The Briefing.
A research note on leadership communications from Adventurous: the studies worth trusting, what they mean in practice, and who moved. Every edition is archived here.
The CCO job is growing faster than the budget behind it
65.9% of chief communications officers say their remit widened over two years and 45.9% say the resources did not follow. Headcount growth and budget increases both fell against Page's 2025 survey. Plus the report worth reading and a comms move.
Is it geopolitics, or is it economics?
Geopolitical risk has topped the Oxford-GlobeScan corporate affairs survey for seven years running, and this year it did not move, holding at 76 per cent. What changed is what the category is made of. Plus two reports worth reading and a comms move.
Where should communications sit?
Microsoft, SC Johnson and Meta all moved communications next to legal, public affairs or sustainability in one week. The common feature is adjacency, and the combined seat it produces has come with a wider brief rather than a narrower one. Plus two reports worth reading and the month's comms moves.
When faster outreach starts to cost relationships to journalists.
53% of journalists oppose AI generated pitches, and they are now saying so on the record, by name. A cheap pitch does not read as efficiency to the person receiving it. Plus two reports worth reading and the month's comms moves.
Comms teams are engaged and burning out at the same time.
88% of communicators call themselves engaged, 81% report burnout, up 22 points in a year. The driver the researchers name is relational, not workload. Plus two reports worth reading and the month's CCO moves.
Most communications teams cannot prove engagement leads to action.
62% of communicators say meaningful engagement means an employee doing something; 8% can show whether it happened. The measure has to exist before the content does. Plus two reports worth reading and the month's comms moves.
More communication is not the same as being understood.
Generative tools made producing communications cheap and did nothing for being understood. What closes that gap is decided before anything is written. Plus three reports worth reading and the month's comms moves.
A change of leadership tests what a communications programme is built on.
Lululemon's comms chief leaves four days before a new chief executive starts. The useful question is not who replaces him, but what survives him. Plus the reports worth reading and the month's comms moves.
Employees moved on AI before leadership's story did.
74% of frontline staff now use AI at work regularly, yet only a third find their leadership's AI message clear. The gap is credibility, not wording. Plus four reports worth reading and the month's CCO moves.
The year the CEO trusted comms, and the year that trust gets tested.
Only 2% of Fortune 1000 comms leaders report falling chief executive confidence, down from 13%. The next test of that trust is the AI claim made in a leader's name. Plus four reports worth reading and the month's CCO moves.