According to our corp comms lead, Lexy King, corporate communications is a strategic thread woven throughout a company’s story from day-to-day operations to major milestones. Lexy joined Method earlier this year, drawing on her tenure leading corporate technology communications programs at two of the world’s largest PR firms. Her mission here: To help clients navigate volatile markets, manage enterprise risk, and deliver measurable business impact.
Q: Corporate communication means a lot of things to a lot of different people. What specifically does Method’s Corporate Communication Specialty Group focus on?
For us, it’s about managing the entire ecosystem of a company’s reputation. We look at everything from executive positioning and thought leadership to major milestones like rebrands, launches, market pivots, and the internal comms that shape employer brand.
Lately, we’re spending a lot of time helping clients navigate capital markets and financial communications. That includes funding rounds, earnings, M&A, and guiding companies to the public markets via IPOs and SPACs. Underpinning all of that is proactive reputation strategy. We make sure our clients have the crisis preparedness and issues management frameworks they need to protect their brand, no matter what comes their way.
Q: What’s new about this expanded corporate comms offering?
Our clients will be the first to tell you that corporate strategy is built into Method’s foundation. Our agency was born out of our founders’ experience managing in-house public relations and corporate strategy for the largest private shareholder of Abbott and his 30+ companies. And for the last 16 years, we’ve been helping challengers through funding rounds, M&A, executive positioning, rebrands, and IPOs. We’ve underpinned all of that with proactive reputation management that keeps our clients in the headlines they want to be in and out of the ones they don’t. We formalized this specialist group because the external landscape has completely shifted. In today’s AI-saturated market, corporate comms teams are fighting severe truth decay. AI-driven risks like cyber incidents and viral misinformation now accelerate corporate crises at a terrifying speed. The modern corporate comms leader can no longer just be a storyteller. They have to operate as an enterprise-wide risk manager bridging corporate action and stakeholder perception. We established this group to be the agile partner that reality demands.
Q: Many agencies tout a one-of-a-kind approach to reputation management. What makes Method’s approach unique in the market?
I’m going to make our media training team proud by cueing and speaking in threes. If you remember nothing else, there are three main reasons why clients count on Method for corporate communications:
- We partner with companies at every stage. We work with brands ranging from pre-stealth startups to massive public enterprises. That range means we know how to meet a client exactly where they are, regardless of their size or complexity.
- Our senior leaders are actually in the day-to-day work. Our most experienced people are part of the teams sending pitches, reading the news, and crafting content. With Method, you get smart, fast-twitch counsel right when you need it. If an issue arises or a transaction accelerates, we can plug in our bench of specialists without bureaucratic delays or ping-ponging between various senior titles before we actually set direction.
- Method brings the power of a global network with the agility of a boutique agency. Our integration with VCCP gives us the infrastructure and global footprint to scale up and meet massive, complex enterprise needs. Because we have incredibly strong employee retention and a flat structure, we don’t have the typical cumbersome processes of a massive agency.
Q: From AI ethics to geopolitical shifts, we are in an era of hyper transparency and high-stakes issues. How do you prepare executives to navigate these moments?
A good friend and communications law expert once noted that, as professionals, we are never going to remember every specific law, every reporter’s ticks, every line of an S1. The goal shouldn’t be recitation, but understanding. We understand the landscape well enough to recognize the exact moment a risk or an opportunity requires our clients to step up and take action.
We coach executives using that same principle. In today’s volatile environment, preparation isn’t about memorizing a perfectly polished soundbite for every scenario. If a leader just reads from a risk-averse script, audiences see right through it.
Instead, we focus on grounding leaders in their market landscape and their company’s core values. When a high-stakes moment hits, they don’t need a cheat sheet; they need a strategic filter. We partner with them to look at the issue and evaluate: Is what we are saying productive? How does it actually help our stakeholders? Our shareholders? Does it advance the conversation? By focusing on substance over script, we ensure executives can navigate complex, unpredictable moments with genuine conviction and clarity.
Q: Every communications leader is under pressure to prove ROI. How does Method measure the success of a corporate communications campaign?
We prioritize business impact over vanity metrics that may look great on a report but mean very little to a CFO. Instead, we tie our measurement directly to the specific business outcomes our clients are trying to drive. If the goal is enterprise credibility to support a future transaction, we track shifts in share of voice against direct competitors and message pull-through in tier-one outlets. If the goal is risk mitigation or navigating a crisis, we measure sentiment trajectory and the speed of reputation recovery.
We are also looking closely at a new, critical indicator of ROI: Answer Engine Optimization, or AEO. In a world where stakeholders are using tools like Claude, ChatGPT, Gemini, and Perplexity to research companies, traditional media clips aren’t enough. We track what we call the “synthetic narrative.” We measure how often a brand is being cited by these models, how accurately they pull through core narrative architecture, and where our clients’ leadership teams show up in AI-generated search results. Ultimately, we build a custom measurement framework for every client so the brands we work for are proving real business impact and future-proofing corporate reputation, not just counting clips.
Q. Finally, a lightning round of rapid-fire questions…if the new corp comms specialist group had a theme song, what would it be?
“We Didn’t Start the Fire” by Billy Joel.
Q: What’s your go-to comfort food after a long day of crisis management?
Toss-up between Vietnamese food or breakfast-for-dinner.
Q: What’s the most important skill for an early-career comms pro to build from day one?
Always take notes. Regardless of whether a conversation is recorded or if an AI agent is summarizing action items, ours is a business of details and precision. It’ll improve your focus, your information retention, and most importantly, show those around you that you care about what’s being said. Be the person that remembers the date, the verbatim, the nuance. It’s such a simple way to deliver outsized value.