The role of CCO as juggler

It’s been a funny old week. It started off with the triumph of the second Corporate Affairs Summit in Dublin – of which more next week – and ended with an infection getting a tad out of control and blowing my face up to resemble the loser in a fight with Tyson Fury.🥊 The swelling has partially closed both eyes, so please forgive any typos and the shorter length for this newsletter. I’d also like to welcome our new sponsor, Blakeney, which will be supporting Corporate Affairs Unpacked for the next three months. Thank you.

A corporate affairs professional once likened his role to me as a game of three-dimensional chess.

He might not have all the answers, but he needed to flag the questions that are likely to arise. And also, crucially, to recognise when it is necessary to bring an external adviser to the room.

I was reminded of this conversation on reading this year’s Ipsos Reputation Council Report, The Eye of the Storm, which draws on interviews with 161 senior communications leaders across 19 markets.

As global service line lead Milorad Ajder comments in his foreword: ‘The clear resounding message from our council members is that their primary function has evolved. The CCO is no longer simply a guardian of the message, but a strategic sense-maker for the entire organisation.

‘With a constant barrage of risk, CCOs simply cannot respond to everything. Prioritisation is paramount, necessitating a smarter, more disciplined approach: one that is nimble, selective, cross-functional and collaborative.’

The need to interpret the chaotic external environment for their board and leadership teams, translating instability into actionable insight, was described by one CCO as prompting the question – what fresh hell is this? – every morning.

And, as many respondents noted, the speed of change makes it harder while strategies or recommendations that might have worked five years ago, or even six months ago, no longer seem effective.

But the biggest issue for most council members: geopolitics.

A theme that barely registered in most corporate affairs professionals ten years ago, say, is now front of mind.

This was also reflected in the Oxford-GlobeScan Global Corporate Affairs Survey report earlier this year, where 76% of respondents cited geopolitical risk and uncertainty as the biggest short-term risk to global businesses.

It is perhaps telling that respondents in North America viewed macroeconomic conditions as the greatest short-term risk. (Yep, they don’t have to worry about Trump and his threat of tariffs, a word that seems to instil fear into comms directors elsewhere in the world.)

Consequently, 83% of council members report that their organisations have formalised plans to monitor and quantify geopolitical risks, which involves implementing solutions to monitor and report on key topics, scenario planning and analysis, ensuring crisis management frameworks are thoroughly developed, and that external support is available and coordinated when needed.

At the Corporate Affairs Summit in Dublin, Simon MacAllister, partner, EY Ireland, offered some words of comfort to delegates as he explained current US trade policy.

First, it is important to view tariffs as the tool, a stick for the US government to achieve other objectives, such as reducing bilateral trade deficits. But they are almost a distraction.

There is a drive to reshore manufacturing back to the US, allowing control over production and supply chains, and generating jobs in blue collar states that will likely vote them back into power. The issue here: they can’t build the factories fast enough but, if they could, there is not enough labour – and immigration is a no no.

Recently, the US scored what can only be described as an own goal in this area. South Korean car company Hyundai is pouring $4.3 billion into a new manufacturing site in Georgia, but recently immigration agents deported more than 300 South Korean workers at the plant, who did not have the correct papers. An about turn plea for some workers to stay to train local staff resulted in just one saying yes.

But MacAllister warned, however, against thinking that US trade policy is disorganised and chaotic. The government is working to a plan, the Mar-A-Lago Accord, which sets out its strategy. And, he says, it is working.

All the chatter about revenue from tariffs and how it will lead to lower income taxes is just that. Talk. Income tax generates trillions of dollars, at most tariffs will generate hundreds of billions. And if reshoring continues apace, then the revenue stream from tariffs will fall further. MacAllister described it as a ‘good talk track’.

But the threat of tariffs has been successful in achieving policy objectives. The US government has a much more transactional view of the world than ever before, a sort of ‘you scratch my back, I’ll scratch yours’, with objectives ranging from upping defence spending by allies to taking action on illegal drugs smuggling.

And, the biggest policy objective of all: to weaken the US dollar.

Remember that, and the Mar-A-Lago Accord, and forget the conflicting statements, streams of consciousness and Truth Socials. They are side shows. If corporate affairs officers understand the greater plan, then it may help structure a less reactive response.

AI is a communicator’s friend

Communications is one of the top two corporate functions that can be positively transformed by generative AI, according to a new global study from Boston Consulting Group: the other being customer services.

Deploying AI technology at task level today could generate time savings of between 26% and 36%, but with further refinement, such as reshaping processes, that could reach 47%. For communication functions juggling additional responsibilities with unchanged resources, that should be a real wake up call.

Half your valuable time freed to focus on the important stuff! (Not saying the other stuff is unimportant, but it is probably, er, how can I put this delicately, best described as mundane or repetitive.)

Deploying AI technology at task level today could also, according to The GenAI Transformation of the Communications Function, generate cost savings of between 14% and 18%, rising to as much as 28% with more thoughtful implementation.

Breaking down a communications function into its constituent parts, the report finds that the greatest time (and consequently cost) savings could be in operations, planning and analytics, where it estimates time savings of up to 40% if AI were deployed for basic tasks, rising to as much as 47% once processes are reshaped or reinvented.

The cost savings at task level could amount to 21% to 27%, rising to 39% at process level. Similarly, reshaping the processes involved in external and media communications as well as digital and multi-media communications could slash the time involved by half. Indeed, across the board, it suggests that productivity gains of between 26% and 47% are achievable.

But crucially, the report does not suggest that AI is able to replace communications. While it asserts that ‘comms has one of the most AI-ready task mixes of any function’, just 8.9% of tasks can be totally automated by AI. In fact, more than 80% of communications can be enhanced by AI, describing it as ‘a transformation sweet spot where human judgment and machine output reinforce each other's strengths’.

The report concludes: ‘Its dual capacity for augmentation and supervised autonomy gives comms an edge in turning GenAI potential into enterprise value.’

While this should all make for happy reading for communications professionals, a word of warning from an Ipsos Reputation Council member for those who have yet to get their heads around AI. ‘AI is not coming to take your job; a person who knows how to use AI well is coming to take your job.’

While 57% of members claim to use it daily, just 43% of members feel they use AI meaningfully. It’s a lost opportunity, according to the report, and a lost job, if they don’t step up.

Corporate Affairs Summit London: 8 October 2025

British Library: 9.30am to 5pm

We are just sorting out the last few panelists, but the programme for our third Corporate Affairs Summit is effectively complete, and will go live shortly. But it is a great endorsement that almost 150 senior in-house comms professionals have already booked, sight unseen, as a result of our past events. Thank you!

What can you expect?

• There will be a focus on the role of corporate affairs today - with first glimpse of the Ithaca Benchmarking Study, the most authoritative review of UK large, listed company corporate affairs functions conducted in the last five years.

• With concerns rising about the demotion of corporate affairs, we’ll be chatting to leading professionals on how they prove the value of the function to the board.

• Can we trust the case for trust? A provocative look at the claim that rebuilding trust leads to commercial success.

• What are the new frontiers of reputation risk? And how do you mitigate these?

• Making belief tangible: how sustainability and reputation become strategic capital in a polarised world

• With five generations in the workforce, how can you build and maintain a culture that meets all their needs?

• Can you identify all your stakeholders? Do you understand all their needs? Can you spot which ones influence your reputation? How can companies and organisations adapt and thrive in order to effectively convey their messages?  

• A fireside chat with Charlotte Cool, director of corporate affairs at Post Office, on how the organisation is rebuilding its reputation

• And Simon Lewis, one half of the When It Hits the Fan podcast, will be sharing his wisdom. Or at least, chatting to me!

To reserve your seat for just £50, just click this link https://buytickets.at/corporateaffairssummit/1734090

NB: Other Summits may be available (some even on the same day 😉) but I doubt any will prove as useful and thought-provoking for your roles today.

Strategic silences

When I first pondered why the role of corporate affairs seems to be getting de-prioritised, particularly in FTSE 100 companies, it was suggested that part of the reason was that CEOs were entering a period of quietness.

Having publicly embraced several social stances in the wake of George Floyd’s murder and the invasion of Ukraine, the increasing polarisation of society, a fear of a Trump-related backlash coupled with a feeling that traditional media outlets were less interested by stories than scandals, CEOs were in retreat.

The latest Ipsos Reputation Council Report describes it as ‘the rise in strategic silence’, where just one in five of its members now will speak out on potentially divisive issues, while a third prefer to stay silent.

And this week in Semafor, GSK CEO Dame Emma Walmsley effectively downplayed the importance of external communications today. In an interview with my old colleague Andrew Edgecliffe-Johnson, Semafor’s CEO editor, Walmsley explained that, following her appointment, she named ‘trust’ as one of her three priorities.

She added: ‘We have to recognise that shouting ‘trust us’, as a profit-generating public company, is not the way to [change minds]. We have to go step by step, stakeholder by stakeholder, understand where people’s fears and frustrations are coming from.’ But in GSK’s stakeholder mapping, the media is not a priority. ‘I think you make a real mistake as a CEO if you worry more about your communication than you do about the delivery of the innovation that’s the core of our purpose,’ she said.

If Walmsley focuses her attention on the impact that GSK’s innovation – another priority – has on patients, then, she added, ‘you have to trust that the communication will follow’.

ODDS & SODS

Will return next week… along with my vision! 👀Hopefully.