Turbulent Times: Communications and Sustainability During the COVID-19 Pandemic

How will the role of the Corporate Communications team - and its partners - evolve in the near future?

In the last 24 months of repeated disruptions, distortions and discontinuities in the business world, the role of Corporate Communications has been elevated to a critical position in the company ecosystem. Speed, calmness, accountability, flexibility, and resilience are required skills as strategic and tactical stories are carefully managed across all stakeholder groups in what can only be described as 'turbulent times.'

Join us for a wide-ranging discussion drawing on the data from The Conference Board's recent research and the front-line, practical experience of Edelman's leading Corporate Affairs practice. We will explore these topics and deliver informed insights on how the future of the Corporate Communications team – and its partners – is likely to evolve.

Ivan Pollard, Center Leader of the Marketing & Communications Center at The Conference Board, is joined by Jim O’Leary – Edelman U.S. COO, Corporate Affairs Practice Chair, and Global Chair of Impact & ESG.

How to Tell a Coherent and Authentic Sustainability Story

In this podcast, Alex Heath, Managing Director and US Head of Social Impact & Sustainability at Edelman, talks with Denise Dahlhoff, Senior Researcher, Consumer Research, about the growing expectations for companies by various stakeholders—from customers to investors to employees and beyond—to address sustainability and what that implies for telling a coherent, authentic sustainability story to different audiences. Tune in to hear about the following topics:

• What do corporate sustainability and social impact entail?
• How do employees and consumers think about sustainability?
• Does corporate purpose make employees more productive?
• How to tell a coherent sustainability story, including challenges and goals yet to be achieved, to different stakeholders?

In this episode of “Influencers,” Peter McGraw, a marketing professor at the University of Colorado Boulder and an expert on emotions and behavioral economics, talks with Denise Dahlhoff, Senior Researcher at The Conference Board, about his latest research on an underexplored topic: singles. Listen to this episode to learn about:

• The economic importance of singles and their demographic diversity
• Marketing to singles, including examples and underleveraged potential
• Different psychographic segments of singles, including eternal singles and hopeful romantics
• Opportunities for employers to better target singles

Listen to our Influencers Podcast as Mike Moran, a Senior Fellow of the M&C Center and the Chief Product Officer of SoloSegment, an AI powered martech company that predicts which content should show on your website, uses his real intelligence garnered from 30 years in the space to illuminate what you need to know about the Artificial side of intelligence.

How does the use of financial services vary across Asian, Black, Hispanic, and White (Non-Hispanic) consumers in the US, and how can companies address existing services gaps? And how do multicultural consumers use restaurants, travel, personal services, education, and other services to express their ethnic origins, and what this all means for companies as US demographics are changing? 

Listen to this conversation by Ivan Pollard, Leader of the Marketing & Communications Center, with Dana Peterson, Chief Economist, and Denise Dahlhoff, Senior Researcher, about The Conference Board’s latest findings from its multicultural research series in collaboration with General Mills.

The Conference Board's timely annual survey of C-Suite Executives is out and it provides fascinating insights for marketers and communicators. What are C-Suite executives focusing on and how will it help marketers navigate what lies ahead with more certainty?

Join Ivan Pollard, Leader of The Conference Board Marketing and Communications Center, and Denise Dahlhoff, Senior Researcher as they unveil the data from this year’s C-Suite Outlook through the lens of Marketing & Communications.

Ever since the mass adoption of all things digital, the job of a Chief Marketing Officer has become increasingly complex, changeable, and challenging.

In 2008, Professor Christine Moorman at the Fuqua School of Business, launched “The CMO Survey” to quantify these challenges and understand how CMOs around the world were feeling about them.

To discover the good news from the latest CMO Survey, join Christine and Ivan Pollard, leader of the Marketing and Communications Center at The Conference Board, as they discuss the new results and what lies ahead for marketers.

How is a company’s true value measured?  And why is there such a discrepancy in corporate valuations between Wall Street, Main Street, employees and investors?

In this informative discussion, Tim Koller, Partner and Core Leader of the Corporate Finance Practice at McKinsey & Company and co-author of the book, Valuation, helps us solve these apparent contradictions with our Marketing Institute Leader, JP Kuehlwein – and also offers his own expert guidance on how to properly assess a corporation’s value.

How does one craft the right name for a brand or business? Should one evolve and extend it over time? David Placek, Founder and President of Lexicon, boasts over 30 years’ experience in the naming business. His agency has developed some of the most famous brand names, such as Dasani, Impossible Burger, Swiffer, and Febreze.

In this fascinating conversation, The Conference Board Marketing Institute Leader, JP Kuehlwein, discusses with David how the right name can be used to tell the product’s story, and how it relates to other important branding elements like design, visual identity, and communications.

How might COVID-19 impact where, what and why we buy - even long after it’s gone? JP Kuehlwein, The Conference Board Marketing Institute leader, speaks with Paco Underhill, Founder & CEO at Envirosell, as well as a guru when it comes to the shopping environment and its impact on our behaviors, to discuss this question.

Join this conversation as Paco explains some of the instincts we all have as shoppers to help us understand how retailing might change – or not – in the near future. How do people interact with the shopping environment and the product proposition? And what can we learn from that as we try to predict what will happen next?