Despite Needing to Communicate More, Businesses are Communicating Less. How to Remedy This Communications Paradox.
Businesses today are operating in a polycrisis environment characterized by geopolitical instability, societal division and rapid AI transformation. These conditions heighten uncertainty, accelerate misinformation, and intensify stakeholder scrutiny, which can drive customers, partners, talent, and investors toward safer, more transparent alternatives.
Now more than ever, effective communications are required to build trust, reduce uncertainty, and align stakeholders. Clear and consistent messaging helps businesses explain decisions, manage misinformation, reassure stakeholders, and maintain credibility. Otherwise, confusion and distrust naturally arise, which can increase operational and reputational risks.
However, according to the Ipsos Reputation Council Report 2025, research that “captures the candid perspectives of 161 senior corporate communicators across 19 global markets,” businesses are communicating less. Only one-in-five (21%) Council Members prefer to speak out on potentially divisive issues, a trend the firm describes as the “rise of strategic silence.”
In an increasingly polarized world, once benign issues like the environment and public health now generate backlash. In response, businesses are shifting from the corporate activism practiced in recent years to a deliberate, risk-assessed decision not to engage on issues unless they are core to the business.
Compounding these challenges is the disruption wrought by bots. United Airlines, Starbucks and Cracker Barrel are recent examples of companies whose operations and reputations were compromised by events that didn’t originate with them, but whose scale, intensity and consensus were distorted by bots. Before the central facts became clear, the follow-on media coverage enhanced the profile and credibility of each event.
The antidote to this paralysis is embracing a paradigm shift enabled by modern AI – adaptive influence. This approach moves beyond static crisis plans to dynamic, AI-powered strategies that evolve alongside shifting narratives. Historically, communicators faced a brutal trade-off: sacrifice accuracy for speed, or relevance for quality. They simply lacked the tools to process volatility faster than the news cycle.
An AI platform developed by communications strategists changes this calculus. Lancea analyzes and informs narrative strategies, then simulates audience adoption barriers in real-time, allowing teams to stress-test strategies against potential risks before they act. This gives communicators the confidence they need to break their "strategic silence," engaging stakeholders with the speed of AI and the indispensable value of human judgement and accountability.
The ability to assess risks and engage stakeholders with optimal efficiency is critical for a company playing offense. Take Apple’s 2024 launch of the iPad Pro. Intended to demonstrate the device’s all-in-one resources for use by creative people, the company’s 'Crush' advertisement was immediately seized upon by critics who reframed it as evidence of technology’s ability to supplant human creativity.
Before the company could contextualize the intent of the advertisement, the opposing narrative calcified and the launch of a flagship product was eclipsed by controversy. Apple, whose iconic 1984 advertisement championed individual creativity and breaking free from the technological control of IBM, issued a rare public apology. “We missed the mark,” the statement read.
The same ability to assess risks and engage stakeholders is equally critical for a company playing defense. Take Boeing’s 2024 door plug blowout and subsequent safety inquiries. No doubt concerned about the legal liability arising from public statements immediately following the uncontrolled decompression of a 737 MAX 9 aircraft, Boeing failed to promote a positive narrative. As a result, the prevailing news and social media coverage portrayed the company as untrustworthy, causing reputational damage that has outlasted the initial event.
In both examples, Lancea could have continuously mapped the narrative landscape, while detecting dominant cultural frames, sensitivities, and latent anxieties. It, too, could have identified audiences primed to reinterpret intent negatively, including journalists, activists, government offices or competitors capable of weaponizing a message. Not least, the platform could have predicted the barriers of acceptance among individual stakeholder groups, and demonstrate where silence, delay, or over-lawyering created a reputational vacuum.
To be clear, no AI tool diminishes the value of a skilled communicator. Human judgment, political nuance, ethical accountability and the pattern recognition honed through lived experience are critical assets to any business, none of which are replicable by technology. Ditto the ability to engage stakeholders and to own decisions well beyond simulations.
Rather, Lancea is an additional resource that can be used to practice the adaptive influence today’s polycrisis environment requires. Whether a business is playing offense or defense, businesses need to manage uncertainty, misinformation and stakeholder scrutiny with dynamic communications strategies – even when addressing core issues.
Strategic silence is no longer an option.
Bob Knott is a strategic advisor with KRG Advisors and Gregory Young is CEO of Lancea.
Despite Needing to Communicate More, Businesses are Communicating Less. How to Remedy This Communications Paradox.
