Finding the Right Corporate Message Isn’t Always Easy

Finding the Right Corporate Message Isn’t Always Easy
It was 2013, and Ms. Kuryk — who had just left her post as the national finance director of the Democratic National
Committee — was at Condé Nast seeking career advice from the well-connected Vogue editor in chief.
Instead, Ms. Kuryk soon found herself back at Condé Nast, no longer looking for a job
but serving as Vogue’s director of communications, and the media gatekeeper to Ms. Wintour (who doubles as the artistic director of Condé Nast).
“There’s huge demand right now for professionals who can teach businesses how to navigate these new consumer expectations
and for corporations to take stances on political issues and practice good corporate social responsibility,” said Kara Alaimo, associate professor of public relations at Hofstra University.
That’s not in dispute,” Ms. Kuryk, 40, said during a recent interview in the office she now rents from Condé Nast at 1 World Trade Center.
Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. to sell trucks, to the criticism (by, among others, Chance the Rapper) of
Heineken’s series of commercials for its light beer and the tagline, “Sometimes, Lighter Is Better.”
“The Pepsi and Kendall Jenner thing — I was tearing my hair out,” Ms. Kuryk said.
The second is to reinvent the concept of corporate social responsibility by integrating it into every aspect of a company’s management,
and not shunt it off, she said, to “a separate office down the hall.”
Partly because of the reach of social media, partly
because of a new era of civic engagement (some of it in response to the polarizing first year of the Trump administration), corporations are increasingly embracing message-based marketing.