John Hellerman

President of award-winning Hellerman Communications (@HellermanComm); PR Agency Exec of Year (@PRNews).

[John Hellerman @jhellerman]

@nicksortor @elonmusk They’re calling it a loss for Elon, but he’s probably made back his lawyer fees already today, and I would say Sam Altman‘s reputation is in the crapper.

[John Hellerman @jhellerman]

@atlblog @Cmbg3Law This is an important discussion. Without the wisdom of “doing the work” now it’ll be difficult to know in the future what to even ask for in a prompt.

[John Hellerman @jhellerman]

The smallest mistake...when I first started my career doing PR for lawyers I went to work for @JaffePR -- their circa 1996 website's home page started with this: One "oops" can erase a thousand "well done's"! And that was the ethos of the work -- you got it perfect bc if one thing wasn't, none of it could be trusted.

[John Hellerman @jhellerman]

This is NOT an episode of Weeds.

[Vivid.🇮🇱 @VividProwess]

🚨BREAKING: The IDF has found A 25-meter-deep underground Hezbollah command center inside a clothing store in Lebanon.

Massive amount of weapons were found.

Share this. The mainstream media won’t.

[John Hellerman @jhellerman]

I don;t think it’s any of our business who the culprit is. That’s an internal matter. Whether true or not, no believes a @sullcrom partner was the one responsible for the actual work and “back in your day” and now, whoever it was, we’d have to believe, will never touch another piece of work at the firm.

[John Hellerman @jhellerman]

BigLaw at its best and worst in one filing. Sullivan & Cromwell owned the issue immediately, which is impressive and important. The scar, though, is real: when you charge what they do, clients assume zero mistakes. Peers will whisper, but if @sullcrom continues to be transparent about the new tools and protocols they’re implementing, they'll turn a PR hit into a trust win.

[John Hellerman @jhellerman]

Alex, you're spot on as always. While clients expect better diligence than a solo at $125/hr., the letter was genuine accountability: painful but classy. I believe that @sullcrom's transparency on fixes will earn back trust fast. No one wants an error but how you respond to a screw-up really does define you.

[John Hellerman @jhellerman]

This will be uncomfortable for them for a while (esp. w/all the gossip and peer whispering) but it's @sullcrom and how they handle this now on their own behalf -- and so far so good (transparent, apologetic, etc.) -- will demonstrate how they handle similar troubles at $3K per hr.

[John Hellerman @jhellerman]

While peer whispering is inevitable and will be uncomfortable for a while, Sullivan & Cromwell's proactive internal review and swift apology letter from Dietderich was textbook accountability and exactly how a class firm should respond when things go wrong. That said, this is still a serious self-inflicted wound for a firm as prestigious (and expensive) as @sullcrom, and it will no-doubt cause serious internal reviews and new mitigation protocols. Ultimately, S&C's handling of the mess will say more about the firm than the mess itself.

[John Hellerman @jhellerman]

A speech Trump should finally give on Iran from 2009!

[John Hellerman @jhellerman]

6/6. If you need credible earned media but can't afford "to try" -- DM me about our results-based FAME program for professionals.

[John Hellerman @jhellerman]

Good morning ☀️

Saw this eye-opening stat from Gartner’s latest “Top Predictions to Inform 2026 Comms Strategies” report: The mass adoption of AI and public LLMs (Grok, ChatGPT, Copilot, Gemini, etc.) is changing everything. As AI becomes the new primary search interface, it’s expected to drive a ~2x increase in PR and earned media budgets by 2027.

Why? Because these “answer engines” overwhelmingly pull from — and cite — credible journalism and earned media. Gartner notes that more than 95% of the links they surface come from non-paid, authoritative journalistic outlets. In short: real PR placements in respected publications now carry far more weight than another blog post or LinkedIn article. Brands without substantial earned media risk becoming invisible in AI-powered results.

1/6

[John Hellerman @jhellerman]

5/6. Are you seeing this shift in your 2026 budgets and planning yet? What’s your biggest challenge right now in prioritizing (or scaling) earned media? Getting buy-in to reallocate from owned/paid? Building deeper reporter relationships? Measuring real AI-era impact?

[John Hellerman @jhellerman]

@StockMKTNewz Congrats to @PalmerLuckey We’re lucky to have someone of his resilience and vision leading our innovation efforts in military and war fighting.

[John Hellerman @jhellerman]

It's Purim tonight and Esther may be history’s most underrated communications strategist.

Timing.
Coalition-building.
Message discipline.

Still relevant for leaders today. Here's my take on Esther the Influencer:

https://t.co/rMITzTGiqF

[John Hellerman @jhellerman]

If you ask your Q like this “Does allowing AI to run over Shabbat preserve my existential stillness, or does it extend my weekday agency into sacred time?” You get an answer like it shouldn’t be “your agent” — it shouldn’t be acting as you would on real time inputs, especially in a public way (eg, answering email, posting to X, etc.)