CollectivNews
Welcome to a monthly round-up of information relevant
to comms professionals and everyone interested in the fractional model.
October 2026
Fractional Is Growing up
Now the Market Needs to Define What It Means
A recent discussion among marketers on Reddit took aim at the number of people calling themselves “fractional” CMOs, arguing that too many are simply consultants who have adopted a more senior-sounding title.
The criticism was not really about the model itself. Their concern was whether the term “fractional” is becoming so widely used that it is losing its meaning.
At its best, the fractional model gives an organization access to an experienced executive who has done the job before and can step into the business, operate as part of the leadership team, provide judgment and counsel, and take responsibility for outcomes.
A fractional communications executive should bring the perspective that comes from having led a comms function. That means advising CEOs and boards, managing teams and budgets, navigating crises, protecting reputation, counseling leaders when the answer is not obvious, and understanding how communications connects to business strategy.
Those capabilities cannot simply be claimed by changing a LinkedIn headline.
Fractional or Consultant?
The meaningful distinction is related to the role the individual plays inside the organization.
A consultant is typically hired to complete a project or provide specialized expertise. A fractional communications person steps into the role, and while they may work three or four days a week instead of five, they are expected to think and operate as though they are a full-time employee.
That means participating in leadership discussions, counseling senior executives, setting communications priorities, anticipating reputational risk, developing the team, and coordinating outside resources. It also means making decisions when the information is incomplete and being accountable for the results.
This distinction is why prior operating experience matters, because those capabilities are built over years of actually doing the job.
Fractional should describe how an executive’s time is deployed, not the level of executive experience being delivered.
The Economics of Fractional Leadership Are Only Part of the Story
The financial argument for fractional leadership is easy to understand. Why pay a senior executive a full-time salary if you don’t need them five days a week?
That calculation is helping fuel continued growth in fractional leadership, but focusing exclusively on cost misses the value of the model. Companies aren’t only buying fewer hours. They are buying senior judgment without the full-time cost.
A growing company may need a sophisticated communications strategy, CEO counsel, reputation management and leadership of its communications function. A more established organization may need experienced leadership during a transformation, acquisition, leadership transition or period of reputational risk. And another may have a strong internal team that needs senior strategic leadership rather than another layer of execution.
These are all scenarios that call for a seasoned expert, but they might not need that person 40+ hours a week.
Strictly thinking about this in terms of cost is not the answer. The better question is how much communications leadership the organization needs, and for how long.
Sometimes the answer is a full-time communications leader. Sometimes it is a communications agency or project consultant. There is another option: an experienced communications executive embedded in the organization at the level the business requires.
Friction does not mean fractional leadership has a problem. It may actually be a sign that fractional leadership has arrived.
Beyond the Binary: AI’s Biggest Communications Problem Is Local
By Monica Talan, Partner
Every day, we wake up to headlines about AI’s potential harm: jobs lost, cybersecurity threats, misinformation, social isolation, and systems that may become difficult to control.
But one of the biggest communications challenges facing the AI industry is much closer to home: it’s local.
The issue came into sharper focus for me in February, when TIME published “The People vs. AI,” a cover story about the growing backlash against the industry. Though the people profiled had different concerns and political backgrounds, they were responding to the same problem: AI companies were making decisions that impacted their lives without giving them enough information about what was happening or how it would affect them.
AI does not exist only in models, headlines, or forecasts. It runs in data centers that consume electricity and water, reshape neighborhoods, and affect public infrastructure. People living near those facilities are asking practical questions.
How much water will a data center use? Who will pay for grid upgrades? How many jobs will it create? What will happen to utility costs, housing, land, and public services?
Too often, the answers are buried in technical documents. And in many cases, the answers are difficult to find or not publicly available.
When companies respond with general statements about innovation, efficiency, or economic growth, they create more distrust. People are asking what a project will mean for their community and need specific answers.
The US-VISIT Lesson
I saw this while working on the rollout of the US-VISIT program. The program faced hurdles and backlash from local communities. The turning point came when we focused on listening to the concerns and addressing them directly. These one-on-one conversations with local elected officials and stakeholder meetings completely changed the narrative.
That experience offers a useful lesson for the AI industry. Communities need to understand how a major project will affect the places where they live. They need a clear explanation and transparency.
A project should also share the information needed to evaluate its impact:
- Actual and projected electricity use, including peak demand
- Water sources, withdrawals, consumption, and discharge
- Emissions from construction, operations, backup power, and purchased electricity
- Expected effects on roads, utilities, housing, and public services
- Local hiring, tax contributions, and economic benefits
- Plans for drought, grid stress, equipment failure, and other disruptions
- Noise impact assessments.
The numbers should be easy to find and easy to understand. For example, water reporting should explain where the water comes from, whether it is potable, recycled, or reclaimed, and how the facility uses it for cooling. Companies should also report how much water is recirculated, what steps they take to reduce consumption, and how use changes under average and peak conditions.
Data center operators should explain what a project will contribute locally. That could include jobs, public investment, improved infrastructure, or other tangible benefits that are specific, measurable, and connected to the concerns people have already raised.
The industry should also establish common reporting standards that define what companies must disclose, how they calculate it, and where they publish it.
Communities should not have to compare incompatible numbers buried across technical filings and corporate reports. The information should be available in one public, searchable place.
Start the Conversation Earlier
Public engagement needs to begin before major decisions are made. A single town hall or contact form does not give residents a meaningful role.
People need access to decision-makers, clear response timelines, and a way to challenge incomplete or inaccurate information. They also need to know which concerns can influence the project and which decisions have already been made.
Large infrastructure projects will involve tradeoffs. Residents are more likely to engage with those tradeoffs when companies explain them clearly and show how the local benefits will be delivered.
Ultimately a data center is not just a building that supports an online service. It becomes part of a local economy, a local utility system, and a local political conversation.
The industry needs to explain what AI requires in physical terms and what that will mean for the communities hosting it.
Three Things Moving Fast in Our Profession: From Producing to Governing
By Brian Besanceney, Partner
Over the last few months, I have connected with a lot of seasoned CCOs and corporate affairs leaders. What has struck me is how quickly their agendas are evolving. AI is on every agenda, of course, but the more I listen, the less the conversation feels like it is about technology alone.
Here are three things moving quickly in our profession and what they mean for anyone leading, advising or building a career in this field.
1. AI Scales the Output. Judgment Is Still the Job.
Most communicators now use AI to draft, summarize, research and generate ideas. The latest PRWeek/Boston University survey suggests AI is most established in research and drafting, while crisis management and media training remain distinctly human work.
In research released in May, 2026, Gartner surveyed 350 executives at $1 billion-plus companies. Of those piloting AI, 80% had cut staff, and the cuts showed no link to higher AI returns. The best results came from using AI to boost workers, not replace them.
When anyone can generate a dozen options in seconds, the scarce skill is knowing which one to choose and which ones should never be published.
Some of this is timeless. When I served in the White House more than 20 years ago, I came to believe that more than half of my best contributions involved preventing a bad story from happening in the first place. Often, the most valuable communications work is stopping the poorly framed initiative or avoidable controversy behind the scenes.
AI raises the stakes because a bad idea can now be generated, polished, approved and distributed in minutes.
What it means for you: Automate the grind. Invest the time you get back in the counsel only you can give.
2. We Know How to Think About Audiences and Competitors. Not Adversaries.
Communications professionals have always thought carefully about audiences: employees, customers, investors, reporters, policymakers and communities. We also understand competitors: we track their positioning, anticipate their moves and work to distinguish our organizations in the market.
But increasingly, there is a third category that deserves more attention: adversaries.
An adversary is not simply a dissatisfied customer, an aggressive reporter or a company competing for market share any more. An adversary may be seeking to distort information, create doubt, damage trust, disrupt operations or pressure an organization into making a mistake. Their objective is not to win an argument on the merits. It is to shape the narrative before anyone realizes one is being built.
Most companies are not designed to think this way. They have communications plans, media monitoring, crisis protocols and social listening programs. But many still assume that facts arrive first, a story develops next and the organization then responds.
That is no longer always how it works.
A false narrative can be seeded anonymously, amplified through coordinated accounts and reinforced by synthetic content before a reporter calls or a formal stakeholder raises a concern. By the time the company sees it, the narrative may already have the appearance of credibility.
Alethea’s recent research on data centers shows how this plays out: foreign state actors and AI-generated content amplify genuine local opposition into something that looks like a grassroots movement.
This does not mean every criticism is malicious, or that companies should dismiss legitimate concerns as disinformation. In fact, the ability to distinguish genuine stakeholder concern from coordinated manipulation is becoming an essential leadership capability.
The response has to begin earlier: watch for hostile narratives while they are still forming; establish facts and context before a sensitive decision becomes controversial; and agree in advance who can verify a suspicious video, audio clip or document. Researchers call one part of this approach “prebunking”: preparing audiences with accurate context before misleading claims take hold.
What it means for you: Ask two questions about any organization you serve: Where are we vulnerable to a hostile narrative? And would we know if someone were building one about us right now?
3. Reputation Is Becoming a Governance Discipline.
As a director, I watch closely how boards are responding to reputation and related risks. The subject is moving higher on the agenda, but it remains poorly defined. Most boards understand that a reputational crisis can have serious consequences. Fewer have agreed on how to define reputational capital, which metrics matter or how to distinguish early-warning signals from noise.
New research from Augur Intelligence illustrates why. Across 139 crisis events, companies in the lowest quartile of reputation value saw a median market-value decline of 20.1% relative to industry peers, compared with 8.5% for companies with stronger reputations. The methodology will be debated, as it should be. But the direction is difficult to dismiss: reputational damage can be substantial and can keep accumulating long after the immediate crisis is over. Directors need assurance that material decisions with reputational consequences are being identified, examined and owned before they become headlines.
The remit of senior communications leaders now spans AI adoption, employee voice, public policy, executive credibility and fast-moving online narratives. Few organizations need every capability at full strength all the time. The most resilient functions pair a strong permanent core with senior expertise brought in when the moment demands it.
What it means for you: Your value increasingly lies in the judgment and experience you bring across situations. Ask your board which decisions carry reputational risk and who owns each.”, not in the headcount you manage.
The Bottom Line
As content multiplies, clarity becomes scarcer. So does the person with the judgment to provide it.
The communicators who thrive will not be measured by how much they produce. They will be measured by what they help their organizations get right.