​Last week Christina Fee from Fourtold was our guest speaker at VMA GROUP’s most recent event for internal communications professionals, hosted in partnership with Hanover Communications. 

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Christina shared her insights on why company narratives and CEO communications matter, particularly highlighting the critical alignment between narratives and overall brand positioning, and the potential pitfalls of a mismatch between brand positioning and CEO communications. This was brought to life with stories and case studies from her extensive 30-year career. Key learnings include:

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• Be sure to identify your key audiences and understand the personas within your stakeholder groups - who are they, where are they, what’s the journey they have been on, and what should they know, feel and do? 

• Actively listen and engage - gather as much insight as possible to understand stakeholder views and perspectives so you can tailor your messages accordingly. 

• Co-create the story with key stakeholders - this will ensure you craft a narrative that resonates with the majority of your audiences. 

• Find engaging ways to clearly articulate the vision, mission and purpose, to enroll everyone in the direction, so they understand how they fit into the narrative. 

• Ensure you have strong proof points to validate the narrative and focus minds on why the purpose and ambition are the right ones. You need evidence to help people believe in what is going well and what may need fixing.

• Be transparent about strengths and weaknesses – being open and honest builds trust and sets you up for success. 

• Stress-test the narrative with a wide range of stakeholders for feedback to ensure it will land well. </