“Don’t wanna be in the comms department of that CEO’s company this week,” is a phrase that I’m sure has been said in many a communications company the past few months.  

First we had the Coldplay kiss cam calamity. Then, a CEO went viral after grabbing a tennis hat out of the hands of a child, as the hat was gifted to the youngster by a famous tennis star. And this week, Nestlé dismissed their CEO because of “an undisclosed romantic relationship with a direct subordinate”. 

The precise line between corporate responsibility and private lives can be debated until the cows come home. It goes without saying that CEOs hold positions of leadership and should be measured by the standards of the company they lead. That specific type of judgement – while it holds serious implications for reputation and crisis management – isn’t so interesting from a strategic comms perspective. Rather, what stood out during these three CEO media storms were how smoothly they fed into a growing anti-corporate or anti-business sentiment. The modern CEO too easily becomes the object of ridicule, even in some extreme cases hatred.  

Not all CEOs are hat-snatchers or careless casanovas. This is so obvious as to be a completely banal statement. And yet, today, it seems necessary to say out loud. Globally, suspicion towards corporations as societal contributors has been on the rise. Here in South Africa as well we see some politicians and activists painting the private sector as the enemy. 

Three CEOs -attracted negative attention and trended so widely precisely because it resonated with the current ideas many people have of business leaders.  

But read the business section of any objective news website and you’ll see: reports on CEOs who want to grow their businesses and create jobs, while boosting tax revenue for their country, to the benefit of all; opinion pieces by CEOs that innovate and offer some of the most valuable insights available; articles about CEOs who know how to balance the profit incentive with social responsibility. 

Of course, it’s just not sexy to think of CEOs as hard-working contributors to an economy and a country. It is much more fashionable to be cynical about big business and their captains. It must be said that this state of affairs is partially due to business itself thinking they’re safer not sticking their head above the parapet.  

In today’s media landscape, nobody is safe. Rather clearly voice what it is you contribute.  

Packaging the undeniable proof that business leaders are not the jokes or villains they are made out to be – that might be the real challenge of strategic communications today, rather than the scramble of crisis comms and corporate image recovery.  

Loftus Marais
Senior Account Manager