Silence or strategy? Corporate communications in an age of uncertainty

March isn’t a normal month in which to take stock of the corporate communications landscape. But these are not normal times.

There has never been a moment when geopolitics has so directly affected digital corporate communications teams – and that is saying something given the seismic jolts of Covid and the Black Lives Matter movement less than five years ago.

Scott Payton made some 2025 predictions in December, which are already materialising. But I’m sure Scott would agree that it is the pace of these developments, largely driven by the unpredictability of the new US government and world events at large, which has surprised us all.

“An imminent proliferation of corporate communications crises is by no means certain – but it is more likely”, he wrote; you don’t need us to tell you this has come to pass, and then some. In particular, the reversal of Diversity, Equity and Inclusion (DEI) initiatives, and also of climate policies, has been enacted so swifty and decisively that many companies have been understandably caught off guard. The only certainty is that there will be more unpredictability.

This has accelerated a trend of retreat by companies from overt positions on the issues du jour; it is now, for many organisations, not so much a case of getting your head below the parapet, but rather a full-scale withdrawal.

2020, with its rush to embrace racial and climate justice, seems a long time ago. Corporate digital channels were of course at the forefront back then given we couldn’t communicate in person; and they are again in this time of permacrisis, precisely because audiences have learned that those channels are where a company will set out the truth about its stances.

As we and many others have said in the last couple of years, the demand for authentic messaging on the issues that matter is only increasing in the age of mis- and disinformation. Crucially, the issues that matter are no longer just being defined by your company; they are now being defined by geopolitics and audiences themselves, which is why listening to those audiences is so important.

But in many cases, companies are simply staying silent, or quietly removing content about wider issues and initiatives. If they are saying anything, it is via internal memos or select events; despite the fact there is no longer a meaningful distinction between internal and external communications, as articles like this one from Axios demonstrate.

Of course, the decision as to whether your company is willing to have material on its digital channels which may well attract criticism – from any side - is a complex one, that the communications team may not even be in full control of in these extraordinarily charged and fractious times.  In the eye of the storm, you may have no option other than to shelter quietly.

There can be a temptation to retreat from listening as well as communicating at these moments – but only by listening to your audiences can you shape a communications strategy to navigate the current, and as yet unknown, crises. So now is the time to make sure you have the tools in place to do that listening – across your website and social channels, and more widely too – so that when it is time to communicate, you can do it with understanding and confidence.