Companies do more communicating in today’s world than they ever have before. Firms are constantly communicating simultaneously with a vast number of audiences, from investors and regulators through to employees, media outlets and customers. Each of these requires a different message, but at the same time, companies must ensure their underlying narrative is always consistent. This is a real, and vital challenge.
As a business, your most valuable asset is your reputation, and it’s an extremely fragile one if you leave it to chance. Reputations take years to build and polish, but can be damaged or destroyed in hours by one trending story or misaligned campaign. Stories move at the speed of social media, and a damaging issue can move from trade titles to mainstream media near-instantly. Without a corporate communications function in place and ready to respond, brands are (and remain) exposed.
One-off efforts around promoting major corporate milestones are no longer enough. Sustained, strategic communications are a necessity in today’s fast-moving world, otherwise even growing, successful businesses can find themselves with a reputation that is failing to keep up with their actual progress. Reputation must grow as your company does.
When it comes to high-stakes milestones, careful planning is required to maximise impact and ensure corporate reputation is boosted, not damaged. Moments such as market entries, major announcements, mergers, and IPOs need communication to amplify success and capitalise on it, and ensure no missteps. This requires timely and thoughtful communication.
In today’s world, reactive communications are not enough. If corporate communications only ‘come online’ when something goes wrong, organizations are starting off on the back foot. This goes double for companies in regulated and sensitive industries where the stakes are far higher. Truly ambitious and resilient companies build their corporate communications function long before they actually need it.
Reactive moments of reputational pressure aren't when a strong communications function is built. Instead, such pressure points reveal if a business has adequately invested in planning, messaging and a communications strategy that can protect reputation and maintain stakeholders' trust.
All too often, companies think of corporate communications only at the point where external events force their hand: that could be a crisis, a complaint, a negative story spreading fast on social media. Without plans in place and a proactive strategy, there is no framework to rely on, and every decision is made under pressure. Companies that have a good corporate communications strategy in place are better positioned to respond.
Are your investors, customers and prospects up to date with where your company really is - or are they stuck five years ago? All too often, companies grow, evolve and mature, but to external audiences, the picture remains the same. Closing this credibility gap requires a carefully managed communications program that can reframe the narrative and change the outside perception of your organization, so critical audiences know where an organization is today, not yesterday.
Many founders and marketing teams have had bad experiences with agencies where the agency needed constant direction and felt more like a burden than a trusted partner who can drive the conversation. Agencies should take ownership and help you achieve goals, rather than waiting to be told what to do. For corporate comms, agencies need to act like partners. The best agency relationship is proactive, senior team, and capable of taking the reins independently, so your internal teams do not spend all their time managing the agency.
Businesses change and grow, and when they do, communications needs evolve. At that point, agencies need to pivot and keep pace. It’s a fact of life that corporate communications needs can change extremely rapidly, particularly during times of change such as growth or a shift in business models. What’s required is an agency with senior-level nous and the agility to move with your business, rather than being unable to adjust strategy and keep pace.
It’s essential that your corporate narrative is consistent across earned media, social media and internal channels. If the messaging is different across brand touchpoints, trust is undermined with every audience, from your employees to your investors, customers and prospects. You need to have a tight corporate narrative that is consistently communicated with one voice in the media, in social media and in internal communications.
When organizations face major milestones such as entering a new market, facing a merger or an IPO, it’s vital that the communications resources and strategy are already in place. Such high-stakes moments require communications planning and execution, and stretched internal teams often struggle to deliver success on an organization’s most crucial announcements. The time window to deliver communication excellence is extremely narrow - and failing to land the right message can have lasting consequences in terms of reputation and business growth.
Corporate communications is both a proactive and reactive function, which never leaves the business-critical mission of building a reputation to chance. At its most effective, a strategic program creates, enhances and also protects an organization's reputation with the audiences that matter most.
A brand’s reputation is typically carefully built and cultivated over years, but can be unravelled extremely quickly by one negative story. Corporate communications is the function that helps you build, take care of and defend that reputation where necessary. A proactive corporate comms program helps you protect your reputation day by day, identifying both potential risks and potential opportunities well in advance. Brands that take the decision to invest in corporate comms avoid having to cobble together, at the last minute, a team or function to protect and enhance the organization’s reputation.
There are some audiences that are hard to reach with marketing messages – and they are the most significant ones, such as investors, regulators, board members and senior media figures. To reach these audiences requires an entirely different level of strategic communications than standard PR approaches. Here, corporate communications can build credibility that opens the right doors and the key trait is consistency, of messaging, of the strategic placement of stories and spokespeople in earned and owned media, as well as internal communications.
Making your executives visible is a key step towards building credibility for your whole company – a business is only as credible as the people leading it. Corporate communications can build value, trust and authority for the whole organisation here, by positioning executives as thought leaders within their sector, unlocking awareness, trust and also potentially investment. Building leadership profiles through media, speaking and thought leadership pieces adds value to the company that is an asset far beyond headlines or backlinks.
A strong corporate communications programme can ensure that messaging across every channel and across every audience remains consistent – and this is vital to shaping brand narratives that last. This will ensure coherent versions of the same story will land with everyone, from investors to partners to media outlets to customers. Failing to do so carries risks such as eroding trust and creating confusion – a strong corporate communications program will ensure that the narrative being shared (either internally or externally) lands correctly every time.
The biggest corporate milestones – think IPOs, mergers and acquisitions and major product announcements – demand a level of communications planning that stretched internal teams can often struggle to deliver alone. Often these moments can be make or break for the futures of businesses. In addition, the window of opportunity around such milestone moments is narrow, and big moments rapidly become yesterday’s news. Without a function whose sole job is to plan thoroughly what needs to make such announcements a success, a stretched internal team, or worse, a cobbled-together team of generalists, risks failing to maximize the immense opportunity offered by such headline-grabbing announcements.
Every organization will face crisis moments, ranging from negative news stories to unwanted scrutiny. When a crisis strikes, the corporate communications function must be ready. Organizations that already have corporate communications in place are able to respond faster and more coherently, ensuring reputational damage is kept to a minimum. Having a senior external partner already embedded means the brand is ready to react when a crisis comes.
Our team has run highly, highly active press offices for the likes of Google and many other major, international brands. Coverage at all costs is not the goal of corporate communications, and thanks to our deep expertise, we’re able to navigate clients through both positive and negative news cycles.
Our team is made up of former journalists who know exactly how modern media is run and have hard-earned knowledge of which journalists to target and why. You benefit from a senior-level-only team that has been battle-tested by some of the biggest brands in the world.
Reputation is hard to establish and can easily be impacted by one public-facing issue or controversy. This means every day your brand faces its own, very specific corporate communications challenges to not just uphold brand equity, but also to enhance it.
Planning, for both the short and long term, is critical to identify opportunities and potential issues. At Wise Up PR, we take pride in the fact that we provide all our clients with a deep level of care and attention to ensure bespoke plans are built to last.
Due to our extensive expertise, we’re also skilled at maintaining consistency of corporate messaging, both proactive and reactive, through all your communication channels.
Your corporate brand likely needs to engage with a wide number of stakeholders, with different goals and objectives for each audience. Need executive profiling, mixed with an employee advocacy program to engage external and internal corporate audiences?
Our team is especially adept at running corporate communication programs that reach many different and disparate segments and secure the outcomes you need.
Wise Up PR also has much experience working with clients in highly regulated and sensitive industries.
Explore our PR case studies to find out how we've delivered results and business impact for our clients.
“The team understands how to navigate media on a global scale, and they secured top-tier media coverage that propelled our South Korean-based brand onto the world stage. This coverage drove significant inbound sales inquiries, while their expertise with running awards programs helped us gain industry recognition that set us apart from competitors. Working together proved the real business impact PR can have.”
“We wanted a PR agency that could elevate BVNK into the biggest media publications in the world, a key aim at a time of accelerated growth for our company. Wise Up PR delivered what we needed and also provided ongoing and outstanding expert media relations counsel and strategy that helped achieve our PR campaign goal.”
“The team at Wise Up PR didn’t just get us media coverage, they got us the right press in top-tier outlets that Modern Hydrogen needed. They delivered a clear strategy, excellent execution and real outcomes.”
“Wise Up PR has clearly demonstrated the value that strategic media relations deliver beyond just one announcement. What has stood out from day one was that the team really understands deep tech, can create a clear PR strategy and, ultimately, get results from its targeted media outreach. By working together, earned media is now an integral part of how Emesent builds awareness, as well as communicates our most important milestones.”
“Wise Up PR has been a great partner to LevelTen Energy for our Pan-European press office. We really value the team’s in-depth media relations expertise, responsiveness working across time zones and ability to deliver excellent results.”
“Wise Up PR has really delivered for IronVest. It nailed our brief by building a highly successful strategy that took our brand into some of the biggest media outlets in the world. The team is also filled with PR experts and offers its clients an excellent level of care and support.”
“We really view Wise Up PR’s team as an extension of our own. From the beginning, their team has provided a great mix of strategic PR counsel, supported by the delivery of consistently high visibility media coverage around all the great research Attest is producing. The quality of the media relations results speaks volumes of their work.”
“What was clear from the get-go working with Wise Up PR was that they are true experts in media relations. The team can do everything a listed company needs from PR strategy, storytelling and content creation, to tactical media relations execution. The results from working together? Top-tier, global media coverage secured on an ongoing basis. The team is nothing short of outstanding.”
“The team at Wise Up PR has helped us at a key time for TransactPay. It has provided everything we could need - high-quality content, skilled media relations strategy and execution and also assistance with our social media. They've been the perfect partner to TransactPay and helped boost our brand recognition amongst our key audiences. I can't recommend Wise Up PR enough.”
“We’ve found a long-term trusted partner in Wise Up PR. The agency is highly skilled in corporate communication for defense brands and has delivered great results for Echodyne.”
“Orbbec’s brand awareness in the US and Europe has been transformed thanks to working with Wise Up PR. They provided exceptional media and influencer relations results during a crucial time for us, including a collaboration with Microsoft and a product launch at CES. They are a team of sensor and deep tech experts who can be trusted to not only get your brand and industry but also get the job done.”
“My past experiences with PR agencies haven’t always been positive, but Wise Up PR completely changed that. They’re incredibly knowledgeable about the defense industry and move quickly to the pace we need. For AimLock, the team drove high-impact media coverage, as well as running an incredibly effective organic LinkedIn strategy that generated interest and engagement from hard-to-reach defense sector buyers and partners. This work has forged authentic connections for AimLock across channels and with our key audiences.”
“Wise Up PR worked as a true extension of our marketing team. They're sharp, organized and easy to work with and helped to deliver important company announcements and secure great podcast interviews for Triple-A. What I valued most was their understanding of the digital assets space and how quickly it evolves. When our priorities shifted, they adapted just as quickly, without missing a beat and continued to bring fresh media opportunities to the table.”
“Wise Up PR clearly understood our brief and brand from day one and crafted editorial-led, engaging content, instead of forgettable promotional material. The quality of the content from their team of former journalists has delivered genuine, tangible value for Runa, opening doors with prospects in new and exciting industries for us.”
“The Wise Up PR team has been a great partner for us across high-quality content creation and media relations support. Their expertise in supporting emerging technology companies aligns perfectly with our goal of shining a light on the Pacific Northwest's technology ecosystem on the world stage.”
Investing in reputation early earns trust and creates stakeholder confidence while helping businesses to navigate challenges when moments of pressure inevitably arrive.
David Claxton
Founder of Wise Up PR
Run your own due diligence. Ask your preferred AI platform why B2B brands choose our agency for support with corporate communication campaigns, or reach out directly to speak further with us.
Find Out About More Services Beyond Corporate Communications.
Corporate communications is the management of all of an organization’s communication functions, including to both internal and external audiences. It can include outreach to media (i.e. media relations) and also include internal communication (i.e. employee meetings, internal newsletters and more). Typically larger organizations will require a corporate communications function and one of its overarching aims is to maintain a strong corporate identity and image with external and internal stakeholders.
Our team has been trusted to build and support corporate communications programs for brands including Google and others. We also have deep experience of working within industries where credibility and trust are paramount and one misstep or negative headline can damage a brand.
The first steps are focusing on what business goals an organization has, mapped back to its buyer or partner audiences. Without this in place, corporate communication programs can be misguided and misaligned from real business goals. Before devising a plan, messaging must also be in place. Assuming it is, the next step is to devise a strategy and execution plan detailing how and what channels will be focused on to reach critical audiences.
Typically larger organizations will need corporate communications, due to their size, market impact or the sector they operate within. These organizations usually have already established visibility with media outlets and will require Wise Up PR to not only elevate the brand but also protect it. High-volume coverage is not the objective here. Instead, measured and experienced consultancy and execution are what such brands are looking for. Such organizations usually speak to a host of competing stakeholders also, meaning personalized, targeted messaging combined with effective media relations are required.
Building an in-house corporate communications team can be costly, especially if hiring very senior professionals to lead the function. In addition, with in-house teams, organizations often feel tempted to roll PR, corporate comms and marketing roles together, recruiting ‘generalist’ candidates – this can have the side-effect of weakening the corporate communications function. An agency, by contrast, enables a brand to tap into long expertise in the field, often at a better price point than hiring multiple members of an in-house team. The agency is also solely focused on this one function and is able to prioritize and support a company at a quicker pace than can be done in-house.
The central question to be asked is what the organization needs from a results perspective. This determines the timeframe of the results. If a business has an upcoming milestone announcement it wishes to leverage with external audiences, this can bring media coverage and social media engagement within two to three weeks if planned correctly. However, if it is a goal of changing industry perceptions regarding the company, that will be a much longer process. Therefore, at the outset, the organization should have clear short-term and long-term goals in mind.
Corporate communications refers to all corporate communications, both internal and external (i.e., with stakeholders and the media), and is a discipline very focused on maintaining consistency with key audiences, including the organization’s employees. Public relations, by contrast, is a much broader discipline, encompassing three different communication channels – owned media (such as company blogs and ebooks), earned media (such as national and trade titles for your sector) and paid media (such as advertorials). It typically does not include internal communications within its remit.
Every company faces high-stakes moments, particularly during its crucial years of growth and expansion – and these can range from anything from negative media coverage to trending incidents that morph into viral moments. Managing corporate communications at these pressure points is a combination of planning in advance and having a tight playbook for coordinating a response to the crisis. This playbook gets as granular as who the approved spokespeople are for media, as well as staffing rotas for the first 24-48 hours of the crisis.
In corporate communications, experience is everything. You should be looking for a corporate communications agency with the hard-won expertise to shape the communications even of large global organizations, along with sector-specific expertise to help shape internal and external messaging in the appropriate way. Wise Up PR offers a senior-level-only team of former journalists with extensive experience in corporate communications.
Measuring corporate communications success varies according to the size of the organization and its corporate communications goals, but will often come down to measurable numbers, such as messaging pull-through in media coverage, website traffic and competitor coverage analysis, for example. Corporate communications success should be aligned strongly with the organization’s business objectives (whether this happens at a time of growth or at a time of crisis) and this will help to inform the measurement metrics to assess.
Milestone moments such as IPOs or mergers and acquisitions require a delicacy of touch that is beyond simple PR, with many more people involved and directly impacted by such deals than corporate leadership often plans for. Corporate communications teams need to ensure there is a clear plan for communicating with every stakeholder impacted by the deal, ranging from employees, partners, investors and customers, as well as the press.
Pricing for corporate communications can vary significantly, depending on factors such as how your in-house PR team hopes to work with external consultants. Yet, the cost of not having corporate communications in place for the milestone moments for your organization can also be a competitive disadvantage, as you do not maximize your most important announcements effectively. Wise Up PR will create a bespoke plan that fits your organization and its needs, along with KPIs and deliverables.
