How We Help
We work with boards, CEOs and senior corporate affairs, communications and sustainability teams. Our three services connect a credible corporate position, evidence-based sustainability communications and strategic responses to external pressures. Each engagement starts with your business priorities and the support you need to act.
Reputation and Corporate Affairs
The trust and influence to advance your business.
Your business may be changing direction, seeking greater influence or facing scrutiny. When your story, leadership messages and stakeholder relationships are disconnected, important decisions can meet resistance, and opportunities can be missed.
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We critically assess your corporate messaging and how well it reflects your business direction, evidence and stakeholder expectations. Drawing on 15 years of experience working with corporates and NGOs, we identify what is credible, where the gaps are and what needs to improve.
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We use that assessment to develop a clear corporate narrative and core messages that support your current priorities and future ambitions. We help you explain where your business is heading, why it matters and what gives your position credibility.
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Through our network across the sustainability ecosystem, we seek informed perspectives and challenge how your messages may be received. We identify weaknesses, anticipate difficult questions and refine the narrative so it can stand up to scrutiny.
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We turn the narrative into leadership messages, briefing materials and answers to challenging questions. We work with your spokespeople to prepare them for stakeholder conversations, interviews and speaking opportunities, so they can communicate clearly and consistently.
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We identify the people, organisations and platforms that can help advance your business goals. We use our relationships to make relevant introductions, explore partnerships and develop opportunities for your leaders to contribute to the conversations that matter.
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We advise you on which opportunities to pursue, how to respond to emerging issues and when to speak. We help you make the most of your relationships and visibility, building trust and recognition around a consistent, credible position.
What you gain: a clear assessment of your current position, a stronger corporate narrative, tested messages, prepared spokespeople and a focused approach to stakeholder engagement.
Business value: greater support for strategic change, access to opportunities and less friction when you need to act.
In practice: our work with Aston Martin connected leadership positioning with its electric vehicle and net-zero narrative. Our retained work with Asahi combines executive visibility, stakeholder relationships and ongoing communications support.
Start with a defined reputation and stakeholder review, support around an important business moment, or ongoing senior counsel.
Sustainability and Regulatory Risk
The confidence to turn genuine sustainability progress into business value.
Your business is making progress, but communicating it can feel uncertain. Evidence sits in one team, messaging in another and approvals can become slow or contentious. Valuable work can be overstated, misunderstood or left unexplained.
Assess the evidence behind your progress
We assess and critique the evidence supporting your sustainability communications using our IMPACT methodology. We examine whether your data, examples and proposed claims support the story you want to tell, and identify gaps, weaknesses and areas that need stronger substantiation.
Review claims for regulatory and reputational risk
We use Zena, our proprietary assessment software, to identify potential greenwashing and regulatory risks in your sustainability claims and content. We highlight wording and evidence that need attention, with specialist legal expertise brought in where appropriate.
Strengthen the evidence and refine your claims
We work with your sustainability, communications and brand teams to address the weaknesses identified in the review. We clarify what the evidence supports, where further information is needed and how to express your progress accurately, including any limitations.
Connect credible evidence with human stories
We turn substantiated progress into evidence-based examples and human stories that connect with your brand and matter to your audiences. We help explain what your sustainability data means in practice for people, products and services, giving your teams concrete stories they can use.
Prepare your teams to communicate with confidence
Our Credibility-First Method and IMPACT framework bring the evidence, claims and narrative together. We develop core messages, supporting examples and answers to likely questions, helping leaders and teams agree on what to communicate and explain your progress consistently.
What you gain: a reviewed set of sustainability claims, clear priorities for strengthening the evidence, and credible examples and human stories that explain your data and progress. Your leaders have a sustainability narrative they can stand behind, with greater alignment across teams and clearer decisions about what to communicate.
Business value: greater confidence to communicate your sustainability achievements following a thorough review of your claims and supporting evidence. This gives you a stronger basis for integrating sustainability into the way you position your products and services, creating clearer differentiation, more value from your sustainability investment and fewer avoidable delays, corrections and reputational setbacks.
In practice: we support Asahi’s sustainability narrative, leadership engagement and stakeholder relationships. With Asahi and Kantar, we have also developed a brand mapping framework connecting sustainability themes with credible brand positioning.
Start with a Sustainability and Reputation Risk Review, then build the communications and ongoing support your business needs.
Business Resilience and Senior Counsel
Senior counsel to navigate external pressures, manage risk and act on opportunity.
Boards and senior executives need to understand how geopolitical shifts, government policy, economic and social change, climate pressures, natural disasters and resource constraints could affect their business. These forces can change costs, markets, supply chains and reputation. We help you identify what matters, explore the implications and decide where to focus. Sustainability remains central to this wider view of business resilience, connecting environmental, social and economic pressures with long-term business strategy.
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Brief your board on the external pressures that matter
We begin with a Resilience 2040 Board Briefing and facilitated discussion. Using a shared view of the forces shaping the business environment, we tailor the briefing to your industry, markets and strategic priorities. We explain the potential implications and use the discussion to understand your board’s concerns and assumptions.
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Identify priority risks and opportunities
Following the briefing, we provide a concise summary of the high-level risks and opportunities most relevant to your business, informed by the board’s feedback. We identify areas that warrant further investigation, decisions or specialist input, giving your senior team clear priorities to take forward.
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Explore scenarios and challenge strategic assumptions
We work with your leadership team to explore plausible changes in the external environment and what they could mean for your strategy. We challenge assumptions about markets, supply chains, resources and stakeholder support, and consider where your business may need to adapt, prepare or act.
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Provide ongoing senior counsel
Through retained advisory support, we help boards and senior executives interpret geopolitical and policy developments, revisit priorities and consider their strategic response. Regular briefings and access to senior counsel support decisions as conditions change, connecting longer-term thinking with the choices facing your business today.
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Navigate policy, government engagement and investment opportunities
Drawing on over 20 years of experience advising corporate leaders, we help you identify where government priorities, policy changes and public investment could create opportunities for your business or projects, including in the UK. We advise on positioning, relevant decision-makers and engagement, and support you in navigating routes to government investment where appropriate.
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Align your strategy, reputation and stakeholder engagement
We bring strategic counsel together with HN’s reputation and communications expertise. We help explain your chosen direction to employees and external audiences, and identify who to engage across government, NGOs and industry groups. This connects strategic decisions with the understanding and relationships needed to carry them forward.
What you gain: an industry-specific board briefing, a facilitated leadership discussion and a concise summary of priority risks, opportunities and areas for further work. Ongoing advisory adds regular external insight, scenario discussions and senior counsel on strategic direction, government engagement and stakeholder relationships.
Business value: better-informed strategic and investment decisions, earlier recognition of risks and opportunities, and greater preparedness for disruption. Your business is better placed to respond to policy change, explore government investment opportunities and build support for its direction, helping protect continuity and long-term value.
Start with a Resilience 2040 Board Briefing and Leadership Discussion. Continue with retained senior advisory and counsel tailored to your industry, priorities and decision-making needs.
A project can be the beginning of a longer partnership
Start with a focused review, a communications project or a tailored board briefing. Continue with retained support for corporate positioning, sustainability communications or senior strategic counsel. We work alongside your leadership and internal teams as priorities and circumstances change.