When Corporate Affairs Thinks Like Campaigns

Nina DeLorenzo has led and built communications and corporate affairs organizations at global companies including AbbVie, Sanofi and Emergent. She has also served in the White House, U.S. Department of State, U.S. Senate and on political campaigns. What is her take on what it really means to be “campaign ready”? It’s not what most leaders think.

Straight To The Point 

• Today’s landscape doesn’t reward the slow, the passive, or those who operate with a comms-only mentality of yesteryear. In an age of weaponized misinformation and instant backlash, any company can become a political target.
• If your organization can’t move in unison quickly, pivot smartly and speak credibly under pressure, you’re not ready. And in this environment, not being ready is risky and expensive.
• Start treating your corporate affairs function like a campaign: comms and government relations in lockstep, built to engage, equipped to respond and ready to lead. Integration is crucial, and that also means with commercial and business leaders. Because when the heat is on, a well-designed PowerPoint deck about your top product won’t win you any battles.

What We See

Campaign readiness starts with an essential question: does your corporate affairs organization understand the company’s business strategy—and is it built to advance it? In too many companies, the answer is no.

Leaders often replicate generic organizational structures or apply templates that don’t reflect the business context. That’s a mistake. Comms and government relations teams that don’t work closely together and don’t understand the business will always be reactive. And in today’s environment, that’s not just a vulnerability—it’s a liability.

Being campaign ready isn’t about a binder full of crisis plans or a quarterly offsite. It’s about knowing where your business is going and what the external environment needs to look like in order for it to succeed. Campaign-ready means comms and GR shaping the environment to your advantage when you can, and forcefully countering obstacles when they arise. A campaign-ready corporate affairs organization can think, move and act like a campaign: ahead of the curve, aggressive when it needs to be, quiet when it’s strategic to be so, but always ready and aligned with your business.

The outside world moves fast. It doesn’t care how big your company is or how beloved your brand was yesterday. It has zero regard for your C-suite’s comfort zone. You need a campaign-ready organization to navigate it.

What It Means

Too many comms or corporate affairs leaders walk into roles thinking their job is to communicate business priorities or lobby in DC. That’s the bare minimum. Your real job? Help drive the business strategy by shaping the external environment to protect and promote it—and pivot on a dime when necessary.

At the same time, companies that thrive have leadership that treats corporate affairs like it’s as much part of the business as marketing or sales: essential to growth. The ones that flounder see comms as the team that writes the press releases and GR as the ones who lobby. And guess who gets clobbered when the external environment turns hostile?

The readiness checklist isn’t complicated—but it is critical. You need:

• People: They’re smart. They’re scrappy. They’re strategic. Not just “pencil-pushers”—people who can flex, adapt and act under pressure.
• Assets: You need a clear, resonant story. Along with a brand and assets that reflect it. Channels that reach the right audiences—fast. A PAC that’s not dormant. And data that tells you what’s working (and what’s not).
• Mindset: You should be the one looking around the next corner, unafraid to tell the CEO what’s there—even if it’s ugly. And you need to have a bias for action when things get messy because they will. Freezing in place—or hiding under the desk—is not an option.

What To Do About It

1. Take your seat at the table. If you’re not helping shape business decisions, you’re not campaign ready—you’re an afterthought. Understand the business. Embed your team with their teams. Use that knowledge to drive strategy instead of just communicating the latest business updates.
2. Insights are your foundation. Don’t build your strategy on instinct alone. Know how your company is perceived, internally and externally, where your story is strong and where it needs work. Understand where your competitors or those who might challenge you politically have an advantage. Have assets ready that reflect your brand and your business, and ensure you have the ability to generate insights quickly. Don’t be paranoid, but do be prepared.
3. Act with the speed of a campaign, not of a legal department. Companies get paralyzed by perfection—and lawyers. Campaigns know perfection means losing the news cycle. Speed matters. Develop solid relationships with your CEO, Chief Counsel and others who can affect the speed of your response. Because the ability to say something smart and fast can often beat saying the “perfect” thing too late.
4. Hire a team that’s ready to rumble. You will be challenged, whether it’s by activists, politicians, competitors or an angry ex-employee on social media (maybe all of them at once!). The question is: do you know how your organization will react? Will you respond with confidence—or will you scramble? Here’s where having a corporate affairs team that has comms and government relations under one roof, integrated with the business, with the right people and the right attitude—will make or break your response.

Campaigns don’t win based on who made the best Power Point. They win by taking action, being resilient and staying sharp. The same is true for organizations. If your corporate affairs function isn’t ready to move, adapt and lead—you’re not campaign ready.

Need help building a campaign-ready external affairs operation? Let’s talk.