Peaks... and Troughs

At its most basic level, Davos is a four-day conference bringing together the most important people in the worlds of business, politics, academia, activism and increasingly – to add a splash of much-needed colour to a canvas of corporate grey – entertainment and showbusiness. But for the news-consuming public, the annual gathering of the World Economic Forum (WEF) falls somewhere between a talking shop for plutocrats and a real-life meeting of SPECTRE. Davos runs the risk of appearing out-of-touch and incongruous.

However, such complaints are ultimately just noise as long as influential people still rock up. Which they continue to do in their droves – world leaders (Presidents Macron and Zelenskyy), captains of industry (JPMorgan Chase’s ‘rockstar’ CEO Jamie Dimon), billionaire investors (Bridgewater founder Ray Dalio), media moguls (Washington Post CEO Will Lewis), Silicon Valley tycoons, (OpenAI wizard Sam Altman and Salesforce chief Marc Benioff) – all descended on the Royal Family’s favourite skiing resort this year.

Davos matters as the convener of power and influence. And so it follows that, as advisors in the business of influence, communications agencies have at some level a responsibility to clients to offer a bespoke Davos service, getting them in the room with the right people and preparing them thoroughly to get their key messages across loud and clear.

At Davos just gone, Hanover – across its Advocacy and Corporate teams – did just that with Meredith Whittaker, President of the Signal Foundation. Meredith’s will be a name familiar to anyone interested in the world of technology regulation.

A leading campaigner on user rights and privacy, Meredith was a senior figure at Google who organised against claims of sexual misconduct in the business and what she saw as the company’s unethical pursuit of AI. As she told the Today Programme in an interview secured during Davos, she has “seen AI from the inside” and is concerned with the “significantly concentrated power in the hands of a US-based tech oligopoly” that it has engendered.

Meredith’s success in securing media coverage around a topic she is passionate about – including with Tortoise Media, CNBC and WSJ – serves as an important reminder to encourage clients to speak openly about what motivates them and, simply, why they think the way they do. Personality is obviously a big part of this, but it is just as much an intellectual question, especially somewhere like Davos, where detractors would argue that homogenous corporate-speak rules.

Learning number two from our work at Davos is as one might expect from a global networking event. It was absolutely vital to be fleet of foot. With engagements from dawn until dusk and the day carved out into 15 minute chunks, but with travel across a congested ski resort to be wrestled with, the importance of a team able to schedule, manage and control logistics became almost as key as one that can manage crises.

I think we sometimes forget that there is always flexibility and possibility – even with an event as apparently closed off and Grade A as Davos – to make things work in spite of everything, from time to space. Again, a lot of our job is making things happen for our clients and opening doors for them, and our Davos project with Meredith was a stellar example of this.

During this year’s conference and indeed since, AI has occupied more column inches, airwaves and policy papers than perhaps any other phenomenon in the last decade. Even at Davos, the issue was one that stood out and Meredith was in demand across a range of events, roundtables and interview opportunities. And while a path for the future of the technology is still being lit, it felt all the more important to be supporting Signal in their efforts to broadcast a crucial side to the conversation. This, if anything, brings home the value that remains in a perpetually busy and crowded news agenda, including Davos, and supporting clients there.

So long as you are speaking to issues from the heart, while there is the chance to make a difference, there remains value in being there, and doing so.