A new index by Onclusive has ranked the CEOs of leading companies according to their media coverage.

A new CEO Index by Onclusive analyses the media coverage received by leaders of the largest listed companies across Europe and the US, emphasising the link between leadership and trust. The index identifies who is gaining the most coverage, how CEOs compare between themselves and who is leading on key business issues. BP CEO Bernard Looney has emerged as top-ranking CEO in the United Kingdom.

CEOs are scored against five areas: financial performance, leadership, sustainability, innovation and regulation. Research by Onclusive found leadership to be one of the most prominent themes across the coverage, potentially owing to economic crises, the return-to-work post-Covid and socio-political uncertainty.

“There is a wealth of research available to confirm the contribution of a CEO to investor and public trust in their company,” says Onclusive senior vice-president, Philip Lynch. “We started tracking the media engagement of CEOs over a year ago and now have an open resource for communicators and journalists to analyse the media engagement of global business leaders across all sectors, regions and key topics.

“In an age of information overload, the short-cut to understanding the vision, transparency and resilience of a company is to study the words and behaviour of the CEO. That a CEO of a smaller company doesn’t have the same media presence as a titan of the sector is unlikely to surprise. But if a CEO outperforms their peers, and starts to close in on the sector leader, that’s when it becomes interesting to understand the reasons why.”

Jack Richards, Onclusive field marketing director, says: “It’s about understanding the broader impact of communications. Benchmarking against competitors is always a compelling exercise, and a time-old method of framing success, but this index should also prompt conversations which explore the medium to long term.

“I’d encourage brands to look at who is leading the debate on key business issues, and the trends shaping the future, as opposed to a single snapshot in time. An index like this, in parallel with the right PR tools and partnerships, can truly help both chief executives and brands to get ahead and support communications teams in delivering tangible, measurable impact which has been led by data insights.”