“do u have a dog?”

“no but I wanna get one, do you have a recommendation?’

Sam Altman this week provided yet another example of the future of executive communications.

The exchange was easy to miss since it was so inconsequential.

The significance lies more in what it says about how CEOs connect with the world.

Altman had tweeted about a new product, GPT search, a big innovation that more than anything we’ve seen so far may threaten Google’s stranglehold over search.

The announcement was made on his X handle and followed by a tweet explaining how to make it your default search engine.

Later that afternoon, in the comments, someone responded to this big news by asking Altman if has a dog. 

Altman temporarily took off his marketing hat and wrote: “no but i wanna get one, do you have a recommendation?” 

Fantastic. Just fantastic.

I regularly remind people who work in PR or comms that Sam Altman is the future.

We are moving on from the world of tightly-scripted CEOs who rely on PR to book them on CNBC and lawyers to tell them what they can say.

Every head of comms should ask themselves if their CEO could answer the dog question. 

And by answer, I mean put their fingers on the keyboard and type the answer with no one helping.

The ability to play in the social media sandbox is a competitive advantage that will only become more pronounced. Soon enough it will be a requirement.

I’m sure Altman asks his team for advice, but he clearly wields the megaphone.

Just how valuable that was became clear last year when he was fired from OpenAI. He was able to continue to shape the narrative because could write on X and connect directly to two million followers.

The reason he had so many followers, of course, was because he has been writing high-quality content online for two decades.

You cannot wait until you need followers to attract them. And you cannot buy them. 

You earn them by writing things that people find interesting.

Many of the most successful executives – from Altman to Zuckerberg – are using social media to announce product launches and connect with stakeholders. That trend of having the CEO, not the company, make big announcements will continue to grow.

You can get help from your comms team, speechwriters and ghostwriters (like me!). 

But you have to participate to reap the rewards.

Otherwise you will not be prepared for your dog day afternoon.