A single tweet tanks your stock price. Your CTO resigns unexpectedly. News of your quiet acquisition gets leaked. In these critical moments, the difference between crisis and opportunity isn’t just good PR media placements and press releases, which still matter. Today’s executives need confidantes embedded in their decision-making process before a communications challenge even materializes.

Just last month, we received three urgent calls in a single day that illustrate this evolution. A fintech client needed guidance on announcing a major acquisition, a healthtech CEO was seeking help revamping their investor narrative after board pushback and a technology CMO had just learned their CTO was departing — with only 48 hours to craft the messaging strategy. None of these scenarios appeared in any quarterly PR plan or retainer scope. And this is the new reality of strategic communications partnerships.

Last year, a CEO gave me a call. He was on vacation when his head of HR quit. I helped him get comfortable with the fact that she wasn’t going to hold onto this information until he was back and that we needed to take action. We had a trusted HR partner step in for a period of 5 months and to help hire the replacement. Having this partner in place was critical for us and the CMO during a season of major changes and announcements. It’s not what people expect of their PR partner, but we’re not the everyday partner – we’re the confidante and trusted adviser that sees strengths and weaknesses from fresh angles and helps executives hear the relevant message and find necessary support.

The Conventional Client-Agency Dynamic is Dead

When executives issue directives and agencies simply execute, companies become vulnerable. Crises don’t schedule appointments. Market perception doesn’t follow your PR calendar.

Last year, a Fortune 500 CMO watched helplessly as their HR department told employees about organizational changes without any strategic communications plan. By the time that CMO realized what was happening, employees were already posting on social media. Narrative was lost. Trust was damaged. Reputation was compromised.

Shifting from Service Provider to Strategic Confidante

Elite PR partnerships function like executive coaching relationships, not vendor arrangements. At Red Fan, we’re not order-takers; we’re strategic confidantes. This transformation requires deliberate cultivation from both sides.

One Red Fan client, a tech CEO, puts it bluntly: “Our agency knows things about our strategy before my own leadership team does, because I need their counsel before I communicate internally.”

This level of trust isn’t accidental. It’s built through intentional practices that transform the relationship.

Seven Principles for Building Your Brain Trust

1. Seek Cognitive Diversity, Not Just Industry Experience

To solve problems, don’t just evaluate agency client lists. Evaluate how they think.

At Red Fan, our focus isn’t just on sector credentials. We demonstrate how our team’s diverse backgrounds — former journalists, corporate comms strategists, data scientists, product marketing managers — create solutions that homogeneous thinking can’t match. When a nonprofit client faced an employee walkout and community concern, our nonprofit experience didn’t solve the problem. Our background and guidance in crisis communications, employee communications, legal HR expertise and community organizing created the breakthrough approach.

2. Establish Success Metrics

Impressions don’t drive business outcomes. Clip counts don’t increase valuation. Modern PR partnerships require metrics that matter.

Consider one of our tech clients who engaged us for “funding announcement support.” During onboarding, we discovered they couldn’t articulate a compelling narrative for their Series B round. Their investor deck wasn’t resonating. Their executive team was divided on messaging.

We didn’t plan an announcement. Instead, we rewrote their narrative. We facilitated leadership alignment sessions. We reconstructed their investor presentation. We prepared executives for tough investor questions. The result? Funding secured. The metrics shifted from “announcement reach” to “capital raised,” transforming how they valued our partnership. Oh, and then a press release did happen, along with advanced briefings with select media.

3. Institute Information Symmetry

Information hoarding kills effective PR. When executives withhold crucial context, whether it’s discomfort discussing weaknesses or simply forgetting what their agency doesn’t know, they sabotage their objectives.

A friend in the industry told us about a retail client who attempted to launch a sustainability initiative without revealing supply chain challenges. The campaign faced immediate backlash when environmental groups identified inconsistencies. Complete transparency would have produced a different approach — and different results.

Successful executives practice radical transparency, sharing fears, challenges and internal politics. This candor enables agencies to address unstated concerns before they become public problems.

4. Create Safe Spaces for Dissent

The most valuable communications counsel often begins with “That’s the wrong approach.” Yet many executives unconsciously bristle at this essential pushback.

Red Fan formalizes “strategic disagreement sessions” with clients. When a technology client wanted to announce layoffs as “operational efficiency improvements,” we pushed back hard. The euphemistic approach would have damaged trust and credibility. Our dissent led to a more transparent narrative that preserved the client’s reputation despite difficult news.

Executives who consistently embrace constructive confrontation achieve better outcomes than those who surround themselves with yes-people — whether they are within their organizations or their agencies.

5. Balance Accessibility with Intentionality

An always-on culture creates a paradox: Constant availability diminishes strategic value. Responsiveness matters, but successful partnerships distinguish between urgent needs and important discussions.

One energy CEO schedules “strategic communications time” with us on his calendar — protected hours for thoughtful discussion rather than reactive exchanges. This discipline transforms our partnership from transactional request-fulfillment to collaborative strategy development.

When a major federal policy change threatened the company’s business model, this protected thinking time allowed us to develop a comprehensive influence strategy rather than simply reacting to the news cycle.

6. Normalize Productive Failure

Communications strategy involves experiments that sometimes fail. How executives respond to these disappointments defines the relationship’s potential.

When a software client’s product launch generated less coverage than expected, their CMO didn’t demand explanation. She asked, “What did we learn, and how do we apply it?” This approach encouraged innovation rather than defensive positioning.

The next launch incorporated those lessons, resulting in coverage that exceeded all benchmarks. PR partnerships transform when executives shift from demanding perfection to expecting learning.

At this year’s SXSW, I listened to the CMO from GoDaddy point out what she has learned from taking an old-school approach on a big campaign launch at the Super Bowl. Her takeaway was we’re stuck in the old mode of doing things and watching others; she saw that sneak peeks and campaigns that start before the Super Bowl and continue beyond have more legs and ROI. Things will change going forward, and she’s making sure her C-suite and board understand why and what they can expect from that change.

7. Position Yourself as the Emergency Partner

Your PR agency should be your first call in a crisis, not your last. From leadership transitions to potential crises, strategic communications partners provide critical perspective when you need it most.

Take a look at these real scenarios we’ve navigated at Red Fan:

• When a software client discovered mid-deal that their acquisition target had undisclosed compliance issues, we pivoted from planning a triumphant announcement to crafting a strategy that acknowledged complications while maintaining investor confidence. The situation required complete discretion: Even the client’s internal comms team wasn’t initially briefed due to legal sensitivities.
• Another executive called us before talking to his own leadership team when facing the delicate task of unifying two competing sales divisions with different compensation models and territorial disputes. “I need an outside facilitator who understands our business but isn’t embroiled in the politics,” he explained. We designed and led a two-day offsite that transformed territorial competitors into collaborative partners under a new, unified vision and reward system that they jointly presented to management.
• An agritech CMO contacted us within minutes of learning her CEO was being replaced — before the news had reached her own team. “I need to process what this means for our entire narrative before I can lead my team through this transition,” she explained. Within hours, we had developed a comprehensive stakeholder communication plan, messaging frameworks and a timeline that helped her navigate the transition with confidence.

Red Fan helps CMOs navigate these challenging moments, especially when they’re too underwater to brief their internal teams on sensitive topics. We become the confidante, the sounding board and the strategic execution team for communications that require both discretion and expertise.

The Future of Executive-Agency Partnerships

The line between internal communications leadership and external agency counsel is disappearing. Agencies that will thrive are those that evolve beyond service provision to true strategic partnership. They become not just the voice of the company but also trusted confidantes who help shape that voice from inception.

Forward-thinking executives treat PR agencies as extensions of their strategic brain trust and understand that in today’s environment, your PR agency shouldn’t just amplify your voice: They should help you find that voice, refine it and leverage it to achieve business objectives that transcend traditional communications metrics.

Executives who will win are those who view agencies not as implementation resources but as essential strategic partners for their most critical communications challenges.

Choose your PR partner carefully. Your success might depend on it.