Vanessa Liell. Partner at boutique corporate advisory, Orizontas, discusses why bridging this divide between marketing and corporate communications is a critical leadership issue.
Historically, marketing and corporate affairs were separated for sensible reasons. Marketing focused on reach and commercial outcomes, while corporate affairs managed risk, reputation, and stakeholder relationships.
But today, with sustainability, regulation, politics, and brand all colliding in real-time, that separation is costing organisations real outcomes. In a world where campaigns can trigger regulatory scrutiny overnight and reputation is shaped at the speed marketing operates, the question isn’t why these functions don’t work together. It’s whether organisations, agencies, and leaders can still afford not to.
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Obviously you can’t have 100 technical experts within your organisation, but I think the lack of access to academics, to scientists, to key people will hold us back in the complexity of the environment that we’re working in.
Transcription (Edited):
Darren Woolley: Hi, I’m Darren Woolley, founder and CEO of Trinity P3 Marketing Management Consultancy, and welcome to Managing Marketing, a weekly podcast where we discuss the issues and opportunities facing marketing, media, and advertising with industry thought leaders and practitioners.
Historically, marketing and corporate affairs were separate for sensible reasons. Marketing focused on reach and commercial outcomes, while corporate affairs managed risk, reputation, and stakeholder relationships. But today, with sustainability, regulation, politics, and brand all colliding in real time, that separation is costing organisations real outcomes.
In a world where campaigns can trigger regulatory scrutiny overnight and reputation is shaped at the speed that marketing operates, the question isn’t why these functions don’t work together, it’s whether organisations, agencies, and leaders can still afford not to. To discuss why bridging this divide is a critical leadership issue, please welcome partner at boutique corporate advisory Horizontis, Vanessa Liell. Welcome, Vanessa.
Vanessa Liell: Hi Darren, it’s great to be here.
Darren Woolley: I’d like to start if you don’t mind by asking how you define corporate or strategic communications versus brand and marketing.
Vanessa Liell: That’s a really good question, and starting with those definitions is fundamental to this conversation. I am a public relations and strategic communications professional who has been practising for nearly 30 years. In my world, the definition of public relations hasn’t changed: it’s about building a relationship between an organisation and its stakeholders. Regardless of global disruption, building that relationship remains foundational.
In contrast, marketing is about connecting products and services to customers to drive growth. It focuses on reach, conversion, preference, and commercial outcomes. Typically, these two functions have run separate, side-by-side operations with different mandates and disciplines, intersecting only at sequential points.
The Blurring Lines of Media Channels
Darren Woolley: It would be fair to say that technology has significantly changed the channels both functions use. Traditionally, media relations meant corporate communications focused on journalists as primary stakeholders to get a story reported. Now, technology has expanded that landscape, allowing consumer journalists to emerge and widening the audience. Agencies are now actively using influencers, and even governments invite these influencers into budget lockups ahead of time. From my perspective, those traditional lines are clearly blurring.
Vanessa Liell: Yes, that’s exactly right. This changing environment has fundamentally affected how both marketing and corporate affairs practice. The real issue we face isn’t merely a marketing and communication challenge; it is a structured systems and leadership challenge. Unfortunately, marketing and communications functions are frequently structured for the way the world used to be, rather than evolving for how the world is today.
Three major environmental factors have shifted over time. First, speed has changed significantly because marketing has always operated at a very fast pace to get campaigns to market, whereas corporate affairs traditionally ran at a much slower pace where there was ample time to analyse corporate risks and evaluate stakeholder positions. Second, there has been a major shift in control over channels because pre-digital media had distinct timelines that allowed corporate affairs time to engage, brief, and control distribution, whereas today we operate with real-time speed, immense transparency, and heightened scrutiny. Finally, increased regulation impacting communications means that marketing campaigns can very quickly cross the line into becoming a corporate reputational risk.
Where corporate affairs used to act as the final review step at the very end of a timeline, successful organisations and agencies are now baking reputation management right into the beginning of the creative process. This ensures potential issues are thoroughly considered before a campaign launches, leaving everyone prepared for both proactive and reactive scenarios. The days when marketing was immune to reputational fallout, or when corporate affairs acted strictly like the police rather than creators, are completely over.
Shifting from Control to Responsiveness
Darren Woolley: It’s interesting you say that. An old-school corporate communications professional once told me that it wasn’t possible for them to work with marketing because marketing is all about pushing the envelope and creating risk, while corporate affairs is focused on keeping things steady and minimising risk. That reflects the legacy belief that organisations can maintain absolute control. Today, while a degree of control still exists, the primary requirement is knowing how to respond effectively to the marketplace in real time, rather than always assuming you can dictate terms from the front foot strategically.
Vanessa Liell: That’s exactly right. The reality is that sustainability, trust, and reputation now live directly inside marketing channels. For example, if a company makes sustainability claims, those claims will face immediate review and reaction from both regulators and the market. We see plenty of examples where price claims made in tightly regulated markets face instant scrutiny from regulatory bodies and consumer groups.
Historically, these claims could be made with minimal consequences, but today there is intense scrutiny at every level. Organisations frequently operate with marketing driving creative momentum and corporate affairs managing the resulting consequences. The underlying risk is that no single leader is held accountable for the holistic outcome, and legacy structures continue to hold businesses back.
The Risk of “No Comment” and the Information Vacuum
Darren Woolley: I can share an example from our own experience. We are frequently engaged to manage agency tender processes where a high-profile brand is choosing a new partner, which naturally generates significant interest in the marketplace. Our advice to marketers is to always be on the front foot with a pre-agreed position explaining why the change is occurring. However, corporate affairs often steps in and insists on maintaining a strict stance of “no comment” to minimise risk.
Invariably, we see this backfire. By saying nothing, they create an information vacuum that is immediately filled by external opinions across the internet or the wider industry. We continuously advise clients that while they don’t need to shout about the process from the rooftops, they must have a prepared statement ready so that if the media reports on it, they fill that vacuum with their own planned narrative.
Vanessa Liell: You are exactly right, Darren. That situation highlights traditional corporate affairs thinking where leaders assumed they could fully control the message. That is no longer the case; today, everyone is a stakeholder with a voice, a platform, and a channel. It is vital that your message comes directly from you so you can clearly articulate your perspective.
There was a time when corporate affairs was expected to deliver only carefully crafted, definitive statements, and companies would wait until they had every answer finalised. In today’s landscape, no one has all the answers upfront. It is perfectly acceptable to share an interim pathway where you communicate what you currently know, what you don’t know, and what steps you are taking next.
Consumers and stakeholders have very little tolerance for “no comment” or the withholding of information. We live in an information-hungry environment that is plagued by misinformation and disinformation. People want to go straight to the primary, authoritative source. If that source is you, it is entirely in your commercial interest to openly communicate your position and point of view, even if you are still working through the details.
Darren Woolley: Absolutely. When an organisation says “no comment,” the market automatically assumes something sinister has occurred or is being actively covered up. The public has been trained to suspect the worst when a brand is unwilling to share information. Admitting that you don’t know everything yet feels human and carries a powerful sense of authenticity.
Humanising Crisis Management
Vanessa Liell: It is highly reasonable. I frequently counsel companies navigating cyber security challenges and active cyber-attacks. High-profile corporate data breaches are no longer a matter of “if,” but “when”. In my view, targeted brands often just happen to be the brand of that particular day; these sophisticated global security risks are rarely a reflection of a single company’s defence mechanisms failing.
Where companies succeed or fail dramatically is in how they choose to respond. Those that try to withhold information perform poorly, whereas those that show their humanity by letting people know what they know, what they don’t know, and what they are actively working on navigate the crisis well.
What is incredible is that consumers are generally very forgiving if they feel they are being treated respectfully and honestly. While there are always sensitive security parameters that cannot be legally shared, there is always enough data you can say to help people understand your mitigation plan. The public understands that these modern situations are far more complex than a simple yes or no answer.
Information versus Communication
Darren Woolley: To your point about organisational structures, is this old-school behaviour driven by the fact that corporate communications often sits in the C-suite right alongside legal counsel or compliance departments? Lawyers are naturally inclined to view the world through highly defined parameters where control is possible, so their default stance is often to say nothing.
I recall a situation where I was asked for advice, and a room full of lawyers was trying to draft an apology that avoided actually apologising. The resulting statement looked like an obvious cover-up. The issue is that lawyers draft for the courts, completely ignoring how ordinary people consume and perceive communication in the real world.
Vanessa Liell: You’ve raised two distinct issues there: the difference between information and communication, and the leadership and structural challenges that sit at the board and CEO level.
First, let’s define the clear difference between information and communication, which can be difficult for non-experts to distinguish. Information is typically what an organisation wants to say, which usually stems from internal functions like legal counsel or marketing teams. Communication is what the audience actually engages with. I see many organisations focusing entirely on what they feel they need to tell the market, without checking where that message will actually land.
Effective communication requires an audience-first perspective where you must look at exactly who your audiences are, analyse what drives them, identify their barriers, and clarify exactly what action you want them to take, crafting the message to relate directly to those parameters. This is where sophisticated communication leadership is required. It is critical that communicators respect the legal and compliance advice provided by other functions, but they must find a middle ground to ensure that advice is translated into messages that the audience can understand, engage with, and respect.
Overcoming Legacy Structures and Silos
Darren Woolley: This leads directly to the leadership and structural issues embedded at the board and CEO level. Most organisations are still designed for a simpler world, and those legacy structures continue to exist. Functions like marketing, communications, legal, and HR all operate with separate reporting lines, separate budgets, different timeframes, and entirely different scorecards.
Vanessa Liell: This structure drives highly predictable, counterproductive behaviour where marketing moves exceptionally fast to build creative momentum, corporate affairs is brought in far too late, forcing them to manage a purely reactive scenario, and frustration mounts on both sides until true risk and reputation are owned by nobody.
Significant structural shifts must happen if we are going to grow our organisations ambitiously while successfully managing increased risk, reputation management, and public scrutiny. First, CEOs and boards must stop treating marketing and communications as sequential functions and ensure they work together right from the inception of a campaign. Second, leadership must expect challenge early, rather than seeking reassurance late, which means embracing difficult conversations at the very beginning of the creative process regarding the truth of product claims, sustainability parameters, and how the message will land with regulators and diverse audiences. Finally, boards must hold leaders collectively accountable for overarching business outcomes rather than isolated functional performance, because rigid reporting lines and constrained individual budgets discourage people from thinking about the big picture and collaborating across functions.
Navigating Conflicting Corporate Messages
Darren Woolley: A perfect example of this functional conflict is playing out in the market right now. In an environment where the cost of living is high, marketing teams focus heavily on great service and heavily discounted pricing to drive consumer impact. At the exact same time, corporate leaders are announcing major staff layoffs on the basis of AI and technology adoption, while talking up record corporate profits to satisfy shareholders. These two corporate messages feel entirely uncoordinated and in direct conflict with one another.
Vanessa Liell: Absolutely. This highlights the shift in our environment, because there was a day when corporations could tightly control the flow of information. No one easily knew what a CEO was paid, and the public didn’t have real-time visibility into internal downsizing. If a company didn’t explicitly announce layoffs, employees weren’t all over mainstream media explaining that they had lost their jobs.
Today, we live in a completely transparent environment where corporate downsizing is visible instantly on platforms like LinkedIn and Reddit, highlighting the human impact in real time. Therefore, navigating structural change without communicating holistically to all stakeholders is a major risk, and it is exactly where marketing and communications must work hand in hand.
Corporate affairs must communicate business strategy to the market, and businesses legitimately exist to deliver long-term profit to their shareholders. However, the impact a company has on its employees, its customers, and the community must be part of that strategic consideration. If marketing is preparing to launch a national value campaign addressing the cost-of-living crisis, it must be carefully contextualised within the broader public perception of how that organisation is operating as a whole. If you choose not to openly discuss what your company is doing, the internet will happily fill that communication gap for you. The good, the bad, and the honesty of your operations will be judged in real time by consumers, and “no comment” is never an acceptable answer.
Darren Woolley: This dynamic underpins a broader trend we’ve observed for a number of years: the widespread loss of public trust in traditional institutions like the political system, religious organisations, and big business. This loss of trust makes it more critical than ever for businesses to open up and remain transparent within legal boundaries.
Vanessa Liell: That’s correct, because trust is built through long-term relationships, and you cannot successfully build a relationship during a crisis when you suddenly need it. We often say that trust takes decades to build and can be lost in a single moment; today, that cycle has accelerated dramatically. The speed at which an organisation can gain or lose trust is shorter than ever, meaning businesses must continuously think about how they are actively building relationships with all stakeholders on an ongoing basis. You build those bonds by taking a genuine interest in your customers, your investors, and the media, and by communicating openly, honestly, and humanly.
Interestingly, while people have lost trust in macro institutions, they are increasingly seeking out traditional reference points for verified facts. We see an ongoing reliance on mainstream editorial media, government portals, and authoritative corporate voices to cut through the noise of misinformation. This makes it more critical than ever for corporate institutions to be proactive and transparent.
Darren Woolley: The scope of issues has also expanded beyond simple financial performance into complex areas like sustainability, environmental impact, and Indigenous rights. Managing and tracking these issues is incredibly complex because you are dealing with a broad spectrum of highly passionate stakeholder groups across social media.
Vanessa Liell: It is, and it points to a fundamental shift in how modern businesses must operate. Historically, companies could deliver short-term profit for shareholders with very few resource limitations or societal obligations. Today, true sustainability means evaluating how an organisation can deliver profit not just in the next quarter, but far into the future.
In previous generations, companies relied on tactical initiatives like launching a corporate foundation, donating to charity, or sponsoring a local sports team to build community trust. Today, they must think long-term about their direct systemic impact on their workforce, society, and the environment. If a business fails to contribute positively, it will be judged harshly by consumers and investors alike, directly impacting sales and viability. Forward-thinking organisations cannot just look at quarterly bottom lines; they must embed long-term societal contribution right into their core strategies and daily operations.
The Horizontis Model: Breaking Agency P&L Barriers
Darren Woolley: Looking at PR agencies in the current marketplace, we see immense fragmentation in how public relations is applied. Some agencies focus strictly on events, others look exclusively at managing social media influencers and content creators, and another tier specialises purely in crisis management. Horizontis was set up with a fundamentally different operating model to solve these challenges, wasn’t it? Can you explain the strategic thinking behind it?
Vanessa Liell: Yes, we constructed Horizontis to directly solve the operational silos we observed in both client organisations and traditional agencies. Horizontis was founded to work directly with boards and CEOs on climate, political, and reputational risk. Our services deliberately span issues and crisis management, corporate affairs, public relations, and high-level advisory on government relations, policy, and regulatory affairs. Recognising the critical role that creative execution plays in shifting public reputation and influencing regulatory outcomes in a cluttered market, we also launched an internal creative agency within our group called “Rethink Everything”.
What makes our model unique is the composition of our round table. My business partners include a former politician and a former political advisor who bring bipartisan expertise from both sides of politics. They sit alongside myself as a corporate affairs and strategic communications expert, and our Chief Creative Officer, Mike Spakowski. From the very beginning of any client brief, all of those distinct heads sit around the table together.
This fixes the systemic problems seen in traditional holding groups, where these essential disciplines are separated by rigid P&L structures, separate client scopes, and conflicting financial incentives. In the old model, if corporate affairs and creative teams worked together at all, it was strictly at the very beginning or the tail end of a project—never step-by-step and side-by-side.
Darren Woolley: So the exact operational gap that exists inside most corporate businesses is what you’ve integrated within your own advisory and consultancy to ensure complete strategic alignment.
Driving Behavioural Change Across Disciplines
Vanessa Liell: We have, but achieving this required us to deeply challenge our own behavioural habits and rethink how integrated campaigns are executed. First, it required our creative team to stop viewing corporate affairs as a “brake” that slows down momentum or complicates ideas. They have had to learn to involve us early whenever product claims, corporate purpose, or social content matter.
As communication professionals, we are experts in messaging, but we are not experts in everything else. The real benefit of our model is that I work day-to-day with technical experts in policy, regulation, climate change, and sustainability. That provides incredible confidence as a communicator, knowing our campaigns are built on a sound, verifiable footing. It genuinely concerns me when I see branding or marketing professionals posturing as sustainability experts without any deep technical backing or respect for academics, scientists, and policy parameters.
Our creative team now understands that speed without credibility creates immense commercial risk. There is distinct value in being thorough and taking the necessary time upfront. On the flip side, I’ve had to adapt my behaviour as a corporate affairs leader. I must engage early with the commercial and creative ambition by listening first, understanding what we are trying to achieve, and figuring out how to contribute constructively without blockading the idea. My role is to help build the strategy at the inception phase, rather than merely shaping the perimeter as a late reviewer or acting as a clean-up crew at the end of a botched campaign.
It requires a lot of hard work, continuous learning, and deep respect for each other’s disciplines. I’ll be honest, Darren, it was initially awkward because I had never worked hand-in-hand with a Chief Creative Officer or embedded policy specialists directly into a creative team like this before.
The Power of Inclusivity at the Round Table
Darren Woolley: You’ve created an authentic round table where everyone sits as an equal partner. Part of driving true collaboration is being inclusive and open to multiple distinct perspectives from the start. How do senior leaders and external experts respond to this setup, and what do you need to focus on to make it work?
Vanessa Liell: Making it work is entirely a matter of leadership and structural economics. The immediate issue within traditional agencies is that separate P&Ls and isolated scopes incentivise siloed behaviour. To fix this, you must build a structure that creates an open space for senior leaders from different disciplines to collaborate without immediate output pressure. We are living in a time of tumultuous change, and if we want to address it ambitiously, the commercial incentives must reward collaboration.
The other side of the equation is purely human leadership. It requires stepping back, changing behaviours, and recognising that we all have a lot to learn from other disciplines. We established Horizontis on that exact premise, ensuring all necessary skills are in the room at every single stage of a campaign. It certainly comes with hiccups, challenges, and occasional conflicts, but it has been entirely worth the investment. The speed, quality, and overall cost-effectiveness of the campaigns we deliver as an integrated group are incredibly exciting.
Case Study: Achieving Regulatory Reform through Creative Campaigns
Darren Woolley: I’d love it if you could share a practical example of how this integrated model has delivered results for a client.
Vanessa Liell: I can share a case study from this past year where we worked extensively with a major peak body and industry association seeking regulatory policy alignment between state and federal governments regarding sustainability.
Due to a highly fragmented policy environment, existing regulations were actively conflicting with their intended goals. Subsidies and structural incentives were working directly against the government’s own stated agendas of localised manufacturing and reducing residential carbon footprints. It wasn’t an explosive or highly visible crisis; it was simply a low-priority issue on a packed political schedule. Traditional lobbying and standard government relations pathways had been entirely exhausted over a long period without any effect. The client needed to significantly amplify the impact of their message, and that is where our integrated round table stepped in.
My political business partners and I thoroughly diagnosed the regulatory landscape and briefed our creative team on the exact barriers, stakeholder mindsets, and policy nuances. This insight allowed the creative team to distill a highly complex technical issue into an exceptionally simple, impactful national campaign.
We executed a fast, highly targeted eight-week campaign that integrated several key elements. We ran national integrated advertising alongside hyper-targeted digital and social media campaigns aimed specifically at key electorates. We complemented the paid media by placing authoritative opinion pieces in tier-one mainstream editorial media, and we deployed comprehensive stakeholder relations information packs directly to key decision-makers.
By simplifying the narrative and actively engaging consumers to show a clear shift in voter sentiment, the campaign successfully established a political imperative. We achieved the desired regulatory and policy changes at both the state and federal levels in just eight weeks.
Darren Woolley: What I love about that example is that it highlights how government policies are often drafted without fully understanding the unintended consequences on the ground. Because a government’s legislative schedule is always packed, going back to fix a legacy error remains a very low priority unless you build an undeniable imperative to act.
Your campaign successfully drove that imperative and forced the issue higher up the political agenda. It is a fascinating demonstration of using an advertising campaign to achieve regulatory change, which simply could not happen without both sides of the fence working together. On one hand, you had a deep understanding of the political agenda, and on the other, you used marketing communications to show how shifting voter sentiment makes fixing the policy a worthwhile win for the government.
Treating Politicians as a Consumer Audience
Vanessa Liell: Exactly. The modern environment is far more politicised, regulated, and scrutinised than ever before. A factor that agencies often overlook is that politicians have an immense volume of competing issues to manage. When you want to drive change for a single issue, you have to treat Members of Parliament almost like a consumer audience. You cannot automatically assume they understand the technical nuances or the long-term significance of your specific sector’s problem.
That is where the beauty of combining creativity and communication comes in: distilling information into simple, highly impactful messaging is just as critical for political audiences as it is for everyday consumers. In this case study, the client had previously relied entirely on traditional, isolated corporate affairs and government relations pathways, which kept them stuck.
Conversely, if a creative agency tries to launch a commercial or sustainability campaign without embedding regulatory and corporate affairs expertise at the absolute beginning of the strategy, they take on massive risks. Our model allows us to shape ideas and identify pitfalls early in a collaborative, constructive way. It ensures the creative output is right on the money commercially, while completely mitigating regulatory scrutiny or public backlash before it happens. Running a campaign that triggers a negative regulatory reaction after the fact is an incredibly expensive mistake for a brand.
Darren Woolley: I can imagine that working on these complex briefs is incredibly motivating for your creative teams and creative leadership. Creative professionals love nothing more than sinking their teeth into solving massive, multi-layered problems. Distilling commercial, political, and industrial complexity into a single, elegant piece of creative that shifts national policy is an extraordinary achievement.
Investing in Technical Capability within Agencies
Vanessa Liell: It is a fantastic learning experience for all of us, and that is the real challenge for our industry moving forward: throwing open the doors to what we can learn by actively working together. When you bring together capable people with deep expertise, things can move exceptionally fast. Our creative team feels this setup has significantly benefited their output. It adds a few more steps and a lot more reading to their process, but it gives them immense confidence because they can test their creative directions against real-time feedback from our internal policy experts before the work ever reaches the client.
What I would really like to see moving forward is a serious, proper investment in true technical capability within creative and communication agencies. Modern corporations already do this well; their internal communication and marketing teams work daily side-by-side with sustainability and technical experts. Agencies need to increase their seriousness about the level of technical expertise they hold or can readily access, particularly around critical macro areas like the energy transition, consumer rights, and First Nations affairs.
While an agency obviously cannot employ a hundred different technical specialists full-time, a total lack of structured access to academics, scientists, and industry experts will hold us back in a complex environment. This comes back to a fundamental respect for discipline. In the sustainability space, for example, it genuinely concerns me when marketing and branding professionals position themselves as sustainability experts without any deep technical background. We cannot responsibly advise clients in this modern landscape without constructing our teams to ensure technical accuracy is embedded at the very beginning of our campaigns.
Darren Woolley: I completely agree with you. Thank you so much, Vanessa, for coming in. This conversation has been fabulous, fascinating, and highly illuminating, and I want to thank you for taking the time and joining us on Managing Marketing.
Vanessa Liell: It’s been great to be here. Thanks so much, Darren.
Darren Woolley: Just one question before you go: what would you say, looking back on the work that you’re doing now, would be the one thing that’s given you the greatest sense of achievement?
