#WeLeadComms: Orla Graham

Today, the #WeLeadComms spotlight falls on London-based communication and insights leader Orla Graham.

In her words:

“Strategy without measurement isn’t strategy – it’s just a nice idea.

“This has become my mantra over the years as I’ve realised that measurement is the lens that brings comms work into focus. It’s what makes the difference between showing you’re busy and showing your value.

“As a measurement consultant and advisor, I help comms teams make their strategy real. That starts with obvious but important questions. What are you actually trying to achieve, and why does this matter? Who are your audiences, and what do you want them to think and do? Which signals tell you if you’re on track?

“People come to me expecting numbers to drop into a report. Instead, they get a strategy deep dive that helps them articulate what they actually do and why, what success means for the business, and what it looks like in reality. What starts with “which KPIs should we use?” quickly becomes something far more fundamental – the purpose of the comms team itself. That’s why I’m so adamant that measurement isn’t a nice to have or tick-box exercise. It is existential.

“My job has two parts that seem contradictory but are actually two sides of the same coin. One is human: sitting with leaders, translating concepts into common sense, and helping them articulate what they’re trying to do. The other is data. As a research and media nerd, I love finding correlations, trends and anomalies buried in the data. I compare earned media and social media analysis, opinion research, LLM responses, search analytics, and whatever data is relevant, to work out what’s causing what, and what it means for a comms team’s audiences. There’s nothing more satisfying to my inner detective than spotting the story the data is trying to tell.

“In my two decades in this industry, I’ve worked with huge brands, governments, not-for-profits and NGOs around the world, from No.10 to the Empire State Building. I had no idea this job existed when I studied media at university, but it’s turned out to be the perfect fit.

“I get to scratch my research itch, interrogate the news I’m obsessed with, ask difficult questions, and work with brilliant people. And I’ve realised where I’m most useful: making sense of a complicated, noisy world for senior comms professionals. As AI and LLMs rewrite how audiences find and judge information, comms teams are under more pressure than ever to prove their worth. My job is to cut through it all and tell leaders what’s real, what matters, and what to do about it.”

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