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Published on:

1st Jul 2026

Episode 8 with Kathleen Lucente

On this episode of The Frontline Innovation Podcast, I welcomed Kathleen Lucente, Founder of Red Fan Communications to the show. We talked about one of the most important questions facing executives, CMOs, and marketing teams right now:

🔹 How do companies show up with credibility in the age of AI?

Kathleen brought a powerful perspective on why brand authority, earned media, executive visibility, customer stories, internal alignment, and thought leadership mattered more than ever.

She discussed the importance of not treating PR as a last-minute press release function. Instead, it had to become a strategic engine for visibility, trust, market positioning, and growth.

Key takeaways included:

▪️ Marketing teams have to help educate the C-suite and board on how AI was changing brand discovery.

▪️ Executives need to be visible, credible, and connected to the story they were telling.

▪️ Companies need advocates to be brand authorities that lead with trust, credibility, and empathy to share their value propositions to the outside world.

▪️ Customer testimonials and case studies have to stay fresh, specific, and tied to real business outcomes.

▪️ Employees have to understand and believe the company’s narrative before the market would.

This was a timely and practical conversation for leaders, founders, marketers, and product teams thinking about how to build trust, stand out, and make their innovation easier to discover.

#frontline #innovation #brand #marketing #Publicrelations #AI #brandauthority #thoughtleadership #storytelling

Resources:

▪️ Link to full episode: https://youtu.be/lDis1KWOBy4

▪️ Kathleen on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/kathleenlucente/

▪️ Red Fan Communications: https://redfancommunications.com/

▪️ Kathleen's Article on "The question every CEO is asking: Why most CMOs still can’t answer it": https://www.fastcompany.com/91531517/the-question-every-ceo-is-asking

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About the Podcast

The Frontline Innovation Podcast
The Voice of Problem Solvers
This show explores innovation, from the frontline—where the real work of understanding human problems, dismantling complexity, and building solutions that hold up in the real world. A place where human unmet needs and problem solvers live. Solutions can come in several forms, from products to services to experiences.

Our conversations are reflective, practical, and human. There are no “right answers,” just honest exploration.

About your host

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William D. Reed

As someone who has spent decades bridging the gap between those who build solutions and the people who need them,I’ve seen firsthand why so many great ideas fail—not because they aren’t innovative, but because they never truly reach or work for the people they were meant to help.

Today, through my work at Willway Labs and my Frontline Innovation framework, I help enterprise leaders, product teams, and innovators dismantle real human problems at the frontline—where solutions are actually experienced, adopted, and trusted.
Because innovation isn’t complete when you launch… it’s complete when it works in someone’s life.

What I do is help organizations close that gap—so their ideas don’t just exist…they deliver real value.