​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. 

• Be Consistent – provide regular updates across all channels to keep people engaged and invested. Proof points and success stories will need to be refreshed too.

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Christina also addressed a common challenge: how to empower senior stakeholders to authentically own and communicate the narrative, especially for those not comfortable with public platforms. Her advice emphasised the necessity of securing leadership buy-in first and allowing them time and space to get comfortable with articulating the narrative and being questioned on it. Only when leaders understand the importance and are bought in themselves can they communicate in a way that connects with others and brings them along. And it's the job of internal comms practitioners to help leaders get there so they can effectively lead from the front. 

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We hope you enjoyed this session! If you would like to join us at the next one please let Crystle Pearce or Deborah Le know and they will get in contact with you, to invite you to come along.

Thank you again - if you have any questions or feedback, please get in touch with Crystle Pearce at cpearce@vmagroup.com.

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VMA GROUP is a leading international interim, contract, temporary and permanent recruitment and executive search specialist. We are specifically focused on providing support to the communications, marketing, digital and change communities.

Our specialist practice areas cover: communications, corporate communications, internal communications, change communications, PR, media relations, financial communications, CSR, public affairs, investor relations, marketing, brand, digital marketing and agency services.

We have a reputation for providing expert consultancy services and advice, supported by in-depth knowledge of the professions we recruit for. Our thought leadership and benchmarking studies have become go-to resources for the communications, marketing, digital and change industries, supporting planning and decision-making for organisations of all shapes and sizes.

In the UK, VMA GROUP has offices in London, Bristol and Manchester and in Europe, VMA GROUP has offices in Amsterdam and Brussels, but we work with organisations and individuals on a global basis.

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