Toy Stories

Shahar: Welcome to ‘Always On’, the podcast about brand, reputation and data-driven communications. I’m your host in Copenhagen, Shahar Silbershatz. And our guest today is Roberta Thomson, Chief Communications Officer at Hasbro. 

Obviously, all of you know Hasbro, one of the world’s largest toy companies, and a company that is, on a daily basis, in our household, for sure. I have three daughters, so I see Hasbro quite a lot at home. You know, Peppa Pig and My Little Pony, and many others. So really, really nice to have you with us today. Roberta.  

Roberta: Of course, Shahar, thank you so much for having me.  

Shahar: We have lots of questions, but I want to start hearing a little bit about you in general. How do you introduce yourself to a stranger in a cocktail party?  

Roberta: This is a good question. I feel like it’s a while since I’ve been to a cocktail party. I think I would describe myself: Mom, musician and muse. So the mom part, I have two gorgeous boys, they’re two and six, so they’re a very big part of my life. And I get so much joy from spending time with them. A musician… I used to be in a band when I was growing up. I always have a song in my head at all times. And so that feels like a big part of my identity, too. And then the muse part is how I think about my job, actually. 

As a communications leader, I’m kind of behind the scenes, whispering into the ear of others and helping them kind of show up as their best selves externally and internally. So I think that’s probably how I describe myself. Now I just need the invite to the cocktail party. 

Shahar: I’ll work on that. I definitely have to work on my elevator pitch because yours sounds really great. But let’s put a little bit of flavor on that. So what is your favorite Hasbro toy?  

Roberta: Oh, that’s so good. And so hard. I love all my children equally.  

Shahar: Of course. 

Roberta: My favorite brand and the reason I took the call about this job was I love Transformers. So I’m an 80s child. I grew up watching the original cartoon. I adore the original movie from the 80s, which is why you’ll see behind me a gigantic Unicron, which is the evil planet-eating Transformer. 

And I just was captured as a young girl by the strength of Optimus Prime, the kind of space setting of Cybertron, and just the kind of fight between good and evil that you would see in every episode. And I think, honestly, like, the franchise has just brought that for so many decades now.

 It’s 40 years of Transformers, and I loved the Transformers 1 movie that was out just a couple of months ago. And yeah, so I think Transformers is always going to be my favorite franchise. As you can probably tell, I love working here. 

Shahar: Yeah, it also sounds like a lot of fun working there. 

Roberta: Well, I know this is the… this is one of the things about working at a toy and game company. Everyone who works here comes to work here because they’re a fan of something, right? Like, it might be Monopoly, it might be My Little Pony, but everyone’s here because they’re a fan. 

And so, you know, we could all go and work at an investment bank or an insurance company, and I’m sure that would be cool too. But here we get to talk about toys and games, and I can walk down the hallway and see our board games team playtesting a new strategy game. And I just love that. 

Shahar: So let’s talk a little bit about “transformers”. That’s a great segue to the next question because you’ve had quite a varied career and I want to hear a little bit from you about how you got into communications to begin with.  

Roberta: Oh, I love this question because it was a total accident that I’m in communications. I had no idea what I wanted to be when I grew up. Well, actually, if you’d have asked me when I was a teenager, I would have said I would be in music. 

So I was the lead singer and songwriter in a band in my teenage years. And I just thought that was going to be my future. I ended up studying Classics at university, so I’m a Classics major, which I adored, getting to contemplate philosophical questions and read meaningful pieces of ancient literature, but it wasn’t necessarily a very obvious career path after that. And so purely by chance, I ended up working at Deloitte as an auditor. So my first career, I’m actually, that’s my fun fact. I’m a fully qualified chartered accountant.  

Shahar: You’re full of surprises.  

Roberta: I know exactly. Yeah, I’m so fun at parties. And the reason that was great, having the basics of any kind of professional qualification and especially understanding financial statements is such a good background for any career that you might want to choose afterwards in the business and corporate world. 

And so I had no idea at the time. I was like, okay, like, Deloitte seems like a good company. Let me do these exams and try this out. But it stood me in such good stead for the rest of my career just having the basics of how to read financial statements and think about a business life cycle. And so after my three years at Deloitte, I had an amazing time, I like made friends who I still keep up with now, but the deliverable to me of kind of signing off the statutory accounts was just not, like, quite what I was looking to do with my life. 

And so I happened to have dinner with a neighbor in London and he worked for a company called Brunswick, which is a financial PR agency and sort of corporate relations agency, very high profile. And he told me about his job and I was like, Oh, this sounds pretty cool and more interesting than, like, consolidation adjustments and pension accounting, double entry bookkeeping. And so I ended up going to Brunswick and just immediately kind of thrived. And so I loved having something to offer, even as a very junior person at Brunswick starting out on the bottom rung, I did at least know how to read financial statements, if I was talking to a reporter and they mentioned depreciation, like, I knew what they were talking about. 

And so loved having that kind of professional qualification as my grounding, but then getting to be a little bit more creative. And I think across my seven or more years at Brunswick, the exposure to different industries, different clients, was so valuable. 

The job took me across the world. So I moved to New York with Brunswick, and then I was working very closely with AT&T, which at the time was a very big client of Brunswick’s. And so I moved to Dallas, Texas, to work on site for a while at their corporate headquarters, which was a fascinating introduction to how to operate inside a gigantic company with hundreds of thousands of employees. And it was that, I guess, and the relationships I made as part of those years that eventually took me to Facebook and a move to the west coast of the US. 

And I never thought that I would want to be in-house. thought I was agency for life. And now I just, I adore being inside a company and helping lead from within and all of the challenges and rewards that come with that. And so I had no idea that comms was a career, even. And I remember thinking when I started out at Brunswick, you read a newspaper and see a quote from somebody, and I would sort of imagine a reporter with a microphone doorstopping someone and asking for their quote. And then, of course, quite quickly you realize, oh, no, no, it was carefully crafted by a team of folks behind the scenes, and probably there’s a lawyer who looked at it, too, and then there’s a negotiation back and forth with a reporter. And so just understanding how the world of media relations worked, and of course, that world is now very different kind of 20 years on. But yeah, it’s seen a fascinating ride. And I think being in comms is such a interesting and rewarding role. 

Shahar: That’s a very unusual journey, actually, to get into comms, and I can imagine, I mean, obviously the music part is definitely unusual, but I think also the accounting part, and I can imagine that having the accounting background, as you talk about, probably helps you also, be a more strategic communicator, and we’ll talk a little bit about the role of the CCO, because obviously it is becoming more strategic, and business understanding is very helpful. But how would you say, and you mentioned that already, that the field of comms has changed a lot in the last 20 years. What would you say are the biggest changes?  

Roberta: So when I started out, everything was still very, like, paper-based, newspaper-based and I’m totally showing my age here, but I remember writing media reviews for clients and I would get delivered to my doorstep an envelope with press cuttings, physical press cuttings.  

and having to, like, go through them all and highlight and then figure out, you know, an elegant way of summarizing them for the client and getting it all done by seven a.m. that morning. And so just the advent of technology in that space has transformed the industry in so many ways. So I think about… obviously, media relations has been a core part of the job for many external communicators, and we should talk about internal comms, too, because I think that’s, like, honestly, the hardest piece of my job and any chief communications officer’s job. 

But just thinking about how the media landscape has evolved and what it’s like being a reporter or working in a media organization now, right? You have so many more things going on than you did necessarily 20 years ago. You’re not just filing a, like, really incredible, thoughtful story, but you’re also tweeting or, sorry, Xing, whatever we call that now, you’re also probably doing some TikToks, you might have a blog, you’re on video for your publication too. 

And so reporters have an unbelievable amount of things to do. And so the way that we as PR professionals interact with them has had to change significantly over that time so that we can kind of be most useful to them and have that meaningful relationship where we’re able to kind of work with them and bring them stories and information. And so the shift of the media landscape and the publishing industry has been a key shift in media relations. 

There’s also, of course, for anyone working in comms, just thinking about how you reach your constituents directly, there’s been a huge rise in how leaders do that, and it’s a very important way of doing it. I think working at Facebook for so long and seeing the power of platforms like Facebook and Instagram, WhatsApp, even for reaching folks directly, it’s like every leader has to be thinking about that, too, because in a world that is shifting, the authenticity, the transparency of reaching folks directly with your own words is crucial. 

And sometimes that’s not even, like, with a touch of a PR person, right? The best leaders are brilliant, authentic communicators. And so, you know, it’s not our job as PR folks to kind of spin or sort of write everything for a leader. It’s like, no, it’s like, how do we help with framing? How do we help you understand what stakeholders need to hear so that we can get your authentic voice across to them the best way? And so I think the shift to owned and reaching folks directly is super important. 

The media landscape has shifted. And then, I don’t know, I love talking about internal comms, but just thinking about the importance at any company, especially a company that’s in transition or in, like, a newer industry or issues of scale, the way you get your strategy across to your employees is, like, key to your success and internal communications is, like, the most powerful tool to do that. And so I think it’s a bigger piece than ever of any chief communications officers job and an incredibly important lever for management teams to tell stories to employees so that they can help the company meet its goals and its mission. 

Shahar: Why do you think that importance of internal comms has grown over the years? I mean, because you’re talking about the fragmentation, of course, of the media landscape and technology. But when it comes to internal communications, one would think that it’s always been important. 

Roberta: Yeah, this is this is a really good question. I think the way that people work is evolving and expectations of employees are evolving, just in terms of how they think about their leaders and what they expect from their leaders. And so the environment we’re in now or have been for the last few years, we see, and this is getting, like, deep and philosophical now, but we see a lot of the institutions where people used to go for leadership kind of waning in their influence. And so people look more to their employer for a source of that leadership. 

And so I think the expectations of what people hear from their leaders have got even higher. And that’s why, you know, everyone’s hanging on to every word of their leaders. And so that’s why I think internal comms is even more important than it used to be, because the scrutiny is that much higher of leaders. 

I also think from an industry perspective, right? In the past, internal comms at times was seen as, okay, well, we just take whatever we’re saying externally and then make sure we’re also sharing it with employees, right? Which is, like, something that does also need to happen, right? You want your employees to hear first, but much more important is, like, how do you think about the company mission and strategy? How do you get that across to employees? And how do you think about activating your leaders as ambassadors with employees as well as externally? 

And, you know, we all know, if you think about the best-run companies and how they work, like, brilliant leaders who can inspire their teams are, like, the greatest asset that you can have. And so, as the internal comms team can help those leaders understand how to talk about company issues, the mission, how to get their employees inspired, then that’s going to have a big impact on a company’s success.  

Shahar: Yeah, that makes sense. I guess it’s also, you know, when you think about it, the keyword used to be ‘alignment’ when people talked about internal communications, and it’s really moved on from that because it’s something… first of all, as you say, the expectations are higher, but I think also CEOs see themselves more as accountable internally. And, you know, they have to meet certain standards that they didn’t have to meet in the past, and that probably makes it also a challenge from a communication perspective. 

Roberta: Yes, you’re totally right.  

Shahar: When we think about how the world has changed in communications… this is partly, by the way, why we call this Always On… we also see this need to be very, very agile as a communicator, as a company. There’s stuff happening all the time, you need to respond all the time. Do you see that in your own role? Would you say that you find that you need to be “always on” and that Hasbro needs to be ” always on”?  

Roberta: Yes, “always on” is exactly the term. I think about this a lot because I have a lot going on in my life outside of work, right? I have these two little kids and a busy job. And how do you think about what being “always on” means? Because I think the nature of working in comms, I don’t know. I always see the stat that the PR is one of the top five most stressful jobs, up there with, like, cell tower engineers. 

And it’s, like, it can be quite a stressful job. And the nature of our industry and what we do and how we support companies is, like, stuff happens that you’re not expecting all the time. And so that means that you need to be prepared, even if it’s a Saturday afternoon or, like, 10 o’clock on a Tuesday. But the way that I’ve always tried to think about that, if you’re in a role working at a company that you admire, with people that you love, I just see that as, like, something interesting is happening and, like, I want to fix it. 

And so if the other things can line up where you feel like you’re in the right place at the right time, I don’t kind of resent having to be on at all hours. And then I think the flexibility of how you can manage your time is the other, you know, the secret to how it’s all possible. Like, if I need to go… my son has a special assembly at school tomorrow afternoon at two o’clock. Like, I will be there no matter what. But also, you know, I was working late in bed last night on my laptop on something else. And so, just understanding how you can manage the flow of your work.

 Sometimes there’s going to be urgent issues that crop up at tough hours that you absolutely have to deal with. But when you can take the time, I do, because that’s how I, like, have a fulfilling life that makes me want to keep coming back to work every day.  

Shahar: How do you use… we of course come from the world of data and technology as well… how do you use technology to help you with staying “always on”?  

Roberta: Yes, this is a great question, too, because there are so many different tools available, and I spent actually, a couple years at a company called Notion, which is this unbelievable, like, enterprise software collaboration, workplace collaboration tool. And so Notion’s awesome, but I use it a lot in my personal life. I have, like, my vacation packing lists, and it’s a great way to collaborate and sort of run life stuff for me. 

For work, I feel I have to stay across different tools depending on different audiences. So, we use the Microsoft team suite at work. Of course, that’s a natural place for me to collaborate with my colleagues. I’m often, like, texting with reporters. WhatsApp I use. I have this incredible group of, like, fellow chief communications officers that we have all in a WhatsApp group and we’ll ping each other with, like, questions like, “Hey, who’s going to be at this event?” Or “What are you saying about this issue of the day?” And it’s a great source of peer support for one another. And we can also celebrate one another, like, “Oh, I saw that awesome story. The Wall Street Journal.” Like, “Go team”. And so…  

Shahar: I didn’t know about that group.  

Roberta: Yeah, it’s awesome, honestly. And I think these roles at times can be a little bit lonely. And so I think one of the… one of the hardest things about being a communications leader, of course, there’s a lot of subject matter expertise, both about how to be a great communicator and about your company. 

But so much of it is experience, common sense and judgment, right? You’re an advisor. You’re working in, like, high pressure, sometimes difficult situations, and you have to make decisions quickly so that you can move forward. And so having a group of peers that you can call on for just a sense check is incredibly important, I think, and very valuable. So these these these jobs can be hard, but also very rewarding. 

Shahar: Yeah, absolutely. And what about data points? Do you use any real-time data that helps you assess the world around you and helps you make decisions?  

Roberta: This is a great question. I mean, I wish I had a magic dashboard of all the things, like the reputation tracker. And I think, again, we’re still, like, working on that as an industry. What works the best? 

But again, it like kind of comes back to this, like, experience, common sense and judgment. I think for me, understanding my stakeholders internally and what their priorities are and making sure I’m staying really close to the conversations they’re having with our external partners is what helps me kind of put into the soup of decision making, just understanding perspectives from different folks around the company. 

I think there are, of course, very important measurement tools. We, for every announcement we do, we want to know, like, what’s the volume like, what’s the message pull through, what’s the sentiment? We can definitely do all of those things. But there’s always that extra layer of judgment on top. It’s like a billion impressions. Right. But, like, does that mean anything? And so you have to pick a set of different, like, a few different data sets and put them together, but then, like, always a dollop of judgment is going to be needed.  

Shahar: When it comes to the stakeholder universe that you, you know, operate within and that you look at, I mean, obviously you’re a B2C company. I’m sure consumers are very important to you and you probably have a lot of data on them. What are the other stakeholders that you consider to be relevant for you? And of course, employees as part of internal communications. But how do you see the stakeholder ecosystem of Hasbro?  

Roberta: Great question. Obviously employees first. That’s how I like to think of it. If you think about external audiences, fans first, right? Like, we like to think about our customers as fans because they really are. And they’re so passionate about our toys and games. But then if you think about Hasbro, we’re really a partner-based company. We work with so many incredible partners, whether that’s on, like, licenses for our toys and games and IP because we have this unbelievable kind of treasure trove of IP that we’re able to license out. 

But also the retailers that we work with are incredibly important partners. And so we have incredible reach for our IP through partners. And so we’re the number one digital licensor in the world. And just the relationships we have with our licenses are incredibly important. And it’s really how we scale. So we think about… we’re a play company first and foremost, right? Like, we’re across so many different play patterns, whether that’s from, you know, if you’re playing with an action figure with your friends as a young kid to playing a video game as like a, you know, someone in their forties like me, we’re across many, many different play patterns. 

And so, when we get those, like, play mechanics and magical play experiences right, like, that’s absolutely our sweet spot. But the way we scale to as many people as possible is through our partners. And so, yeah, we think about it that way. Like, we create amazing play experiences and our partners help us scale. And so, we think about our fans first and then our partners as a way to scale and that’s the just unbelievable importance of our ecosystem. 

Shahar: And do you also look at a greater… more of the corporate affairs type ecosystem when it comes to opinion leleaders, regulators… 

Roberta: Yes, of course. And we have all the stakeholder mapping that you would expect. And I think the way to think of it is like a dial, right? There’s different times in which different stakeholders become more important and you have to give more care and feeding to them. And then other times when the dial shifts the other way.  

Shahar: Are you finding that it’s getting harder to align your messages across the different stakeholder groups? I mean, there’s a lot of talk about a multistakeholder environment that we live in, especially affecting the comms function. How do you see that in terms of, you know, achieving brand consistency? 

Roberta: It’s a good question. I’d like to think if your messages are clear and transparent enough, you shouldn’t have to do too much tweaking for different stakeholders because the consistency piece is so important. I think your really high-level messaging of, like, who you are as a company shouldn’t really change. I think there’s additional pieces that become very important to different stakeholders, whether it’s policymakers or retailers or fans. But I think the essence of the company, like, should work for everybody.  

Shahar: What do you think are the biggest reputational risks for a company like Hasbro?  

Roberta: Yeah, this is a great question. I think for any consumer-facing company, right, like, issues with your products are always going to be something that you have to pay very close attention to. And we have a lot of processes in place just to think about, you know, how can we help to review things under development? 

We have a reputation review process and, like, a very tight issues management process as well to track. I think for any company, there’s also, like, a large suite of sort of corporate issues that could pop up across, you know, finance, legal risk, people risk, that we also have to track and prepare for. And I think probably just given the nature of the roles that I’ve had in the past, like, issues management is probably something that I’ve done more off than maybe anything else in my career. Having worked at Facebook, I can imagine Yes. So I was at Facebook, I guess, 2014 to 2022. And so, yeah, a lot happened  

during that time. Yes, it was kind of a firehose of different issues. And, like, I learned so much. It was a career-defining experience, and I’m grateful forever for every day that I spent at Facebook. But I get a lot of energy actually out of thinking about what issues could crop up. How do we plan for them? Making sure we have the right processes in place. 

And of course, every issue is different. And so you can’t prepare for everything. There’s no point having, like, a thousand different statements because you’ve got to be flexible. But just having the basic pipes of “Okay, let’s figure out what the issue is, who the decision makers are, how we get this to some kind of resolution and get out there quickly, if we need to explain what’s happened.” If you have those pipes in place, it just makes the response so much easier because you’re not kind of fighting over, like, “Wait, who owns this?” And, like, “Who needs to sign off on the statement?” But instead, you can focus your energies on, “Okay, how do we get the truth out there quickly?” And “How do we best serve our stakeholders that we need to in the moment?”  

Shahar: But do you have a process in place or a mechanism in place that continuously kind of scans the horizons for potential reputational risks and identifies how to mitigate them?  

Roberta: Yes, we do. I mean, again, I wish there was a kind of dashboard for… There’s magic solution…. Yeah, it was what I was talking about before. It’s the relationships. Like, the more…. and, again, this is one of the things I love about working with comms. 

Like, it’s so important to have relationships across the organization. And, like, if they know where to come, like, they’ll flag things before they become an issue. And that’s, of course, the best possible outcome. But in terms of tracking, yes, absolutely we have a weekly tracker, a weekly meeting with my team where we talk about things that are possibly bubbling up, and how we can manage them and hopefully prevent where we can. 

And where we can’t, we have a clear process for “Okay, how are we going to get the right stakeholders involved internally to understand our options and response? And then how do we get a clear human-sounding response out there as quickly as possible? 

Shahar: And do you foresee any of those risks getting higher with the new administration coming in with potential tariffs, for example, because I know that you rely on manufacturing in China, for example. Are you seeing any potential… obviously, on the commercial side, but also on the reputational side, if that leads to any kind of price hikes and so on?  

Roberta: It’s a good question. I think, no matter what administration is in power, right… Hasbro’s been around for 100 years. We’ve seen through many different administrations. There’s always comms risk that comes from change, right? So change in an administration, change in a business strategy. And so, yes, it’s something that we always have to track closely. And I think changes in how our political landscape has been operating over the last 10 years, it’s also changed the media landscape. And so that means for my team, we also have to think about how we engage there. So yes, I think, I wouldn’t necessarily say it would be more work than before, but yeah, it’s just like, again, being on the pulse and figuring out how we best serve all of our stakeholders. 

Shahar: How do you generally handle these cases that have been popping up more and more recently, where there seems to be a growing expectation of companies and CEOs to take a stand on things that are not necessarily strictly operational or commercial, but actually they can be, you know, social, political, geopolitical, legislative. I mean, a lot of different issues that suddenly companies are expected to have a stand on. What is your kind of formula for handling this?  

Roberta: A formula! If only it were so easy, a recipe. This is something that I have spent many years thinking about and working on, and I think it’s very situation, company and leader specific. And so at a high level, you have to think about your values as a company and the things that you always will defend no matter what. Then you have to understand the needs of your stakeholders and the situations that you’re operating in. 

And so if I think about the many years that I spent at Facebook and the fact that we were in an environment where every social issue happening in the world was also happening on our platforms, which meant we had to talk about them both externally and also internally, because we had people who were working on these issues, right? 

Content policy decisions that were happening, like, products and engineering folks who were working on them. And so for many companies, they get to say, “Well, that’s not part of our values, so we don’t need to talk about that. We’re not going to address our employees or make a statement on it.” We didn’t have that luxury of Facebook. And so over many years of dealing with these difficult conversations internally and externally, my philosophy is you have to… you’re very values-based in what you want to respond or consistent. And it’s helpful if you can think about it ahead of time instead of having to react in the moment. 

So, like, having a clear sense of, like, “these are our values, this is what we want to speak up on, and this is what we don’t want to speak up on”. Not rocket science, I’m sure you’ll hear the same thing from every other chief communications officer that you’re talking to. The other thing for me is really listening to those key stakeholders. So if these social issues are around identity, making sure that you’re on the pulse of how your employee resource groups are feeling. And then the third thing… which, again, comes from many years of experience in dealing with difficult social issues and conversations within the workplace… is channel. 

And so when we talk about difficult social issues at work, for many folks who are part of underrepresented groups, they don’t always want to be confronted by those issues as part of their workflow. And I say this as, you know, a Black woman who has, like, dealt with many of these issues and kind of lived through through 2020. Giving folks the right place to have those conversations is really important because you will never get the message right. And I think this is important for us as communicators. Sometimes there’s an expectation that we can craft the perfect message that’s going to hit just right. 

Like, if we could just say the right sentence, then we’re going to make it all okay. That is not possible. The only thing that’s possible is to figure out, “here is the right forum to have the discussion” and “here are the right ground rules”… showing up with empathy, transparency, listening more than you’re talking. That’s the only way that you can kind of get through these tough situations. 

Because if you rely on the messaging to do it, I don’t think it’s possible. And so you asked for a framework. I guess that would be it. It’s values-based. It’s listening to the groups who are affected, and then it’s figuring out the right channels and forums to have the conversations. 

Shahar: Interesting. I think that the point about “it’s not just about the message, it’s about the environment within which the message is conveyed” is also, is an interesting, interesting aspect.

 I’m also thinking about your perspective. I’m very curious to hear your perspective on how this thing is changing. I mean, we hear a lot about the “woke backlash” and the “ESG backlash” and the fact that it seems like we’ve hit a peak of sorts where CEOs had to talk about a lot of different issues, or companies had to have a stand about a lot of issues, and now suddenly they’re pulling back a little bit because there is a bit of a backlash and maybe it’s becoming more and more polarizing, right?

You can never… whatever you say, you’re going to alienate somebody. Do you feel a certain kind of journey like that, where where it’s peaked and now it’s going down and the expectations are to remain more quiet compared to maybe a couple of years ago, or do you see differently?  

Roberta: We’ve always had issues that are polarizing, right? Like, throughout history, probably throughout the course of human history, so I don’t actually see that that has changed. So I think we will navigate as we always have, based on kind of the framework that I discussed. 

But I think we’ve always had issues that are polarizing, like, even, you know, you think back 20, 30 years, and so that part isn’t new. But how you handle it is, I think, more within our control. And I think the elevation of the comms function that we’re seeing across many companies is an important piece and, like, an important enabler for companies to think about how they do handle some of those difficult conversations. 

Shahar: And I imagine that you probably come to the CEO with a recommendation based on the discussions that that you have Internally on what is important and what’s aligned with your values. 

Do you have some examples where the CEO took a different approach, saying, “Well, I actually think we should take… you know, we should be more quiet on this topic”, or “We should actually have a stronger opinion on this topic than what what you’re recommending”?  

Roberta: Yeah, that’s a good question. I’m just thinking back over different scenarios and different companies. I think it’s always a conversation, and it should never be a conversation between me and the CEO that I’m working with. 

It should never be just a conversation with the two of us because there are so many different important stakeholders, right? You think about your people leader and the sort of experience and expertise and relationships that they bring as well. 

So I think the head of comms provides an important sort of, like, listening empathy tool because often, like, we get a lot of feedback from folks, right? If they don’t like something that was said at the all-hands meeting or something that went out in an all-company email, we definitely hear about that. And so we have some important perspective from the seat that we’re sitting in and definitely, like, it’s our job to make sure that the leadership team is taking those things into account. 

But I don’t know that I have an example of where a CEO sort of hasn’t listened or taken into account. I think, like, a robust discussion is very important. But with so many of these situations, if you think about, you know, whether the discussions on, like, whether to speak out on a particular social issue, so many of these discussions, there’s no right or wrong answer. 

And so all you can do is think about what framework you’re making the decision under and, like, again, how do you best serve your stakeholders based on that framework? So we talked about the comms field changing and let’s talk a little bit about the CCO role changing, and you’ve alluded to that already a bit… How would you say the role has changed over the years?  

I think Axios has done some great studies on this, like, thinking about the CCO+ role, like, other responsibilities that chief communications officers are taking on and also reporting lines. I think more chief communicators than ever are reporting directly to CEOs and sitting as part of the executive leadership team. I think this is a very welcome change because I think, again, the things we discussed earlier, right? What we often bring is a ton of, like, judgment, experience and common sense, which is applicable to lots of different fields. 

And yes, as I think about myself and other buddies in this seat, yeah, many of us do manage things that are outside of strictly comms… corporate branding and design, ESG, global events…. like, these are things that fall under my purview, but I have many kind of friends who have similar purviews. And I think what brings teams together in, like, a global communications or corporate affairs org is a kind of shared mission of protecting and enhancing the company’s reputation. And I think all of those functions do that. 

And I think having a seat at the table for your chief communicator at the leadership team just helps you to best represent again those very important stakeholders for whom your corporate reputation is key. And so having access to information, visibility to company strategy, like, your teams can operate so much better when you have that to your fingertips. And so I think it’s a welcome change. I think that, like, 10 years ago, people were calling it, like, “professionalizing comms”, which is kind of weird because it’s, like, it was a profession before, it was pretty professional, and, like, people were very hardworking before, but I think there’s more recognition at the corporate leadership level that, like, it’s a very valid seat at the table. 

And when you think about… we’ve spent a lot of time talking about issues management. Gosh, if you could have that voice at the table earlier on, to maybe have folks think twice about a decision that could have a negative corporate reputation impact down the line, wouldn’t that be so much better than then having to manage the issue at the back end? 

So I think that’s another crucial reason why you want your comms person in the room for the strategic decisions and the business reviews and just understanding, like, “How can we make sure that we bake into some of the company processes and strategy, things that are going to enhance that corporate reputation instead of ending up having to protect it later?”  

Shahar: What’s your advice to those who don’t have that seat at the table? Because we still are in a place where a lot of people don’t have it. 

Roberta: So my advice would be: Show up as a business leader. Know the business. Make sure that you understand your company’s financial statements, what the rhythm is of the corporate calendar. You know, listen into earnings and you may be very involved in the process or not. But I think there’s also a lot of amazing resources online, some of them free. 

Just understanding, like, how to read financial statements. When I was at Facebook, I did an online course on product strategy because I started working with more product leaders and I wanted to understand the vocabulary that they were using and, like, “wait, people are talking about jobs to be done. What do they mean when they say this?” And so I think taking the time to do some independent, like, learning and study, and there’s great free tools to do that, and then making sure you truly understand the business, and when you pair that confidence, right, the confidence and the conviction in your advice, because this is, like, a valid seat at the table, just as anyone else, your other kind of chief folks at the table, and so when you can bring that confidence and give the advice based on all of the knowledge, subject matter expertise, experience and judgment that you have, then you’re going to be a successful leader and, like, your voice will be required at the table. 

Shahar: And I hope that happens more and more. I think the trend is going in the right direction. So I agree with you. I think it’s increasingly like that. What are your predictions for next year in terms of corporate communications? How is the world of corporate comms going to look like in 2025? 

Roberta: Great question. I’m sure everyone will say the same thing. Just thinking about how you use more AI.  

Shahar: Do you see AI as a friend or a foe?  

Roberta: Oh, absolutely a friend. Absolutely a friend. Like, I use it all the time. We have it, like, baked into our tools at work. I use it all the time at home as well. But if you think about…. a lot of the work that we do as communicators can be more automated, and there’s no reason to be scared of that. Like, our jobs are still going to be there. We still need, again, like, this profession is grounded on common sense, experience and judgment. 

Those are things that, like, even the best, like, large language models can’t always provide. But if I can get, like, an awesome first draft of something in, like, two seconds, instead of, like, sitting and staring at a blank page with writer’s block first, then I’m going to be able to give much more valuable edits. And so I kind of laugh when people joke about, like, “Oh, you could get AI to write a press release. And then, like, your job’s going to go away.” It’s like, “Oh, we’re not going to get all the way there without a human touch.” And so the human ingenuity is still going to be at the center for communicators. But I think freeing folks’ time up to focus on the more strategic pieces of our job can only be a good thing.  

Shahar: And you’re not worried about the threats, the potential threat with AI, like, the deep fakes and the malgorithms and all that stuff…  

Roberta: Yeah, you’re totally right. There’s issues that will crop up as a result of AI that we haven’t before. But this happens with every new technology, right? So it happened when, like, the internet began We we saw with, like, the rise of the virtual reality and augmented reality and the metaverse. 

So as we get a new wave of technology, it does bring, like, a different set of issues that we as communicators need to contemplate. But I think based on all of the issues that we’ve dealt with in the past, we’re well placed to handle them. And so it’s more important than ever to stay on the top of these trends. And so I have someone in my team who’s, like, you know, wakes up every morning thinking about AI and is across, you know, the latest research in our field. 

But it’s exciting, right? Like, technology can be such a great enabler. And so I want to keep that optimism within our team and think about how can we be early adopters at the company instead of naysayers.  

Shahar: All right, we want to wrap up with a question we like to ask everybody, and we talk a lot about being “always on”, and I’m curious to hear, how do you switch off? 

Roberta: Another good question. Ha, with two small kids, the switching off… there’s not a lot of swtiching off… Not as often as I would like. Yeah, I know the problem. I do love, I like to… I like to take my six-year-old on the train. 

So I’m based here in New England and my six-year-old and I, every now and then we’ll take the train together to Manhattan, and we will just, like, have a really fun time riding the subway, looking at all the toy stores. 

And I get a lot of energy from spending that one-on-one time with him and also, like, getting to see our fun stuff on the shelves, and New York’s one of my favorite cities and so that’s something I think, you know, when you’re one-on-one with your kids, you can’t really be thinking too much about work or checking your emails. 

Probably when I’m at home, playing the piano is a great, like… again, you can’t be checking emails while you’re playing, and even though I’m, like, quite terrible and not very well practiced after all these years, I just find it a very freeing experience to be playing. 

Shahar: So music is still a big part of your life. 

Roberta: It is, it really is.  

Shahar: Roberta, thank you so much. It’s been such a pleasure speaking to you. Thanks for being with us..  

Roberta: Of course, of course. Shahar, it was great to spend the time with you. Thanks for having me on.