In early 2025, PayPal announced the creation of a Head of CEO Content role, with compensation up to $291,500 annually. While initially perceived as extravagant, the role reflects a growing recognition across industries: executive visibility is no longer discretionary. It has become core infrastructure for corporate trust, talent attraction, and long-term growth.
Research suggests that companies with visible leaders outperform peers across key dimensions of reputation, sales, and recruitment. PayPal’s decision signals a broader trend where firms formalize executive communication capabilities at scale.
CEO communication was once managed indirectly through brand accounts or corporate affairs teams. Three structural shifts have elevated the role of executive visibility:
Digital transformation during the pandemic created direct-to-stakeholder communication expectations.
Erosion of institutional trust shifted credibility from corporations to individual leaders.
AI-driven content saturation increased the premium on human authenticity.
The outcome is measurable. LinkedIn data shows:
CEO posts achieve 4x higher engagement than company posts.
Video content drives 5x greater interaction than static updates.
C-suite content sharing grew 23% year over year in 2024.
Trust as a performance driver
82% of stakeholders are more likely to trust a company when executives are active online.
77% report being more likely to buy from companies with visible CEOs.
CEO reputation contributes 44–48% of overall corporate reputation.
ROI and commercial impact
Research indicates executive-led content can deliver up to 14x ROI.
Companies with visible CEOs report customer acquisition costs falling by up to 40%.
A single CEO post has been shown to influence investor sentiment or catalyze partnerships worth millions.
Talent attraction
Revolut’s CEO visibility contributed to 1.6 million job applications in 2024.
Candidates increasingly evaluate leadership communication as part of employer brand.
Strategic integration
The Head of CEO Content role requires capabilities far beyond ghostwriting. Effective execution blends editorial judgment, social strategy, executive coaching, analytics, and cultural fluency.
PayPal’s decision is consistent with moves across sectors:
Apple has embedded executive briefing managers.
Adobe compensates senior executive communications leaders up to $250K.
Arm and Mayo Clinic employ executive content managers to align leadership voice with institutional reputation.
Even sports organizations, such as LSU Athletics, have invested in executive branding roles.
These examples underscore the shift toward treating leadership visibility as a corporate capability comparable to investor relations or brand marketing.
Risks include:
Inauthenticity: Communications that diverge from leadership behavior erode trust.
Optics over operations: Over-investment in image without substance undermines credibility.
Leadership mismatch: Not all executives are suited to frequent visibility, requiring tailored approaches.
Mitigation requires:
Aligning communication strategy with corporate priorities.
Ensuring executive voice is consistent with organizational actions.
Building governance and analytics into communication processes.
The PayPal case reflects an inflection point in executive communication. We expect:
Standardization: Executive content leadership roles will proliferate, particularly in Fortune 500 and growth-stage firms.
AI augmentation: AI will enhance efficiency, but human authenticity will remain non-substitutable.
Leadership as media: Executives will increasingly act as direct channels to employees, customers, and investors.
Strategic imperative: In 2010, brand marketing was infrastructure. In 2020, performance marketing became infrastructure. By 2025, CEO visibility has become infrastructure.
Executives and boards should assess:
What portion of corporate reputation and trust is currently tied to leadership visibility?
What opportunities are being lost due to limited or inconsistent CEO communication?
Do existing structures support a systematic, authentic, and scalable approach to executive content?
The opportunity cost of silence is rising.
PayPal’s investment in CEO content leadership is not anomalous. It signals the institutionalization of executive visibility as a strategic function. Firms that build this capability will gain advantages in trust, reputation, talent, and capital markets.
The imperative is clear: build the infrastructure for executive visibility now, or risk being outpaced by competitors whose leaders already shape the conversation.
Since 2020, I have implemented CEO content strategies as both Head of Marketing and executive content manager. What was once contrarian has become standard practice.
At Attainment, we integrate Fractional CMO services with executive communication frameworks to help CEOs and founders scale their voices as strategic assets.
For leaders considering this investment, the core question is not whether visibility matters. It is how much opportunity is being left untapped by staying silent.
CEO visibility is a structured program where the CEO communicates directly with employees, customers, partners, and investors across owned and earned channels. It matters now because consistent executive communication improves trust, shortens sales cycles, strengthens reputation, and attracts higher quality talent.
The Head of CEO Content translates company strategy into a leadership narrative, runs the calendar, manages briefings and reviews, produces posts and video, and measures impact on hiring, partner interest, and investor and analyst signals.
Compensation often ranges from the high one hundreds to the high two hundreds in dollars depending on scope and market. A salary at or above 200,000 dollars is justified when one outcome such as a pivotal hire, a strategic partnership, or an improved investor narrative offsets the cost many times over.
Set a baseline, define three to five themes that support the business agenda, choose two repeatable formats, and publish on a simple calendar. Add light governance and measure talent, partner, and sales signals alongside engagement.
Quality and consistency beat volume. A practical baseline is one anchor piece each month and one lightweight touch each week, adjusted to the leader’s strengths and calendar.
Short video and concise leadership notes usually perform best. Add interviews, internal memos, event remarks, and bylined articles when they serve the audience and the strategy.
Track hiring signals, partner and customer inquiries, late stage deal commentary from the field, share of voice on strategy themes, analyst and media alignment, and shifts in investor questions.
The main risks are inauthentic messaging, optics without operational substance, and style mismatch. Avoid them by aligning to strategy, anchoring messages in decisions and customer outcomes, choosing formats that fit the leader, and enforcing clear but light governance.
Drafting can be supported by a professional, but the ideas, decisions, tone, and final approval must be the CEO’s. Authenticity comes from ownership, not from typing the first draft.
A Head of CEO Content or an Executive Communications Lead should own the program, with clear interfaces to PR, brand, product marketing, legal, investor relations, and people teams.
Use topic review rails, pre approved claim libraries, and a crisis posture. Prioritize clarity, timeliness, and factual accuracy, and route market moving or regulated topics through the required reviewers.
Use AI for research synthesis, outline generation, repurposing, and quality control. Do not use AI to invent judgment or lived experience, since trust depends on the CEO’s real voice and accountability.
Choose formats that fit the person, such as monthly long form notes, short scripted video, or structured interviews. Consistency with a suitable format outperforms a forced daily cadence.
PR and brand content speak for the company at large, while CEO visibility is the leader speaking in a human voice about strategy, decisions, and standards. The two should be coordinated, not identical.
Examples include Satya Nadella at Microsoft with culture and platform narratives, Brian Chesky at Airbnb with direct letters during crisis, and CEOs who use regular video updates to recruit engineers and mobilize partners.
David Cyrus is a Fractional CMO and executive communications advisor. Over the past decade he has led global marketing and go to market programs for enterprise SaaS and AI across North America, Europe, and Asia Pacific. His work includes launching new regions to multi million dollar run rates in year one, tripling marketing sourced pipeline, accelerating late stage deals through executive narrative, and building analyst aligned category stories that attract partners and talent. Since 2020 he has run CEO visibility programs that turn leadership voice into a repeatable system across short form video, thought leadership, and measurement. David holds an MBA from Macquarie Graduate School of Management (MGSM) with specializations in Digital Business Model Strategy and Digital Transformation, served as President of the MQBS Marketing Club and President of the MQBS Communication Club, and hosts The Attainment Podcast.