The Suit and the Spin Doctor: Why Management Consultancies Are Moving into Reputation Management

For decades, the worlds of management consulting and strategic communications operated in parallel universes. Consultants restructured businesses, advised on transactions and fixed operational problems. Communications professionals shaped narratives, managed crises and handled the media. The two disciplines orbited each other but rarely collided. 

That separation is dissolving and the announcements of the past few years tell us something significant about where the market is heading. 

When worlds collide 

The launch of Alvarez & Marsal’s new Reputation Advisory practice in London earlier this month is the latest signal of a structural shift. A&M – one of the world’s most respected restructuring and performance improvement firms – has just announced it has appointed someone to build a senior team focused on reputational risk, crisis counsel and stakeholder engagement. The team it has assembled draws heavily from journalism and political communication – this is not a bolt-on PR capability, it’s a deliberate, strategic investment. 

A&M is not alone. Schillings – the reputation, privacy and security law firm – made a similar move when it launched its strategic communications business in late 2023, appointing Victoria O’Byrne and George Pascoe-Watson as founding partners. Schillings’ model was bold from the start: positioning itself as the first firm offering clients a fully integrated suite of legal, intelligence, investigations, security and communications counsel under one roof. In a market crowded with specialists, it was a genuine differentiator. 

What connects these announcements is a shared diagnosis of the market. The world has become materially more complex for the organisations these firms serve. Reputation is no longer made purely in the boardroom or the courtroom. It is made (and unmade) in the court of public opinion, at extraordinary speed, with little margin for error. 

The pioneers who showed the way 

To understand why A&M and Schillings moved in this direction, it helps to look at who got there first. The global CEO advisory firm Teneo has long operated an integrated model combining corporate strategy, communications, crisis management, financial advisory and risk advisory under one roof, and has built a substantial practice around exactly this proposition.  

FTI Consulting has embedded strategic communications within its broader advisory offering for years, with a well-established corporate reputation and crisis practice sitting alongside its restructuring and disputes work. And Dentons Global Advisors – the advisory arm affiliated with the world’s largest law firm – was explicitly built to provide integrated counsel spanning legal, reputational, financial, regulatory and governance dimensions, combining communications, public affairs and intelligence under a single platform. 

These firms proved the integrated model works. What we are now seeing is the second wave: restructuring-focused and disputes-driven advisory firms following suit, having watched their peers demonstrate the client demand. 

Why now? 

The drivers are not hard to identify. Corporate crises no longer follow predictable patterns. A restructuring, a regulatory investigation, a hostile M&A approach, a senior leadership scandal: any of these can detonate a media firestorm within hours, often before legal or financial advisers have even been briefed. The separation between “fixing the business problem” and “managing the narrative” has become a liability. Clients increasingly want both solved at once, by people who understand each other and are working from the same playbook. 

There is also a talent dimension to this. The best communications professionals – those who have worked at the top of journalism, politics and government – bring something that conventional PR practitioners often cannot: the ability to operate in genuinely high-stakes environments with incomplete information, under severe time pressure, where the consequences of getting it wrong are serious. That is precisely the kind of person that restructuring and litigation firms need alongside their technical advisers. 

What this means for the market 

From where I sit, as someone who has spent years placing senior communications talent into exactly these kinds of roles, this trend raises important questions for the profession. 

The frst is about where the best communications talent now wants to work. For a generation, the most ambitious professionals moved from journalism into agencies and from agencies into in-house roles. That path still exists, but a new one is opening: into the hybrid advisory model, embedded within a firm that handles the full complexity of a crisis or transaction. The work is chewy, the mandates more demanding and the stakes higher, but for the right person, it is also more intellectually engaging and, frankly, better remunerated. 

The second question is about what these moves mean for the traditional PR agency model. The global communications consultancies have long claimed the crisis and issues space as their own. But when a FTSE 100 board is navigating a hostile takeover or a complex restructuring, they increasingly want communications counsel that is truly integrated with their legal and financial advisers, not coordinated between three separate firms via a weekly call. The management consulting and law firm model (done well!) offers something agencies structurally cannot. 

The third question is one of talent pipeline. Building these practices is not straightforward. The people who can operate credibly in a boardroom alongside restructuring advisers and litigators, those who understand the dynamics of a shareholder dispute or a regulatory inquiry as well as they understand a media narrative, are not simple to find. That combination of editorial instinct, political judgment and commercial acumen is rare. As more firms build these capabilities, the competition for that talent will intensify – and as someone who helps these firms find the talent, I can attest that the shortlist is always shorter than clients hope. 

A structural shift, not a passing trend 

What we are witnessing is not a fad. The convergence of legal, financial and communications advisory is a structural response to a more complex, faster-moving, more scrutinised business environment. The firms that are building these integrated capabilities now are positioning themselves for the next decade of advisory work. 

For communications professionals, the message is clear: the most interesting and consequential work is increasingly happening at this intersection. The question is whether you have the range and the appetite to operate in it. 

Looking for talent at this intersection

Whether you are a communications professional looking to move into this kind of advisory work, or a firm building out these capabilities and needing to find the rare talent that can operate at this intersection, we would love to talk. Hanson Search has spent years placing senior communications professionals into exactly these roles, and we understand what good looks like at this level. Should you wish to discuss future leadership needs, we would welcome the opportunity to speak. Please contact our team via the form below.

Katie Simpson moved into recruitment after a decade in communications, working on UK and international campaigns for major global brands. She now advises on senior Corporate Affairs and Sustainability appointments across agency and in-house markets worldwide.