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.