by Megan Noel, Global President, Corporate Affairs
The leadership communications landscape has fundamentally shifted for today’s CEOs. The CEO positioning playbook isn’t just evolving—it’s being completely rewritten in real time. With President Trump’s return to the White House, anticipated deal market acceleration, and an increasingly polarized society, the traditional formula for CEO positioning has undergone a fundamental transformation.
Golin’s just-released 2025 CEO Impact Index delivers compelling evidence: CEOs who effectively communicate their business transformation vision while navigating regulatory complexity and misinformation outperform their peers. The data is clear—companies led by top-ranking Index CEOs demonstrate superior annual share price growth and revenue performance compared to Fortune-ranked counterparts. Our groundbreaking analysis evaluates and ranks communications strategies across Fortune 500’s top 250 CEOs through eight critical dimensions.
What was once a balance of business results, higher purpose, and authentic personal stories to humanize leaders has been replaced by a focus on business fundamentals. Today’s most successful chief executives have pivoted sharply from balanced social purpose messaging to laser-focused business transformation narratives. They must navigate a more complex landscape where business transformation takes center stage, especially with the changing administration, expected opening of deal markets, and the polarized societal environment.
Here are six essential takeaways from our latest Index with actionable implications for communicators:
Insight 1: Media relations alone no longer drives CEO reputation
Media relations has long been our default reputation-building tool, but the 2025 Index shatters this comfortable assumption. While earned media remains necessary, it’s now decisively insufficient on its own. Today’s highest-performing CEOs dominate through an integrated influence ecosystem—combining strategic industry platforms, deliberate workforce engagement programs, and calculated public persona development.
What it means: The CEO visibility playbook must be completely reimagined. Communications teams fixated solely on media placements are positioning their executives to fail. Winners in 2025 will deploy a disciplined, multi-channel influence strategy where traditional media serves as just one component of a sophisticated reputation architecture. Companies must build CEO platforms across carefully selected industry forums, internal channels, and targeted external venues where the executive’s distinct voice can drive disproportionate impact.
Insight 2: LinkedIn remains CEO’s safe harbor in a fragmented social media landscape
As social media platforms grow increasingly fragmented and polarized, LinkedIn stands as CEOs’ professional safe harbor, despite only 18 percent of Index CEOs fully leveraging its potential. LinkedIn is generally a source of positive and constructive discussion among CEOs, while other channels, like X and Disqus are driving a much higher rate of negative conversation about Index CEOs.
What it means: CEOs and their communications teams should approach social channel planning and engagement with caution. LinkedIn remains a highly valuable space for CEOs to engage, but changes to fact-checking policies and algorithms across other platforms will likely lead to an increase in negative commentary about CEOs.
Insight 3: AI discussions have moved from concept to execution
AI dominated CEO media coverage in 2024, generating the highest volume across all trends for Fortune 250 CEOs. However, the narrative has dramatically evolved from conceptual possibilities to concrete implementation. Business leaders now face heightened expectations to demonstrate tangible ROI from their AI investments rather than theoretical use cases.
What it means: The AI conversation window has narrowed. CEOs must pivot from broad AI vision statements to specific, measurable business outcomes—articulating exactly how AI deployment is reducing costs, boosting productivity, enhancing customer experiences, and driving competitive advantage. The most influential leaders quantify AI’s impact while addressing implementation challenges with authenticity.
Insight 4: CEOs pivot to a results-driven approach amid scrutiny around DEI
Another critical trend in 2024 CEO coverage centered around DEI – related discussion accounted for about 10 percent of CEO coverage last year. While coverage of this topic didn’t increase, sentiment of DEI conversations dropped sharply from the first half of 2024 to the second half of the year. Legal and political pressures are forcing CEOs to rethink their approach to DEI initiatives.
What it means: CEOs should steer clear of the broad societal commentary and shift toward more focused communication on measurable outcomes and specific business impacts of their DEI commitments.,
Insight 5: Top CEOs mobilize their employees as advocates
CEOs in the Top 50 of the Index see an average employee approval rating of 76 percent, and more than 80 percent appear on Forbes’ World’s Best Employers List. Employees cannot be overlooked as a key stakeholder group and should be engaged as brand ambassadors for the company. To be an effective leader in 2025, CEOs will need to take steps to further cultivate and measure employee advocacy.
What it means: The correlation between CEO effectiveness and employee advocacy is undeniable. Top-performing CEOs recognize their internal audience as their most powerful reputation multiplier. Communications teams should develop integrated strategies that equip employees to authentically amplify the CEO’s vision while tracking sentiment through formal and informal channels. External recognition validates internal culture efforts and creates a virtuous cycle—the more employees feel valued by leadership, the more willingly they become brand champions in the marketplace.
Insight 6: Visible CEOs are associated with transformation and growth – regardless of sector
While this might not have always been the case, business transformation and corporate reputation are now inextricably linked. A clear and compelling transformation narrative benefits all CEOs, regardless of industry. Companies led by top ranking Index CEOs seem to enjoy better annual share price growth and annual revenue growth than their Fortune-ranked peers.
What it means: The data clearly shows that transformation storytelling drives tangible business results across all sectors. CEOs must articulate a distinctive vision for business evolution that resonates with investors, customers, and employees alike. Communications teams should help executives craft and amplify transformation narratives that demonstrate forward momentum while building stakeholder confidence in the company’s strategic direction—ultimately supporting both reputation and financial performance.
The bottom line: CEOs who adapt quickest to this new communications reality will gain a competitive advantage. Communicators must equip their leaders with the right strategic frameworks, messaging architecture, and engagement platforms to effectively communicate transformation stories that resonate across all stakeholder groups. The era of standalone social purpose messaging has evolved into integrated business transformation narratives that explicitly connect vision to value creation.
Learn more about the study here.