Ready to jump in, whether you need someone to lead Comms or a team to run the day-to-day.
↓We built Valentine Advisors because we’ve needed this kind of help ourselves: experienced Comms people with good judgment, strong opinions, and a working knowledge of how things get done in-house. Available tomorrow, if possible.
Each of us has done these jobs. We know Comms isn’t your CEO’s only priority, that partners inside the company inevitably disagree, and that the budget you thought you had can change. We know how to work through that. And we expect to be held to the same goals and metrics as the people on your team.
Your Comms leader leaves, and suddenly the team reports to someone who already has another job. Or the company has grown, but the Comms team hasn’t. You know you need help. Finding the right people is going to take a while.
Meanwhile, the big launch is still next month. The reporter still needs an answer today. And your CEO still wants to know what the plan is.
We jump in while you hire, help you figure out who you actually need, and help find them. If you need us to stay and build it with you, we love doing that too.
Approximate annual turnover in in-house Comms teams
of CCOs leave before their two-year anniversary
months, on average, to replace a Comms leader
Our team has worked in-house at companies of every size: megacaps like Google and Meta, mid-sized companies like Lyft and Hims & Hers, startups of every stage, and everything in between. On the political side, we’ve led election campaigns, served as special assistant to a governor, and worked in the White House. Oh, and we’ve got fixers, recovering journalists, and even a comedy writer in the crew.
Senior Comms leadership, sized to what you need. We sit with your executive team, set the priorities, run the work, and answer for the results.
When you need more than one person, we can quickly put together a team with the right mix of experience and skills.
We’ve hired Comms leaders, worked for them, and been them. We can help you figure out what you actually need in your next hire, work with your recruiters to assess candidates, and talk through the tradeoffs. It’s a big hire. We know what to look for.
It happens all the time. Marketing shows up with data. So do the other functions. But far too often, Comms brings intuition and vibes. It’s been happening for decades, and it’s holding our profession back. Like so many of our peers, we’re sick of it.
of global respondents named inability to measure impact effectively among their top four challenges
2023 · Cision / PRWeek Global Comms Report ↗of global respondents cited continued over-reliance on media impressions as a challenge
2023 · Cision / PRWeek Global Comms Report ↗We spent more than a year prototyping, hired engineers, and built the product we’ve always wanted.
Counting clips and impressions isn’t enough. ReputeAI shows you which narratives are breaking through and which are lagging behind. Even better, we can help you spot untapped opportunities and risks you might not see coming.
individual reputation measurements
The Repute is our free Substack newsletter, where we share our research and thoughts, what we’re learning, and, yes, our mistakes with fellow Comms pros.
We’ve brought real data to some of the big universal questions around Comms: Does declining to comment help? Does frontrunning a bad story actually work? What kind of coverage should a Series A company expect? How about a unicorn?
There’s plenty of intuition in this business. The Repute brings data.
Read The Repute
Founder & Principal
Will founded Valentine Advisors in 2020, bringing together the operational muscle of an in-house team and the creative spark of an agency.
He led communications at Lyft during its emergence to national prominence, navigated Pandora through the streaming wars, and spent 11 years at Visa, eventually becoming Global Head of Media Relations and serving as a chief of staff during its 2008 IPO. In 2019, The Holmes Report named him one of the world’s 100 most influential in-house communicators.
When it comes to Comms, there isn’t much he hasn’t done. That includes running point on three IPOs, 16 M&A transactions, seven CEO transitions, a couple of congressional testimonies, countless product launches, a proxy fight, navigating some pretty big stakeholder battles, multiple all-nighters with the C-suite, and plenty of things that never made the news.
Reporters cite our data, editors publish our perspective, and the industry has taken notice.
Axios · Feb 2024. Our research on “no comment,” cited in coverage of Lyft’s earnings typo.
PRWeek · 2024. Our analysis of the coverage of Dave Grohl’s announcement.
Business Insider · 2024. Will’s column on avoiding earnings-day blunders.
The Holmes Report · 2019. Will named to the Influence 100, recognizing leading in-house communicators.
Got a Comms challenge or an idea you want to explore? Let’s turn it into action.