Sharleen James | Why credibility is a C-Suite issue

A seat at the table

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The CMO was often seen as the natural custodian of the brand’s external voice. But the boardroom has changed, as have the risks facing business. And with them, the role of corporate communications and corporate affairs has moved a lot closer to the centre of leadership.

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Today, the issues that most threaten business value are rarely contained within the marketing funnel. They are geopolitical, regulatory, social, technological and reputational. Many of these risks sit within stakeholder confidence, public trust, governance scrutiny, licence to operate, employee belief, investor confidence and the responsible use of AI.

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This is why more organisations are realising that the Chief Communications Officer needs a seat at the C-suite table, advising the CEO and board directly. The role has outgrown the outdated idea of PR as publicity or press office support. As PwC has framed it, corporate affairs has shifted from defensive PR to strategic value creation. That shift is significant because reputation has gone from being a ‘nice to have’ to a core business function.

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Burson’s recent work on the global reputation economy found that strong reputation contributes nearly 5% in unexpected shareholder value, pointing to a global “reputation economy” worth more than $7tn. The exact figure is less important than the direction of travel, with reputation increasingly being measured, priced and treated as capital.

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The World Economic Forum’s Global Risks Report adds further urgency to the point. Misinformation and disinformation remain among the world’s most severe short-term risks, while geopolitical instability, cyber insecurity and adverse outcomes of AI continue to shape the operating environment for business. For any leadership team, that means communication must take place alongside the development of any strategy and not after the fact.

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Low trust economy

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This is the context in which the role of communications has evolved. While marketing remains critical to customer connection and brand distinctiveness, corporate communication has assumed greater importance in driving business strategy, while addressing the core challenges of building trust and legitimacy.

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At Razor we take a three-prong approach to tackling this through advisory, earned media and stakeholder management — all underpinned by a data intelligence capability that draws on industry-leading tools and databases to surface insight, track sentiment and inform strategy.

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Advisory means sitting close enough to leadership to read the environment early, interpret risk and shape decisions before they become public issues. Alongside this sits stakeholder management, which requires understanding that customers are only one audience with employees, regulators, investors, communities, journalists, policymakers and civil society all equally influencing business sustainability.

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Then there’s earned media, which provides the credibility layer that paid and owned channels cannot replicate. Sure, paid media can deliver reach and owned media can provide control. But earned media builds trust. And that distinction is becoming more important in a low-trust economy. Audiences are navigating advertising fatigue, misinformation, sponsored content overload, AI-generated content scepticism and declining institutional trust. They’re no longer only asking what a brand is saying. They are asking who else is saying it, how credible those voices are, and how much influence they hold.

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That is where earned media remains powerful. It carries the weight of independent validation. It places a brand into a public conversation through editorial judgment rather than media spend and importantly, it cannot be bought in the same way attention can be bought, which is precisely why it matters.

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Strong ideas are the currency of earned media. Budget may amplify a message, but it cannot rescue a weak idea. Earned media rewards relevance, originality, tension and cultural insight. It understands that story beats slogan.

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In a world of AVEs, a powerful earned idea will secure coverage. But the true value of its worth is in its ability to drive conversation.

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We’ve seen this in campaigns that use creativity to open up difficult or important conversations. Take Sanlam’s The F-Show. The campaign was built on the insight that South Africans often avoid talking about money, even though financial conversations can improve wellbeing, relationships and financial outcomes. By using comedy to normalise an uncomfortable topic, the campaign moved financial literacy from instruction into culture. As clips circulated online, reaching millions of views and generating significant engagement, South Africans were able to recognise themselves in a lot of the messaging, sharing it, and participating in a wider conversation about financial confidence.

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French insurer AXA’s Three Words offers another powerful example. Named Creative Brand of the Year at Cannes Lions 2025, AXA used the simple human truth that sometimes the hardest thing to say is “I need help”, to shift its positioning from insurance provider to health ally.

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The campaign encouraged people to speak more openly about health, vulnerability and support. Built around three-word confessions, it gave emotional weight to AXA’s brand promise while creating a platform that could travel across markets, cultures and channels. The strength of this idea was that instead of leading with product or policy, AXA led with empathy. The result was earned relevance, allowing AXA to enter into a sensitive public conversation with credibility, humanity and purpose.

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Both campaigns show where modern PR is at its most effective. These are so much more than simple awareness plays. They use insight, earned credibility and stakeholder relevance to change behaviour, shift business strategy and build trust. Ultimately, this is the work leadership teams increasingly need.

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Understanding consequence

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In South Africa, that need is particularly acute. Trust is fragile and institutions are heavily scrutinised. Business is expected to contribute meaningfully to social progress while navigating economic pressure, governance expectations, cyber risk and policy uncertainty. PwC South Africa’s Digital Trust Insights research found that damage to company brand, including loss of customer confidence, was one of the top cyber-attack concerns for local respondents. That reveals how even technical risk can quickly become reputation risk.

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The CCO therefore has to do more than manage a narrative. They must help the organisation understand consequence. What will stakeholders believe? Where will scepticism emerge? Which voices carry credibility? What will employees need to hear? What will regulators expect? What will the media interrogate? What happens if AI accelerates a false claim before the facts can catch up?

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These are C-suite questions. They require the discipline of corporate affairs’ strategic counsel, issues intelligence, reputation management, stakeholder trust and earned credibility. They also require proximity to power. Communications leaders cannot shape outcomes effectively if they’re only brought in once decisions have already been made. The companies that understand this will build more resilient reputations, while those that don’t will continue to discover, often in moments of pressure, that visibility without credibility is a fragile asset.

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The next era of brand leadership won’t be won by the loudest voice or the biggest media budget. It will be shaped by organisations that can earn trust, explain themselves clearly, act responsibly and build relationships with the stakeholders who determine their licence to operate.

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That’s why corporate communications belongs in the C-suite. The organisations best equipped for the years ahead will be those that place trust and reputation at the heart of how they lead.