The Trending Communicator
The Trending Communicator
In today's hyper-accelerated communications world, keeping up means juggling reputation, brand building, crisis management, storytelling, and more, all while adapting to new technologies like generative AI. The Trending Communicator, hosted by Dan Nestle, is your guide through this chaotic landscape. This podcast dives into the challenges of our profession today, with experts sharing real stories and strategies for making a mark in communications. It's the perfect resource for professionals looking to innovate, take risks, and stay ahead. Join us to make sense of today’s communications chaos, one insightful conversation at a time.
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The Trending Communicator

The Trending Communicator with Dan Nestle

In today's hyper-accelerated communications world, keeping up means juggling reputation, brand building, crisis management, storytelling, and more while adapting to new technologies like generative AI. The Trending Communicator, hosted by Dan Nestle, is your guide through this chaotic landscape. This podcast dives into the challenges of PR, communications, and marketing today, with experts sharing real stories and strategies for overcoming those challenges and more. It's the perfect resource for professionals looking to innovate, take risks, and stay ahead. Join us to make sense of today’s communications chaos, one insightful conversation at a time.

Recent Episodes

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Authority Intelligence Is Built for People, GEO is for Brands - with Erin Lanuti
Aug. 12, 2026

Authority Intelligence Is Built for People, GEO is for Brands - with Erin Lanuti

Who handles generative engine optimization for you? Not for your company - for you. A brand has an answer to that question: a team, a vendor, a budget line, a dashboard somebody checks on Mondays. A person usually has nobody at all, and the tools that do exist were built to read websites, which turns out to be a thin substitute for a career. In this episode of The Trending Communicator, host Dan Nestle sits down with his own business partner, Erin Lanuti, co-founder and CEO of Lilypath and fo
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The Research PR Couldn't Afford Until AI - with Rich Gallagher
July 29, 2026

The Research PR Couldn't Afford Until AI - with Rich Gallagher

Somewhere along the way, PR research came to mean a survey reverse-engineered to confirm whatever the client had already decided to say. Real research, the slow and expensive kind, stayed with the academics, because nobody on the agency or client side had the hours. So what happens when the cost of doing it right collapses? In this episode of The Trending Communicator, host Dan Nestle sits down with Rich Gallagher, Head of Comms Innovation at Brands2Life, whose answer to that question was to
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Why Human Conversation is the OS for AI - with Sarah Neely
July 6, 2026

Why Human Conversation is the OS for AI - with Sarah Neely

Can you build word of mouth on purpose? Few people are better equipped to answer it than Sarah Neely. She's spent two decades engineering the conversations most brands just hope will happen by accident, and she's now the founder of SignalSwell, built to make human word of mouth "audible" to AI. She also leads client strategy at Fizz, one of the few agencies built entirely around getting people to talk. Her premise runs against everything a virality-obsessed business wants to believe: advocate
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You're the Top of the AI Sandwich - with Brian Piper and Matt Wilkinson
June 19, 2026

You're the Top of the AI Sandwich - with Brian Piper and Matt Wilkinson

If AI writes a better prompt than you can now, what are you still being paid for? In this episode of The Trending Communicator, host Dan Nestle is joined by two of his closest collaborators, Brian Piper, content and AI integration consultant and co-author of Epic Content Marketing Volume 2, and Dr. Matt Wilkinson, founder of UK agency Strivenn and author of the forthcoming Buyer in the Loop. A month earlier, the three shared a stage at Mark Schaefer's Uprising retreat, building one marketing
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AI Forward, Not AI First - with Brian McHale
June 5, 2026

AI Forward, Not AI First - with Brian McHale

Plenty of companies have bolted AI onto how they already work and called it transformation. Far fewer have rebuilt the business around it. In this episode of The Trending Communicator, host Dan Nestle talks with Brian McHale, CEO and owner of Brandience, who bought a struggling traditional ad agency back in 2008 and spent the better part of two decades quietly rebuilding it around AI. His shop now runs eight AI agents for every human employee, cut prospect research from 45 minutes to under 10
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Open your AI Authenticity Loop - with Allison Shapira
May 22, 2026

Open your AI Authenticity Loop - with Allison Shapira

Authenticity might be the most abused word in business today. Every AI tool promises to preserve it. Every leadership guru sells it as a brand pillar. And the more it gets thrown around, the less it actually means. In this episode of The Trending Communicator, host Dan Nestle sits down with Allison Shapira — founder and CEO of Global Public Speaking, Harvard Kennedy School lecturer, regular HBR contributor, and author of AI for the Authentic Leader: How to Communicate More Effectively Without
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About the Host

Dan Nestle Profile Photo
Dan Nestle

Chief Curiosity Officer

Dan is an award-winning communications executive and communications technology leader, podcaster, and author. Named to the PRWeek Magazine Dashboard25 in 2023 and 2024, he is recognized among his peers as one of the top 25 "movers and shakers" in communications technology. In both his work and podcast conversations, Dan has proven expertise in corporate communications, communications technology (CommsTech), Generative AI, integrated marketing communications, content marketing, social media strategy, and brand storytelling. He's also a co-author (with Mark Schaefer and 33 friends) and co-editor of The Most Amazing Marketing Book Ever.

As host of The Trending Communicator, Dan will continue to hold conversations that satisfy his learning mindset and what has been called his "unearthly curiosity" - a formidable, if somewhat unpredictable, combination. You can expect great conversations about trends, tools, and platforms that enhance communication, encourage conversation, and foster person-to-person relationships.

Born and raised in New Jersey, Dan spent 16 years in Japan and speaks Japanese. Married to an amazing woman for a few decades now, he and his wife are proud parents of two incredible daughters and paw-rents of two loveable hounds.