• by Christine Perkett , July 18, 2025

Artificial intelligence tools can churn out content at lightning speed, but speed isn’t a substitute for trust. Edelman’s 2025 Trust Barometer reveals that employees give their CEO a 67-point trust score, significantly higher than the trust score they give to “CEOs in general” or government leaders. When audiences doubt what they read, real voices -- the visible, accountable human -- become a brand’s most reliable differentiator. Despite the fact that employees typically hold their CEO in high regard, many companies still treat executive communications like a quarterly task rather than a strategic, valuable opportunity. 

Here’s a tighter way forward: Assimilate → Align → Activate.

Assimilate before you speak. Ensure leaders understand what a specific audience fears, wants, and aspires to achieve. Give executives firsthand context. Scroll the employee-only Slack threads, study subreddit complaints, read customer-service transcripts. Think of it as a digital “Undercover Boss,” the TV series where CEOs worked incognito on the front lines to understand daily realities. When a founder joins a podcast fluent in customer pain points or investor doubts, every word lands as empathy, not spin.

Align message to motivation. Run a simple litmus test on every draft: does the opener start with the audience’s reality or the company’s agenda? If it starts with the agenda, rewrite. The same statement that reassures investors can also encourage employees if it first acknowledges shared stakes, such as job security, purpose, or progress. One voice for Wall Street and another for staff no longer works; culture flows outward, and reputation flows inward at the speed of a screenshot.

Activate in human time—then prove it. Visibility now means showing up where conversations begin, not just where news is archived. A direct, two-minute executive video can complement a press release; a sincere, personal comment from the CEO on an engineer’s LinkedIn post signals an engaged culture and travels farther than a polished but distant missive.

Formal channels still matter for earnings, policy, and long-form thought leadership. The new requirement is an additional layer of authentic presence that allows audiences to see and hear leaders without a filter, the crossroads where modern brand strategy and executive communications now intersect, because humans still buy from humans.

Measuring Impact

Adding this layer of authenticity can also be measured. For example:

• Demos are booked after the CTO joins an industry podcast or shares an authentic post about challenges in building the business. In one case study, a single LinkedIn post by a CEO drove 15% of the company’s monthly pipeline, crushing a paid campaign targeting the same buyers, simply because it spoke the buyer’s language through a trusted human.
• Analyst sentiment shifts following a candid executive briefing
• Employee-engagement scores climb after open Q&A sessions at a Town Hall

If results plateau, adjust the channel or the story and try again. Activate, measure, and refine until executive voice, brand narrative, and outcomes align.

The Takeaway: Creating a Bridge That’s Impossible to Imitate

Deepfakes and autogenerated prose won’t disappear, but neither will the human need to look a leader in the eye, on screen or in person, and decide whether to believe. Executives who step forward with clear, audience-informed messages create the bridge between today’s fastest technology and the timeless power of human connection. Keep the logo on the building, but put your leaders in front of it. Make them visible, accountable, real -- and impossible to imitate.