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| Maurya Overall |
At two recent industry events—Gartner’s Marketing Symposium and the 2025 Cannes Lions Festival of Creativity—a leading theme was how to build brand impact in an increasingly fragmented landscape. Communications leaders are under more pressure than ever to help their organizations speak with clarity and alignment. But even the most powerful narratives can fail if they are fractured across the enterprise.
The root of the problem? Strategic fragmentation. A recent Gartner study revealed that 84% of marketing leaders report high strategic dysfunction in their organization.
Communications, marketing, sales, digital and customer service each interpret the CEO’s growth agenda through their own lens. While specialization is essential, siloed execution can subtract from the impact of corporate purpose and narratives. The result is missed opportunities to lead.
As stewards of corporate reputation and alignment, communications leaders have a unique and urgent role to play: bringing cohesion to complexity, and ensuring that enterprise priorities are translated into unified internal and external action that advances the growth aspirations of their company.
The CEO’s vision is getting lost in translation
At Boathouse, our recent CEO study found that 87 percent of CEOs have yet to fully realize their transformation strategies—not due to lack of clarity at the top, but due to breakdowns as the vision filters through departmental silos.
In communications, that shows up in:
- Inconsistent messaging across audiences;
- Gaps between what’s said externally and what’s felt internally;
- Campaigns that respond to crises rather than advance the brand proactively;
- Lack of metrics across departments that tie to the CEO’s strategy.
Cross-functionality is more than a buzzword – it’s a methodology.
Strategy, messaging and even operational responsibilities cannot be solved in departmental isolation.
When each department reports wins on its own terms—without shared context or coordination—the CEO begins to question whether teams are truly aligned with enterprise priorities, especially with the business strategy. The outcome? Conflicting voices, ungoverned messaging and missed opportunities to lead the conversation on innovation and responsibility. Basically, a murky message and a murky brand, internally and externally.
For Chief Communications Officers (CCOs), this can lead to being sidelined, rather than seen as strategic partners.
But when communications and marketing leaders co-develop strategies, they create alignment, consistency and credibility across the organization. And when they go a step further to align the message across other departments, there is even greater buy-in and possibility for success at the point of execution. They can realize more clearly the overlap between functions and teams, coordinate a strong series of key messages that speak directly to the CEO’s strategy and then work cross-functionally to execute based on their respective audiences, channels and stakeholders and known, organization-wide pain points.
Communications is the integrator
In an era defined by complexity, speed and scrutiny, strategic communications isn’t just a function—it’s a force for alignment. The organizations that win will be those where CCOs play a central role in ensuring the CEO’s vision survives the journey through the organization—and shows up with clarity and consistency in every stakeholder interaction.
An organization’s strategy is, at its core, all about the message. If the message isn’t communicated clearly and understood across departments internally and across audiences externally, then it is lost, as is the brand.
The only path to realize success and move towards the CEO’s vision and goal is for the work to occur across functions. This is not the time to stay in your lane. It’s the time to lead across them.
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Maurya Overall, a principal at Boathouse, leads a diverse client portfolio as well as co-leadings the agency’s content, social and comms group.
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