Gladius Communications

This week, our team convened in person for our biannual offsite in beautiful Charleston, South Carolina. Surrounded by the city’s historic charm, we focused on team-building and strategic planning for the year ahead and beyond. In-person collaboration always strengthens our team and we’re excited to bring fresh ideas and momentum for our clients into 2025! #collaboration #teamwork #strategiccommunications

What do a small country in S.E. Asia, TikTok, and leadership communications have in common? (spoiler: no dancing involved.) Our latest Gladius Communications blog features lessons from Katie Cline Malloy about her time living abroad in Laos. Click below to see how they can be applied to your own thought leadership strategies.

On the eve of our five-year anniversary, we're excited to announce that we've completed the acquisition of Marcoux Strategies to help supercharge the growth of our defense and aerospace communications portfolio. Sandra Perez has built a phenomenal reputation, deep expertise, and a great set of relationships in this fast-growing market, and we're excited to have her join our leadership team as Vice President and head of our aerospace and defense practice area!

Gladius Communications is looking for a #project-based technical #writing contractor with experience in the #electrical and #electronic #engineering, #manufacturing, and #distribution industry to generate #editorial #ThoughtLeadership #content. #Candidates with in-house technical #marketing and #communications experience or trade media #publishing experience would be an especially good fit.   Interested? Please reach out to christine@gladiuspr.com. Know someone who might be? Please send them our way.   #Hiring #Contractor #Contracting #Technology #Tech #Writer #Editor #SideGig #SideHustle #RemoteWork #WorkFromHome

Many of our team members have connections, friends, and family who have been impacted by the storms that ravaged Western North Carolina and Eastern Tennessee this past weekend. It’s both a truly special place overall and a special place for our team (memories of happier times there are pictured below). This one hits particularly close for us this year, as our annual company offsite was planned for Asheville in late October. We're communicating with our venue and vendors, and our goal is to make that happen -- albeit with an agenda that includes more volunteering -- as long we can do it without displacing resources for locals. With so much of the area's economy based on tourism, especially during the prime "leaf peeping" season, our hope is that we can help by spending our money with local businesses as they recover. It's going to be a long journey, and they will need the support more than ever once the initial surge of relief funding has been expended. In the meantime, we're contributing monetarily to Team Rubicon's Helene Response Project -- which mobilizes veterans to deploy immediately to disaster zones and directly assist victims in cleaning up, digging out, rebuilding, and reestablishing essential services. Whether through thoughts, prayers, action, donations, or some combination of the above, we hope you’ll keep the folks in this region close as they recover from this disaster. If you are looking for a way to get involved in recovery and rebuilding (there are lots to choose from out there) - message us, and we can connect you with one of our local contacts in the impacted areas. #WNCStrong #AshevilleRecovery

The new “Evolving Role of Communications” report from Memo revealed significant YOY growth in the number of #CorporateCommunications teams reporting to the #CEO — 56% in 2024 vs. just 22% in 2023. Historically, most #comms teams have reported to the #CMO, but that number fell from 63% in 2023 to just 37% in 2024.   These shifts indicate that #communications teams are increasingly being perceived as strategic business partners rather than administrative cost centers and reflects the steadily growing influence that corporate reputation has on a company’s success — as is not infrequently demonstrated by fumbled #communication strategies that have a big impact on brands’ bottom lines (à la Boeing and Ticketmaster). In a related Axios article, Heyman Associates CEO Jessamyn Katz noted that senior communicators are increasingly responsible for advising on issues ranging from geopolitics and the economy to #ESG, #PublicAffairs, policy, and the rise of #AI and that this expanding scope is likely why we’re seeing a rise in the communications-to-CEO #reporting structure.   https://rebrand.ly/tawaoda

As another #AFA2024 Air, Space & Cyber week comes to a close, our team is feeling energized from spending some quality time with our #aerospace and #defense clients, our partners and each other (which is always a treat with a mostly remote team.) Big thanks to Katie Blixt, Kristen Weidenmuller, Sandra Perez, Deb Prieto - Green and B.J. Talley for a productive and fun few days!

Today’s employee is bombarded with more messages than ever before. Leaders can optimize messages on multiple internal communication channels to address stakeholders. It’s the secret sauce to cutting through the noise and keeping teams informed. Depending on your organiations internal channel array, each channel has its strengths: • Slack or Teams for quick, informal updates • SharePoint for document sharing and collaboration • Email for formal announcements • Town halls for face-to-face/virtual engagement and feedback By tailoring your message to the channel's strengths, you can significantly boost employee engagement and information retention. For example, use Slack for team check-ins and email for department-wide policy changes. Consider adapting each message across different channels and choosing the best channel for the tone and content of the announcement. What's your go-to channel for employee communications? #internalcommunications #employeeengagement #corporatecommunications

According to Axios and a new report by the OCR, Observatory on Corporate Reputation, CCO+ roles in Fortune 1000 companies have grown 88% in the last five years, eclipsing traditional CCO roles. For most of these CCOs, the “+” adds leadership over #marketing, #HumanResources, #sustainability and #ESG, or corporate affairs teams. Although, secondary roles in #branding, #InvestorRelations, and #PublicAffairs teams are on the rise. CCO+ roles with secondary #DEI titles are on the decline. The integration of these strategic functions typically means one of two things: that #communications is at the core of the company or viewed as a catch-all. OCR noted that CCO+ roles are increasingly showing up on company’s senior #leadership pages, which indicates that it may be the former, and is keeping an eye out for other positive indicators, including clearly defined roles and goals for aligning #communication efforts with broader business objectives and substantially larger budgets.   Learn more here https://rb.gy/o5gwm0 and share your thoughts and experiences below.