Tag: corporate communication

About the paper

The paper is a mixed-methods corporate communications study from Edelman, combining a quantitative survey with qualitative interviews to assess how the communications function is evolving after the pandemic.

The report states that it surveyed 218 C-level communications leaders in June 2023 and conducted 20+ in-depth interviews in July and August 2023, with respondents drawn from U.S.-based Fortune 500 and Forbes Global 1000 organisations; the sample is therefore primarily U.S.-focused, even though many of the companies have national, multinational, or global reach.

Length: 30 pages

More information / download:
https://www.edelman.com/2023-future-of-corporate-comms

Core Insights

1. How does the report argue that the role of corporate communications has changed in recent years?

The report’s central argument is that corporate communications has moved from being a mainly executional support function to becoming a strategic leadership function. Edelman presents this as a post-pandemic shift: communications leaders are no longer merely helping to deliver decisions once taken, but are increasingly involved in shaping enterprise decisions before they are finalised.

The report says this shift is visible both in perception and in practice. Half of CCOs now see themselves as strategic advisers to business leaders, up from just over a third in 2021, while only 10% still feel stuck in a cost-centre position, down from 30% two years earlier. It also says that 64% are brought into major business decisions when the decision path is still tentative, compared with only 9% who are consulted after decisions have already been made.

In other words, the function is portrayed as operating at the intersection of value creation and risk mitigation. Communications is not just reacting to reputational threats; it is being expected to anticipate them, interpret stakeholder expectations, and influence strategy across the enterprise. That is the report’s strongest framing of the profession’s future.

2. What evidence does the report provide that communications leaders are under growing pressure, even as their strategic status rises?

A key tension in the report is that greater influence has come with greater pressure, but not necessarily with matching support. The report says nearly 80% of communications leaders feel their role is more demanding than it was 12 months earlier, and 77% say their CEO demands more of them than a year ago. It also notes that CCOs spend nearly one-fifth of their time counselling the CEO on non-communications matters, which underlines how far the remit has stretched.

At the same time, resources are not keeping pace. The report says 44% of communications leaders do not believe their CEO understands the resources needed to shape enterprise decision-making or execute communications programmes successfully. Budget expectations have also softened: 40% expect their budgets to increase, compared with more than half in 2021, while 28% expect flat budgets and 30% expect moderate cuts.

This matters because the report treats communications as a function being asked to do more with uncertain backing. It is expected to cover an expanding range of stakeholders, manage a broader mandate, and prove business value more clearly, yet it still struggles to secure stable investment. One of the report’s recurring assumptions is that communications still has not fully solved the challenge of linking its work to measurable business outcomes.

3. Why does the report place so much emphasis on data, technology, and organisational structure?

The report argues that modern communications can no longer rely mainly on instinct, media experience, or message craft. Instead, it says an advanced communications function must be built around actionable data: stakeholder signals, behavioural insights, monitoring, analytics, and social listening. This is presented as essential because senior leadership now expects communications to bring evidence-based insight into decision-making, not just narrative support.

That logic also drives the report’s discussion of structure. Edelman says the proportion of leaders reporting a centralised communications structure has grown sharply since 2021, because centralisation helps organisations gather intelligence more holistically, reduce silos, and respond to risk more consistently. On that basis, the report implies that organisational design is not a side issue; it is part of how communications earns strategic credibility.

Technology sits within the same argument. The report says 56% believe AI is already affecting their business, and 44% say they are investing more heavily in communications technology than the year before. But it does not present technology as a simple productivity win. It also highlights integration problems, rapid change, and ongoing concerns around privacy, policy, and ethics. The report’s perspective is quite clear here: tools matter, but their value depends on interpretation, application, and the ability of the function to use data intelligently.

4. How does the report explain the growing importance of employees and corporate purpose in communications?

One of the report’s most important arguments is that reputation now begins inside the organisation. Employees are presented as the most consequential stakeholder group because they are closest to value creation, can advocate for or against the company, and shape how external stakeholders perceive the business. On the chart on page 17, employees are shown as the stakeholder group putting the most pressure on organisations to act on social issues, ahead of investors, NGOs, regulators, media, and consumers.

The report also stresses that “employees” are not a single, uniform audience. It points to a five-generation workforce, differing expectations about work, and rising tension between leadership and younger workers, especially Gen Z. As a result, communications is increasingly held accountable for outcomes such as employee engagement, employer brand, retention, and DEI. In fact, the report says 60% expect employee engagement to be the single most important outcome their function must deliver over the next two years.

Corporate purpose is then positioned as the framework that helps organisations navigate this more complex internal environment. The report says communications teams are heavily involved in clearly communicating purpose, fostering meaning among employees, and, in some cases, ensuring purpose shapes strategy itself. So purpose is not treated here as branding language alone; it is framed as a practical decision-making compass and a guardrail for when companies should act on social or socioeconomic issues.

5. What does the report suggest will define the future agenda for corporate communications?

The future agenda, according to the report, will be defined by three overlapping pressures: technology and AI, ESG and sustainability politics, and geopolitical volatility. On AI, the report suggests communicators must help build the business case for adoption while understanding the operational and ethical risks. On ESG, it argues that despite political backlash, especially in the U.S., integration of ESG into communications strategy remains strong, with 76% saying ESG is mostly or fully integrated.

On geopolitics, the report is especially forward-looking. It argues that elections, polarisation, disinformation, labour activism, and broader geopolitical instability will all have growing reputational and business consequences. That is why it repeatedly calls for stronger cross-functional working, especially with sustainability, investor relations, HR, legal, and government affairs.

The broader conclusion is that tomorrow’s CCO will have to be a cross-enterprise integrator: someone who can read stakeholder dynamics, translate them into business implications, and help the organisation act with clarity and credibility. The report assumes that winning trust, internally and externally, will be the defining competitive task for communications. But it also implies that success will depend on whether the function can prove value, secure resources, and combine judgement with data more effectively than in the past.

About the paper

The report examines how the corporate communications function is evolving from a transactional support role into a more strategic business partner, focusing on priorities, structures, capabilities, investment, and reporting lines.

It is a mixed-methods original research report based on a quantitative survey of 200 participants fielded in December 2020 and January 2021, plus 35+ in-depth interviews with senior communications leaders from participating U.S.-based organisations.

The dataset is globally distributed but heavily North America-led, with survey geographies reported as North America (85%), EMEA (7%), APAC (4%), and Latin America (4%); interview participants were drawn from U.S.-based organisations.

Length: 76 pages

More information / download:
https://www.edelman.com/expertise/commstech/2021-Future-of-Corporate-Comms-Research

Core Insights

1. What is the central argument of the report about the future role of corporate communications?

The report’s core argument is that corporate communications is moving up the strategic continuum, from being treated as a cost centre or executional service provider to becoming a value-generating business partner. Edelman argues that external disruption, especially the pandemic, social issues, business transformation, and a more complex stakeholder environment, has increased the strategic importance of communications inside organisations. The report presents this not as a marginal shift, but as a structural change in what senior communicators are expected to do.

A major theme is that communications is no longer just about media relations, messaging, and storytelling. Instead, the function is increasingly expected to help shape decisions on risk, workforce issues, reputation, transformation, social purpose, and stakeholder trust. The report says this has brought communicators closer to CEOs, boards, and the C-suite, with 46% now reporting to the CEO versus 34% in 2014, and 77% saying perceptions of communications as a strategic business driver changed within their organisation during 2020.

At the same time, the report is careful not to suggest that this evolution is complete. It repeatedly notes that progress is uneven. Some organisations still see communications in largely reactive or transactional terms, and maturity varies by industry, geography, and leadership culture. So the report’s argument is both optimistic and cautionary: the opportunity is real, but it has to be claimed and proved.

2. What forces are driving this shift in corporate communications?

The report identifies several forces pushing communications into a more strategic role. COVID-19 is presented as the immediate accelerator. It increased the visibility and relevance of communications, especially around employee engagement, business continuity, internal alignment, and executive decision-making. More than half of respondents said COVID-19 shifted the communications focus and demand on their function, with employee communications emerging as the most strongly affected area.

Beyond the pandemic, the report highlights business transformation as the most important long-term driver, cited by 77% of respondents, followed by social issues at 73%, customer or consumer demand shifts at 56%, and talent at 38%. This matters because it frames communications not as a function reacting to one crisis, but as one increasingly embedded in permanent organisational change. Communicators are being pulled into transformation programmes, social issue response, workforce strategy, and stakeholder trust management.

The report also stresses the importance of the changing media and information ecosystem. Social media, digital channels, and faster news cycles have altered how organisations reach stakeholders and how quickly reputational issues can escalate. That has expanded the role of communications into digital, content, creative, analytics, and more direct coordination with marketing. In other words, the environment has become too fast, fragmented, and high-stakes for communications to remain a back-end support function.

3. How does the report say the communications function itself needs to change in order to meet these expectations?

The report argues that strategic credibility starts inside the function. Communications teams need to change how they think about themselves, how they organise, and what capabilities they prioritise. The report contrasts an older model built around reactive storytelling and service delivery with a newer model based on strategic planning, business acumen, insights, measurable outcomes, and multidisciplinary collaboration.

A recurring theme is that the modern function must be agile, multidisciplinary, and insights-driven. Teams can no longer rely only on classic PR strengths such as writing, media contacts, and message development. They now need broader capability across employee communications, risk and crisis, brand and corporate positioning, change communications, digital, creative, data, and analytics. The report explicitly describes the ideal talent profile as “T-shaped”: people with deep expertise in one area, but enough breadth to work across multiple strategic contexts.

The report also argues that relationship-building with senior leadership is essential. Functions that are seen as more strategic have typically earned closer CEO and C-suite access, often by combining stronger counsel with better evidence of impact. It recommends integrated strategic planning, clearer governance, clearer roles, and more consultative team behaviour. The implication is that structural change alone is not enough. A communications team only becomes strategic when it shows business understanding, connects its work to organisational goals, and consistently executes at a high level.

4. What does the report reveal about investment priorities, technology, and capability gaps?

One of the clearest findings is that expectations are rising faster than resources. The report says communicators are being asked to do more, across more areas, with stronger proof of business value, but many are not receiving proportional budget increases. It notes that only 6% of CCOs expected a budget increase of 15% or more, while 45% anticipated a budget decrease or no change in the coming year. Later benchmarking pages show a similar tension, with 54% expecting some increase but 46% expecting budgets to stay flat or decline.

Within that constrained environment, CommsTech emerges as the headline investment priority. The report defines this as the tools, technology, and data that allow communicators to target, measure, and shape perceptions and behaviour. Seventy percent said CommsTech was a top investment area, and the report positions it as central to proving ROI and connecting communications work to business results. But it also shows that adoption is still immature: 44% report baseline media-impression measurement, yet only 30% map revenue growth back to communications activity.

The report is especially useful in showing why adoption is slow. Barriers include difficulty justifying large tech investments, weak support from CEOs or business leaders, IT ownership conflicts, poor collaboration with marketing and sales, and internal team struggles to adopt digital tools and analytics. So the report is not simply making a pro-technology argument. It is saying that technology only matters if organisations also invest in skills, processes, governance, and data fluency. Capability gaps in change communications, analytics, and ESG are also singled out as emerging needs.

5. What are the main implications and conclusions for communications leaders and organisations?

The report’s main conclusion is that this is a pivotal moment for the communications profession. The external environment has created an opening for communications leaders to claim a more central role in business strategy, but doing so requires deliberate change. Communicators must demonstrate business acumen, link activity to outcomes, invest in specialist capability, and speak the language of strategy, ROI, and performance. In the report’s framing, the opportunity will not convert automatically into influence. It has to be operationalised.

For organisations and CEOs, the implication is equally strong. If they want communications to function as a true strategic partner, they need to bring it into decisions earlier, provide closer access to leadership, resource it properly, and recognise reputation, trust, employee engagement, and stakeholder alignment as business-critical issues rather than peripheral concerns. The report even suggests that some companies are beginning to elevate reputation into shared business goals and leadership accountability.

The report’s final perspective is practical rather than theoretical. Across its “playbook” sections, it repeatedly returns to six or seven concrete ideas: have a clear vision for the function, align communications with business strategy, combine planning with insight, improve governance and process, build multidisciplinary teams, invest in people and specialist skills, and prove impact through measurement. That makes the report less a prediction document than a management guide for how communicators can turn heightened relevance into durable strategic authority.