PageViews Issue 136 | Across Borders, Across Pressure Points: Insights from the 2025 Page Exchange

• Culture and consensus
• AI for today
• Page’s global vision

This year’s Page International Exchange (now simply Page Exchange, more on that at the bottom) brought over 80 members from 15 different countries to Amsterdam to explore how corporate communications is evolving in an era of fractured trust, intensifying political scrutiny and fast-moving technology.

But the underlying question wasn’t how to avoid disruption. It was leading through it, with agility, integrity and a renewed sense of purpose.

Across sessions led by multinational brands, NGOs, public affairs leaders and AI experts, three powerful lessons stood out. Together, they offer a roadmap for communicators navigating global complexity with clarity and conviction, regardless of where their org is based. 

Check out the pictures, here.

Culture Moves Faster Than Consensus

Whether discussing shareholder activism, employee trust or geopolitical risk, one thing was clear: cultural shifts now outpace organizational reaction time. Speakers shared how neutrality is no longer a safe harbor. Staying quiet, they warned, can be perceived as complicity.

Johanna Brenninkmeijer and Marike Westra of COFRA emphasized that company values must be operationalized, not just displayed. DEI decisions can’t be reactive; they must be strategic and principled, especially because trust is at stake. It was especially helpful to see how a holding company with business in multiple sectors is using its values, unchanged from its founding decades ago as a garment business, to weave them together into a cohesive, purpose-driven whole. 

The lesson: When tensions rise, clarity of values matters more than clarity of messaging. Culture doesn’t pause for consensus. The time to prepare is now. 

AI Governance is a Communications Imperative

From Booking.com and ASML to AEGON and The Scriptorium Initiative, nearly every session touched on how AI is reshaping the role of the communicator. At some organizations, AI is co-authoring executive documents. At others, it’s introducing new reputational and cybersecurity risks.

Booking.com’s Ben Schroeter and ASML’s Tom Armitage showed how AI is both a trust accelerator and a trust liability, depending on how it’s governed. During the interactive session hosted by Scriptorium Initiative cofounders Nanne Bos and Marc Cloosterman, attendees discussed the need for AI-specific communications roles (like a Chief Prompting Officer), the risk of “synthetic stakeholders” (think AI agents and bots) and the pressure to adapt faster than regulators can act.

The lesson: The CCO must push for comms-specific AI governance, invest in building internal fluency and find internal partners (like legal and HR) to ensure transparency and trust remain constants regardless of how an organization uses AI.

Sustainability Requires Systems Thinking

While ESG backlash has dominated headlines, conversations at the Page Exchange made clear that sustainability is not being eliminated; it’s evolving. Daniella Vega of Ahold Delhaize and Alice Steenland of Signify encouraged communicators to think beyond reporting cycles and campaigns. 

Daniella shared an interesting insight about climate attitudes with the younger generation; climate fatalism, the belief that it is too late to meaningfully halt climate change, is held by 50% of young people. While younger people may ideologically agree with sustainability initiatives, it would not likely be a driving factor in purchase decisions.

The smart money is on those organizations that communicate sustainability not as a moral stance, but as an operating system for long-term value.

The Lesson: Reframe our purpose narrative around operations, innovation and long-term value, not just corporate responsibility. That framing resonates with investors, regulators and employees alike and moves your organization from compliance to conviction. 

A Global Vision for PageIn her remarks, Page CEO Rochelle Ford unveiled a bold new chapter for the organization, grounded in insights from her global listening tour. She announced the transition from “Page International Exchange” to simply “Page Exchange,” reflecting a unified global community where all members engage as equals. With a new organizational structure, AI-powered tools like Member Match, and a Benchmarking Study built “for CCOs, by CCOs,” Rochelle emphasized that the future of Page isn’t being built for members—but with them. Click here to learn more about the structural changes and new leadership appointments shaping what’s next.