About the paper
The paper examines how Chief Corporate Affairs Officers and Chief Communications Officers are adapting to political volatility, cultural complexity, economic uncertainty, and AI-enabled communications work.
It is an original qualitative research report based on semi-structured, in-depth interviews with CCOs and CCAOs from Fortune 1000 companies, conducted over two months in early 2025; the exact number of participants is not clearly specified in the report.
The geographic scope includes both U.S.-based and European corporate affairs leaders.
Length: 8 pages
More information / download:
https://webershandwick.com/news/new-ccao-and-cco-mandate-navigating-a-new-era-of-corporate-leadership
Core Insights
1. What is the central argument of the report?
The report argues that the corporate affairs and communications function has not retreated in importance as companies have pulled back from the more visible social-issue positioning of the early 2020s. Instead, CCAOs and CCOs have become less publicly visible but more strategically central inside the enterprise.
The core claim is that corporate affairs leaders are now expected to help companies navigate a volatile intersection of business, politics, culture, stakeholder expectations, employee sentiment, and reputation risk. Their mandate is no longer simply to explain corporate decisions after the fact. They are increasingly expected to help shape those decisions before they are made.
The report frames this as a shift from communications as a reactive function to corporate affairs as a source of enterprise foresight. The ideal corporate affairs function, according to the report, helps leaders anticipate risk, understand stakeholder dynamics, interpret political and cultural signals, and protect the company’s licence to operate.
2. How is the CCAO/CCO role changing in relation to business strategy?
The report’s first major theme is that corporate affairs leaders are becoming proactive business partners. Their value increasingly lies in their ability to translate political, regulatory, cultural, and stakeholder signals into business implications.
This means they are not only advising on messages, positioning, or crisis response. They are helping business leaders understand where external pressures may require changes to products, operations, stakeholder engagement, or risk management. One example in the report describes a policy-related issue around a consumer product where corporate affairs brought data to the business, prompting an eight-week sprint that helped resolve product issues and changed the relationship between corporate affairs and the product leader.
The report presents corporate affairs leaders as “orchestrators” across functions. Because they sit close to the CEO agenda and have an enterprise-wide view, they can connect information from legal, policy, HR, product, finance, operations, communications, and external stakeholders. Their strategic value comes from synthesising those signals into business intelligence.
The practical recommendation is to build formal cross-functional intelligence networks and develop ways to quantify external risk in financial terms. In other words, corporate affairs must be able to speak the language of business impact, not only the language of reputation.
3. Why does political complexity matter so much in the report?
Political volatility is one of the report’s defining conditions. The authors locate the research in the early 2025 U.S. context, following Donald Trump’s second inauguration and first 100 days in office. The report says companies are operating in a climate shaped by executive orders, economic volatility, hyper-partisanship, and sudden political attention.
The report argues that this has forced corporate affairs leaders to rethink public engagement. Companies are moving away from broad social activism and towards brand protection, business-aligned issue engagement, and risk management. The task is no longer simply “Should we speak out?” but “Where does engagement serve the business, where does silence reduce risk, and where is private dialogue more effective than public positioning?”
One especially important idea is the “audience of one” problem: the risk that a single powerful political figure can draw attention to a company and create operational, reputational, or regulatory consequences. Corporate affairs leaders are therefore developing scenario plans, rapid-response frameworks, and more cautious approaches to political communication.
This also changes the advisory role of corporate affairs. The report suggests that CCAOs and CCOs are becoming voices of restraint and judgement within executive teams, helping leaders distinguish between noise, bargaining tactics, genuine risk, and issues that require action.
4. How does the report redefine crisis and reputation management?
The report argues that crisis management is no longer an exceptional capability. It has become a baseline expectation. In a “permacrisis” environment, corporate affairs teams must apply crisis tools continuously, not only when a discrete crisis breaks out.
This changes the role in two ways. First, crisis work now extends beyond media response. Corporate affairs teams are expected to help solve the underlying problem, coordinate across business functions, and prevent issues from escalating. Secondly, the report says corporate affairs leaders must make the financial case for proactive reputation management.
One quoted example describes a corporate affairs leader asking for $2.5 million for a campaign during a contentious situation and using analysis to show that the potential return was 12 times the investment. The point is that reputation work becomes more credible in the C-suite when it is connected to profit protection, revenue risk, regulatory exposure, or operational continuity.
The implication is that corporate affairs must move from “the team that handles crises” to “the function that helps prevent avoidable business risk”. The report recommends crisis prevention scoring, financial modelling of reputational risk, and closer collaboration with finance and analytics partners.
5. What does the report say about employees and AI as part of the new mandate?
The report treats employee communication as a continuing priority, but one that has become more delicate. Employees are described as one of the most important stakeholder groups, especially during uncertainty. At the same time, internal communication now has to navigate political polarisation, regulatory sensitivity, DEI-related scrutiny, and the risk that different employee groups may interpret corporate messages very differently.
The report therefore points to a more cautious, “sanitised” form of transparency. Companies may still communicate openly, but in ways designed to avoid partisan signalling or unnecessary exposure. The authors recommend mapping internal stakeholder intersections and using tools such as message testing to understand differences within the employee base.
AI is presented as a practical accelerator for the corporate affairs function. The report says AI is being used for tasks such as preparing Q&As, analysing large volumes of stakeholder content, vetting influencers, monitoring media and misinformation, supporting strategic planning, and improving data analysis. Rather than presenting AI mainly as a replacement threat, the report frames it as a way to free communications professionals from routine work and move them towards more strategic advisory roles.
However, the report also makes clear that AI adoption is a change-management issue. Teams need clarity on what should remain human-led, what can be AI-assisted, and what ethical guardrails are needed around bias, accuracy, and appropriate use.
Overall conclusion
The report’s main message is that the CCAO/CCO mandate is expanding from communications execution to enterprise-level judgement. Corporate affairs leaders are being asked to help companies interpret volatility, anticipate risk, advise CEOs, manage political exposure, support employees, use AI responsibly, and convert stakeholder intelligence into business decisions.
Its most important contribution is the framing of corporate affairs as a foresight function. Its main limitation is methodological: while the qualitative design is described in some detail, the report does not clearly specify the number of interviewees, which makes it harder to judge the breadth of the evidence base.