Somebody at your company is about to be asked for a podcast, a byline or a panel. They will say yes, because they’re a good colleague. They might even be excited for some exposure. After all, this is the first time they’ve been asked to represent the company through an external channel.

Let’s say they take the opportunity. They’re a natural on the podcast—confident and comfortable with the host with clear messaging about your company’s product strategy. It publishes, they promote on their LinkedIn, your company page reposts it. It received moderate engagement from your followers.

And then… nothing.

It was just a one-off. Nobody documented the opportunity, the message or the channel and sought to replicate or amplify the content. After go-live, the effort virtually fizzled, and no one involved knew who was accountable for which activity.

This is only partially a communications and marketing problem. It’s also an expectation management gap that traces to the highest levels of the company. The management team was never given clear guidelines on thought leadership objectives or roles.

You have seen this accountability failure in other places. Nobody can say who owns product naming, so three teams name it three ways. Nobody owns analyst relations, so the analyst hears from whoever happened to answer the email. Spokesperson roles reflect the same gap, but with more exposure, because the missing name is a person’s face.

Most companies have never done this. And the impact of doing nothing doesn’t hurt right away. It shows up 18 months later, usually while something important is happening.

 

The clock starts earlier than you think

If an exit is the strategy, spokesperson capability is a management team requirement, not a marketing preference.

The reason is timing. The analyst who takes your CISO’s call. The reporter who knows your CTO by name and texts before filing. The conference committee that invites your CFO back a second year. None of that gets built during a quiet period. It accumulates over quarters, in small increments, by people who were told it was part of their job.

A clearly defined spokesperson strategy is also essential to your brand’s AI visibility. AI search engines evaluate your brand’s third-party credibility—awards, rankings, media coverage, customer reviews—as well as your top executives’ exposure. If your bench of experts is largely absent from external channels like bylines, speaking engagements, awards, podcasts or media interviews, you’re missing a crucial opportunity to build authority in AI search.

Trust compounds. Silence doesn’t. Buyers can feel it, too.

 

A favor is not a role

It’s easy to feel like nothing is wrong when opportunities organically reach your team. Consider your last media or speaking opportunities. How did they come to you? Which topics did they cover? Were you on autopilot fielding the requests or did they map to a centralized thought leadership strategy signed off by your CEO?

In some cases, you may have created demand for a spokesperson who isn’t actually bought into the strategy. Every request feels like a small imposition. Every “yes” is a personal accommodation. Marketing asks the CTO for a podcast. He eventually says yes, but only after questioning the strategy. PR asks the CISO for a byline. She says yes, but isn’t available for at least four weeks. Next month, the same seemingly random asks, the same negotiations.

Then a busy quarter arrives and all of it stops at once. Nobody refused an opportunity, but it quietly got deprioritized, because it was never formalized at the marketing level or assigned as a core duty to the spokesperson.

Visibility that lifts a company cannot run on goodwill. It has to sit in the job description with hours attached and a line in the performance review. That changes what you are asking for. You stop requesting favors and start holding people to something you agreed on together.

It also changes who says yes. An executive will protect a responsibility. Nobody protects a favor.

 

The five pillars every spokesperson role has to specify

1. The pillar they own. The one thing the market should associate with them and no one else on your team. Choose it from where they are already effective, not from their title. The org chart tells you who reports to whom. It does not tell you who is already resonating with your target buyer. Which personalities are sought out by your customers to influence a deal?
2. The commitment, in hours per month. Put it in the job description: “10% of your time will be reserved for representing the company in public channels, including but not limited to media interviews, speaking engagements, podcast appearances or contributed content.” And what those hours buy. Two interviews. One conference. A standing analyst briefing. Four posts. Turnaround time on reviews. Vague commitments are the first thing cut.
3. The support behind them. Make it clear they’ll have a team to help drive performance. Outline who is drafting content, owning prep, securing opportunities, and briefing them on the reporter before the call. An executive who has to start from a blank page will stop. This is the item companies skip, and it decides whether any of the rest survives.
4. How it is measured, and where it sits in the review. If it never comes up in a performance conversation, you have assigned a suggestion, not an objective. Thought leadership exposure fuels brand authority (measured in AI visibility, company rankings, content engagement) and brand equity (market share, excess share of voice, valuations).
5. Who carries the pillar when they cannot. Curate a bench of experts, not a singular all-star. This protects the brand against travel, departures and busy seasons. Ensure your primary spokespeople have seconds in command to give you year-round flexibility that always ladders up to business strategy.

 

The CEO has to declare a role too

I have been sitting with the Apple succession since it was announced in April. John Ternus takes over Sept. 1 with a limited public profile, and the reaction was that he should fix that. I do not think he should.

But he still owes his team an answer, and so does every CEO reading this. Quiet is a legitimate choice. Undeclared is not a choice at all. It is an absence, and other people fill it in.

This is the part almost nobody writes down, and it causes more damage than anything above. Thought leadership roles aren’t created equal. They should be dictated by style, with a focus on tapping into an expert’s authentic personality and unique offering to the industry.

For CEOs, there are multiple ways to approach their role. They can serve as the front person where every story runs through them. They could be used as a selective closer, out rarely and only where it counts. Or, they’re internal, and the external work belongs to the broader bench of SMEs.

All three work. I have seen all three work. What does not work is leaving it undefined.

The chief marketing officer helps set the tone for thought leadership expectations in collaboration with the CEO. Every CEO is different. Playing to their strength is the point to ensure they don’t feel a singular pressure to be visible in the press. But the strength has to be said out loud and mapped to the larger team’s capabilities.

We brought in a CFO ahead of a transaction. The company’s CEO had solidified his track as the primary face of the deal. The CFO offered an important second dimension to the thought leader bench. She was already the most effective person in the room with customers, closing large bank deals through conversations no one else on the team could have had. CFO to CFO. After the listing, her role got bigger, so the visibility assignment got bigger with it. We did not decide she should be visible and then hunt for a stage to put her on. We watched where she was already winning and extended it into press, speaking and analyst conversations. Capitalizing on her authentic platform led to multiple interviews, byline placements and an award win for “Best CFO.”

The right spokesperson is usually the person already doing the thing well in a smaller room.

 

The bench has to match the promise

A narrative does not come to life because it was written well. It comes to life because specific people can speak to it with authority, in public, repeatedly. And the bench has to be expert in the exact things your positioning promises, because those are the things your customers are already experiencing from you.

Put your positioning next to your org chart. For every claim you make about what you are, name the person who embodies it.

If you find a gap, it is one of two problems: Either the claim is true and nobody has been assigned to carry it; or nobody can credibly speak to it because it is not true yet. The first is an easy spokesperson adjustment. The second is a positioning problem, and no amount of individual visibility will fix it.

Both are worth knowing before a buyer sniffs out a lack of clarity.

 

The window is open right now

Planning for 2027 is starting in most companies this month.

A bench that runs on good intentions does not survive a budget cycle. Revisit the CEO’s role. Revisit each spokesperson. Make them official and make them measurable.

None of this rests on one person, which is exactly why it has to be written down and funded like anything else you defend. Anything you cannot measure, you will not defend in April.

 

A note on where I’ll be in November

Ragan gave me a complimentary ticket to their Future of Communications Conference. I earn nothing on registrations. With that on the table, here is why it made my list:

Three days in Austin, Nov. 11-13, on AI governance, executive visibility, GEO and AEO, crisis and business continuity, and measurement.

The session I circled first is a CFO stress test on proving impact and defending budget. Not because it’s novel, but because it is the conversation most communications leaders are losing right now, and almost nobody programs it honestly. There is also a track on AI search and discoverability, the question I get asked most often and answer least confidently, because the ground is still moving.

An honest read on the room: The speaker roster leans enterprise and internal communications — State Farm, Lockheed, United, Dell, IBM. If you run communications inside a large organization, that is your room. If you are on the growth side of a B2B company, the value is in the budget defense and AI search tracks, and in who you sit next to.

Code Kathleen200 takes $200 off; registration is here. Austin is home. If you are coming in, reply to this and I will tell you where to eat.