When a (shall remain nameless) pharmaceutical giant announced internally its plans to offshore various activities to Poland some years back, employees were quick to share their views that such actions were at odds with the company’s values.

Poland was the least LGBT+ friendly country in Europe, they pointed out, and the decision made a mockery of the company’s longstanding support for PRIDE. Alas, values, it seemed, could be put to one side when it came to saving money.

A new report from FTI Consulting highlights this very point. It claims that 54pc of companies now face internal or external backlash when narrative and action fall out of sync.

Corporate affairs in a world without narrative slack, which surveyed 61 corporate affairs leaders in EMEA, finds that three in four (76pc) believe stakeholders increasingly test company statements against actions in real time, and any gap is punished quickly.

Why does this matter? This ‘collapse of narrative slack’, as it’s dubbed by FTI, changes the operating model for corporate affairs. Internal engagement assumes greater importance. Corporate affairs needs to be involved in decision-making as early as possible. There is a greater emphasis on judgment.

As the report says: ‘Reputation is becoming harder to control at exactly the moment corporate affairs is being asked to take on greater responsibility for it.’ Indeed, 71pc of those surveyed perceive that reputation is increasingly being shaped by forces outside their function’s direct control.

To be honest, I’m rather bemused that two per cent ‘strongly disagree’ that reputation is outside their control. I fear they may have a rude awakening at some point. As one respondent said: ‘99pc of the time there is absolutely nothing you can do about it. How you communicate, however, is totally in your gift.’

Luckily, 84pc of respondents are either ‘very’ or ‘fairly’ confident that they have the skills and resources in their function to manage that credibly, which still leaves 15pc doubting their own ability.

But they do see risks, particularly in claims made around technology and innovation, sustainability and ESG commitments, where they might just run ahead of reality.

Four in ten respondents believe that the most significant consequences to this ‘narrative slack’ are employee scepticism and reputational damage with regulators and policy makers. Just 27pc fear the wrath of the media.

But the real kicker for corporate affairs, according to the report, is that while the board expects the function to influence decisions on issues such as corporate reputation, employee activism, geopolitical risk and policy change, just half of those surveyed believe their function effectively does so.

Indeed, one in five claim they lack the mandate to drive commercial or business outcomes – at a time when we are increasingly being told that corporate affairs practitioners need to demonstrate their commercial nous. And sadly five per cent perceive their function to be totally useless at influencing any decision made at the top table.

They point to structural factors that restrict early access, such as slimmer executive committees, accelerated decision making and a concentration of influence across a smaller number of roles, such as HR and strategy. As somebody recently said to me, while comms had a good pandemic, so too did HR - and that function is gaining ground.

So what’s the solution, apart from weeping in the corner at the injustice of it all. FTI Consulting has defined six practices for operating in a world without narrative slack (I’m sorry, I keep imagining storytelling trousers! Bear with…)

See risk forming earlier
Successful teams horizon scan to ‘anticipate where ambition, delivery and scrutiny are likely to collide’ and highlight potential risks.

Decide what the business is ready to say
You need shared clarity across the organisation. Align other functions early so external commitments reflect reality.

Test messages through the eyes of the audience
Make sure they are credible under scrutiny.

Stress test issues before they surface
Rather than waiting for challenges to emerge, run scenarios early to identify where claims could break down under scrutiny.

Be deliberate about where narratives travel
Pay closer attention to channel strategy, media dynamics and how messages are interpreted and amplified.

Measure what actually matters
Forget activity and volumes and instead think about outcomes.

And above all, don’t forget to have fun. Sorry, that’s not in the report - just some advice from me!

MEDIA RELATIONS

The GEO quandary

CityAM reports that LSEG, or the London Stock Exchange as it used to be known in old money, has cancelled hundreds of corporate subscriptions to the Financial Times because the pink ’un has downgraded its focus on the UK market. Instead, the FT is prioritising political and international stories, which is perhaps no surprise given that its editor was formerly the paper’s foreign editor.

CityAM’s own analysis suggests that the FT’s coverage of Britain’s biggest companies, ironically listed on an index named after the newspaper, has fallen as much as 70pc since 2010.

It cites Barclays as a prime example. In 2015, the bank featured more than 2,000 times in the FT but last year it received just 750 mentions (or roughly 14 a week, so it’s hardly being ignored). But let’s put a bit of meat on those bones.

In 2015, Barclays ousted its CEO after a 20pc slump in annual profits and appointed Jes Staley (whatever happened to him?). It was a year in which the bank received multiple fines for misconduct, including the highest ever levied by the FCA; set aside £800m to compensate customers for mis-selling; suffered an IT glitch that left customers unable to access accounts; and confirmed it had paid one trader £170m over the five years after the financial crash.

Barclays would likely have preferred less media coverage that year, but, in short, it was newsworthy. However, 2015 was also around the time when data scientists entered the newsrooms, when editorial decisions became less about the size of the business or it being a household name, but whether it would attract eyeballs. As journalists are increasingly incentivised by visitor numbers and dwell times, they are less keen to file stories with limited audiences.

It is why the financial results of one of Britain’s biggest companies, with a market cap in excess of £46 billion, were ignored last year, while space was found for those of Victoria’s Secret, with a lowly market cap of $4.6 billion but imagery to capture the reader’s imagination.

The arrival of GEO, we are told, heralds a renaissance for media relations as earned media features highly in the content created by these platforms. The only problem: the story needs to be published first.

Postscript
I’ve told this story before but it’s worth repeating. Back in 2014, my former colleague Paul Murphy, now investigations editor at the Financial Times, shared the insights produced by a data boffin at the Daily Telegraph, our old alma mater, who had noticed that searches for Kim Jong Un bizarrely rose on weekends.

The Korean dictator had not been seen in public for some time, prompting speculation that he might have died. Consequently, the data ‘scientist’ (I’m using that word loosely) prematurely recommended that articles such as ‘Kim Jong Un dead’ or ‘Kim Jong Un assassinated’ ‘should do quite well’.

Kim Jong Un’s rotund figure had, the boffin shared, been attributed to his appetite for cheese, stories about which also did well with readers. He advised journalists to write about the dictator’s favourite cheeses, adding that best practice was for headlines to include names. His suggestion: ‘What cheese would Kim Jong Un recommend?’

Or as Murphy headlined his post: ‘Just click here for the cheese eating North Korean fatso who may be dead already’.

CORPORATE ACTIVISM

Corporates lose appetite for speaking out

When Renée Good, a 37-year-old American woman, was shot dead in her car on the streets of Minneapolis by an Immigration and Customs Enforcement agent, corporate outrage was conspicuous by its absence.

It took seven days after the death of a second American citizen, Alex Pretti, again at the hands of an ICE agent, for 60 Minnesota bosses to issue a joint statement, through the state’s Chamber of Commerce, calling for ‘an immediate de-escalation of tensions’.

There was no moral outrage. No condemnation of ICE’s actions. The statement instead talked of ‘recent challenges’ and ‘tragic loss of life’, without naming either mother of three Good nor Pretti, a nurse. Is this empathetic, I asked Claude. It reads ‘more like a business position statement than an empathetic response to tragedy’, came the response.

And yet 13 of these signatories signed a very different release back in 2019, committing to a new Statement for the Purpose of Business, in which they pledged to lead their companies for the benefits of all stakeholders, including customers, employees and the communities in which they operated.

Many of those customers and employees in Minneapolis today feel frightened – for their own safety and for that of their families and friends. They are too scared to go to work, lest they are apprehended on the way. They are too scared to even do a weekly shop. The hospitality sector is suffering. As is construction, and other sectors reliant on migrant labour.

The community is hurting – emotionally and financially, with official estimates suggesting local businesses are losing as much as $20m in revenues every week.

It wasn’t that long ago that business leaders were opining left, right and centre. There were issues considered sacrosanct on which they had to speak up, they said, such as racism and the security of their colleagues, and others that just took their fancy.

Back in 2017, for example, when neo-Nazis marched at a white supremacist event in Charlottesville, Virginia, leading to the death of one protestor, Kenneth Frazier, CEO of Merck, resigned from the American Manufacturing Council after President Trump (in his first term in office) refused to criticise the aggressors, attributing blame to both sides. His stance shamed other CEOs into action, and the council was disbanded.

Today, however, the situation is different. A 2025 Gallup poll revealed public support for businesses taking a stance on current events had risen 13 percentage points to 51%, which sounds great until you realise how finely balanced the situation is. 48:52. 51:49. These are the ratios that apparently govern today’s world.

There is also anecdotal evidence in Minneapolis that some employees are keen for bosses to remain silent lest it attracts unwarranted attention. Two employees of Target, the state’s second biggest employer, were recently detained within one of its Minnesota stores, prompting other colleagues to stay at home. The retailer, admittedly a signatory of the statement, declined to speak out.

But the biggest incentive to stay shtum is a president whose skin is so thin, I’m surprised he’s not transparent. He is also quick to attack and take action against those who dare criticise him.

Witness his recent $5bn lawsuit against JP Morgan Chase for closing his accounts to, Trump alleges, further a political agenda. Or his threat to levy a 25% tariff on iPhones when Apple CEO Tim Cook declined to join the president on a trip to the Middle East. Corporate affairs in North America is currently not for the faint-hearted.