STRCTR (A ProThird Brand)

When your CEO asks you to prove the impact of your communications strategy, you shouldnt have to wait days or weeks for someone to pull together the answer. Yet thats the reality for many corporate communications executives. Most corporate comms executives arent making decisions directly from their data because they never actually get their data. What they use to make decisions or prove value is typically a report thats been interpreted for them. Those reports work in a fixed environment, but Ive rarely seen them hold up to meaningful pressure, like when the strategy is being questioned, when the impact needs to be proven, or when the budget is at risk. In those moments, canned intelligence isnt effective. And you quickly see how ineffective your data workflows actually are. All new questions take days or weeks to answer because of the number of hands they have to pass through. And in a multi-vendor environment- forget about it! If you and your teams dont have direct access to all of your data in a usable format, you are already behind. #CorporateAffairs #CorporateCommunications #DataInfrastructure #DataStrategy #DataQuality #DataOwnership #CommunicationMeasurement #PRmeasurement #StrategicCommunications #strategy #leadership #StrategicComms

Corporate communications leaders have fought hard for a seat at the executive table. But how can they fully own their strategic contributions when so much of the data informing their decisions is owned, managed, and interpreted by someone else? Vendors and platforms have an important role to play. But they cant develop the same understanding of your organization that you can. Every campaign, stakeholder interaction, narrative shift, and business decision creates an opportunity to learn something about your organization. That understanding should accumulate within the enterprise, not remain scattered across the vendors and platforms that serve it. The AI era will reward organizations that understand their own data, not just those with access to it. This is why I believe the days of outsourcing the "raising of your data" is over. #CorporateAffairs #CorporateCommunications #DataInfrastructure #DataStrategy #DataQuality #DataOwnership #CommunicationMeasurement #PRmeasurement #StrategicCommunications #strategy #leadership #StrategicComms #AIinComms

Corporate communications leaders are being asked to demonstrate more value, often without a corresponding increase in their budgets. And data and analytics are becoming increasingly important to meeting those expectations, but theres a cost that often goes overlooked. When every vendor, platform and partner maintains its own data and analytics workflow, organizations end up paying multiple times to collect, clean, reconcile and report on different pieces of the same data. Thats money that could be going toward better measurement, stronger intelligence and new AI capabilities. We've seen that changing the underlying infrastructure can generate $2-$3 in data management savings for every $1 invested. Communications leaders shouldnt have to choose between controlling costs and improving their intelligence capabilities. The right infrastructure can help them do both. #CorporateAffairs #CorporateCommunications #DataInfrastructure #DataStrategy #DataQuality #DataOwnership #CommunicationMeasurement #PRmeasurement #StrategicCommunications #strategy #leadership #StrategicComms

The expectations placed on Chief Communications and Corporate Affairs Officers are changing. Theyre being asked to demonstrate greater business value, connect communications activity to organizational outcomes, and make more informed decisions, faster.And now AI is raising those expectations even further. But much of the data these leaders need still lives across a series of vendors and platforms that collect, manage, and interpret it for them. That cycle wont change until function takes greater control of their data. If we want AI-ready data, I believe organizations have to take ownership of it first. #DataOwnership #AIReadiness #DataStrategy #AIReadyData #DataInfrastructure #DataStrategy #DataQuality #CorporateCommunications #AIinComms #BarcelonaPrinciples #CorporateAffairs #CommunicationMeasurement #PRmeasurement #StrategicCommunications

Years ago, my team had the opportunity to work with a restaurant that would eventually earn a Michelin star. Before they opened their doors, the owners and chefs spent more than a year traveling across all 29 states in India. They weren't just looking for recipes. They were learning the ingredients: how their intensity changed by region and season, how different traditions shaped their preparation, and what they meant to the communities that used them. There’s something in that for organizations preparing their data for AI. You can't shortcut your way to quality data with better tools, better models or better definitions of what data quality means. That understanding has to be built over time. I wrote about what that Michelin-star restaurant taught me about AI-ready data, and why I think data infrastructure has an important role to play in helping organizations develop that same kind of relationship with their data.

I've spent a lot of time thinking about how data can improve strategy, but working with the data around a high-stakes M&A filing changed the way I think about relationship data has with time. One of the more interesting things I learned from analyzing communications activity around a high-stakes M&A filing was just how much of that activity could be anticipated. We identified four distinct periods, each with different patterns of stakeholder activity, narrative development and communications risk. But understanding when those periods occurred was only part of it. Understanding how quickly communications risks developed within them helped reveal when and where organizations had the greatest opportunity to influence outcomes. I wrote a bit about what we observed and some of the implications for how communications strategies are developed, stakeholders are prioritized, and interventions are timed. #CorporateCommunications #MergersAndAcquisitions #CommunicationsStrategy #PublicAffairs #CommunicationsMeasurement #CommunicationMeasurement #PRMeasurement #MediaIntelligence #ResearchAndInsights #StrategicCommunications #DataDrivenPR #CommsAnalytics