. If you've ever understood something cold and still couldn't make it run, this one's for you. Take the free PESO Model® Diagnostic: https://spinsucks.com/self-peso-diagnostic/ Explore the PESO Model® Certification: https://spinsucks.com/peso-model-certification/

June 23, 202617 min

The PESO Model® Diagnostic: What Peppa Pig Can Teach You About the Difference Between a Campaign and a System

A cartoon pig ran one of the most integrated campaigns I've seen in years—and it still leaves the most important question unanswered. In this week’s Spin Sucks podcast episode, I run the Peppa Pig pregnancy campaign through the PESO Model® Diagnostic to show you the difference between a brilliant campaign and an actual operating system: one has a finale, the other never ends. Take the PESO Model® Diagnostic: https://spinsucks.com/self-peso-diagnostic/ Explore the PESO Model® Certification: https://spinsucks.com/peso-model-certification/ Read the full article: https://spinsucks.com/communication/peso-model-diagnostic-peppa-pig

June 16, 202615 min

The 4 PR and Marketing Metrics that Matter for AI Visibility

Your dashboard is full of green arrows—and your CFO still isn't impressed. That's because most of what we measure flatters us instead of informing us, and the numbers that actually matter in 2026 are the ones almost nobody is tracking yet. In this episode, Gini Dietrich walks through the four metrics that survive the budget meeting—LLM visibility, citation frequency, narrative share of voice, and credibility loop close rate—and why you can't bolt them onto a system that isn't running as a system. If you've ever been proud of a report that couldn't answer "did this move the business?", this one's for you. Take the PESO Model® Diagnostic: https://spinsucks.com/self-peso-diagnostic/ Explore the PESO Model® Certification: https://spinsucks.com/peso-model-certification/ Read the full article: https://spinsucks.com/communication/pr-marketing-metrics-ai-visibility