Every spring, Beekeeper Group sets aside time to invest in our own learning. This year’s Spring Training spanned two full days and covered everything from client service best practices to AI-centered earned media strategies. Here are four key takeaways we’re still buzzing about.
1. The best advocacy communicators write for an 8th grader (on purpose!)
One of our Day 1 sessions explored tips for becoming well-versed on new policy issues. The answer isn’t just reading more, it’s reading differently: adding annual reports, white papers, and industry newsletters into the mix, and then doing the hard work of translating all of that complexity into language that’s clear, accessible, and human.
The benchmark our team uses: write about a technical policy issue at an 8th-to-10th-grade reading level, to ensure your own understanding and to garner the best audience comprehension. It sounds simple, but it’s the standard that separates communications that inform from communications that move people.
2. AI optimization isn’t optional anymore — it’s the new media relations.
Guest speaker, Lianna Serko, Director of Strategic Communications at the Kogod School of Business at American University, delivered a thought-provoking session on the future of earned media. Her message: the audience for your earned media is no longer just humans. It’s also the crawlers, indexers, and summarization engines that power AI-generated search results.
This shift toward “authority engineering” means that a single strong media hit isn’t enough in today’s 24/7 news cycle. Organizations need frequency, co-occurrence across credible outlets, and owned content that converts media mentions into structured, indexable assets. One tactic that stuck with us: booking spokespeople on podcasts not only for the listeners, but for the transcripts of natural, keyword-rich language that AI systems recognize as credible. It’s a philosophical shift from chasing coverage to engineering credibility.
3. How your team is wired shapes how you solve problems.
We spent time reviewing our creative archetypes from Adobe’s Creative Types Quiz, which gave us a framework for how people naturally approach problem-solving, idea generation, and creative work. Our team spans all creative types, including multiple Architects (big-picture executors), Gardeners (empathy-driven collaborators), Guides (conscientious leaders), and Strategists (sharp decision-makers). This means we’re strong at planning, cultivating, and following through.
Knowing our team strengths and opportunities for growth shapes how we run brainstorms, form teams, and recognize the talent that we want to bring into the Hive. It also reinforces something we believe about client work: the best teams aren’t made of people who think alike.
4. AI is a collaborator, not a vending machine.
Our team spent a significant portion of our training with an AI expert who works with organizations on practical fluency — not just what AI can do, but how to work with it well. The throughline of the session: most people underuse AI because they approach it like a search engine rather than a thinking partner.
The fix is context. Giving an AI tool the who, what, how, and why of a task — including the stakes — dramatically improves the output. Iteration matters just as much. Anthropic’s research backs this up: iteration and refinement are the strongest correlates of AI fluency. Understanding how to appropriately use AI as a thought partner helps us better advise our clients on AI’s capabilities for their own needs. If you’re curious about how we think about responsible AI use in advocacy, our white paper on Navigating the AI Wilderness and our Future of Advocacy report cover the landscape in depth.
Our Spring Training tradition is one of the parts of working at Beekeeper that we’re most proud of. Two days, a lot of ideas, and a team that leaves sharper than when it arrived. Interested in learning more about what we covered? Drop us a line here.