The role of the senior public relations professional within major corporations— and other institutions that face intense public and media scrutiny—has grown more complex and challenging in recent years. The rise of social media has empowered stakeholders and spawned new threats to corporate reputation, and smart CEOs have come to realize that a trusted communications advisor is essential to their success.
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Understanding the Influence 100
Methodology
The 100 senior corporate communicators profiled in this book are senior counselors to some of the most powerful CEOs in the world. In compiling this list, the Holmes Report relied on external nominations along with its own editorial research, basing all decisions on discrete set of criteria. Accordingly communicators were selected based on:
- Their status within their organizations (as well as the status of those organizations)
- The respect in which they are held by their own senior management and their peers, including the seniority of their position
- Their influence over the public relations agencies with which they work
- Their thought leadership within—and occasionally beyond— the public relations industry
- The budget under their control
- Their reputation for innovation
- Only one person could be selected from a particular company
Geography & Background
Our list of the World’s 100 Most Influential Corporate Communicators is diverse. As one might expect, given the size and stature of the US public relations industry, almost exactly half of them are based in the US, and about a dozen are headquartered in the UK, but the remainder are spread around the world, from markets including Australia, Brazil, China, India, Malaysia, Russia, and South Africa as well as all of the major markets in western Europe.
They represent a wide range of industries—technology and telecommunications, automotive and aviation, food and beverage and pharmaceutical, mining and manufacturing, retailing and restaurants—as well as government institutions such as the White House and the EU, and not-for-profit organizations ranging from Greenpeace to the Gates Foundation. And they come from diverse professional backgrounds: less than a quarter (21 percent) worked in the media before making the switch to public relations; more than a quarter (26 percent) have a background that includes political campaign experience; and almost a third (31 percent) previously worked on the public relations agency side of the business.
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