Kemi Badenoch stood on stage at party conference this month and talked about her son. About her passion, as a mother, to make sure identity wasn’t something he had to defend growing up.
It became one of the lines everyone was talking about that week. Not a policy. Not a soundbite off a pre-approved grid. A mother, talking about her son.
Love or hate conference season, was this story a mini masterclass in something corporate comms teams have been sleeping on for years? Lived experience is a source of influence, not just a nice bit of colour for a speech.
We’ve spent decades telling each other that careful messaging and well-rehearsed lines protect reputation. And they still matter, don’t get me wrong.
But aren’t we in a new age? Burnham, Badenoch, Zelensky, Trump, and plenty more point to something clear: what you believe, where you’ve come from, and how you talk to people now matter as much as what you’re selling. Personalities build influence.
Ultimately, being trusted is no longer the same as being heard – that’s what we found when we dug into the data for Woodrow’s Influence Economy report this year.
We’ve spent years investing in the "comms toolbox": press offices, message houses, media training. All still useful.
But have we been overlooking the tool that was already in the business all along? Execs.
Not the ones who can recite the corporate narrative the best. But the ones who can tell proper stories about what shaped them and why it matters for their organisation or customers.
This is a big focus for me right now. Getting experts out from behind the press release and onto LinkedIn, into a room, or on camera – telling stories they care about.
Because if politics is teaching our profession anything, it’s this – if your execs have no discernible point of view, nobody’s choosing to listen to them.
So here’s the question I’m putting to all my clients and teams right now. Not “are our leaders visible enough?”. But “do people actually know what they think?”.
