What will Trump do next, and what does that mean for us? That is  the biggest question hanging over most corporate boardrooms. 

The handbrake turn from Biden to Trump has huge consequences for how businesses position themselves, and how they communicate – in the US and globally. Many of the world’s biggest companies worked hard to get ahead of Trump before and after the election and to be seen to be going with the grain rather than fighting it.

Some of the world’s highest profile business leaders have gone out of their way, not just to align themselves with Trump, but with the broader mood that swept him to power. For communications professionals, there is no starker case study than Meta.

Meta’s CEO Mark Zuckerberg took to Instagram in the weeks before the inauguration to announce he was reversing his previous approach to fact-checking, and would instead replicate Trump mega-fan Elon Musk’s community notes on X.

It wasn’t just the scale and implication of the change – it was the way he communicated it. In his Instagram video, Zuckerberg positioned the change as a return to Facebook’s roots of a free speech liberation from government-backed "censorship", and a moment of clarity after the “cultural tipping point” of “recent elections”. He said his own fact checkers had been “too politically biased” and had gone too far in restricting user content. 

He claimed that Facebook's filters would be dialled down, and Meta’s content review team would be shipped out from liberal California to the red state of Texas as a deliberate and visible signal to its users. Zuckerberg explicitly recognised that Meta would now “catch less bad stuff” but that – ultimately – it was a “trade-off” which would reduce the number of innocent posts accidentally taken down.

This video alone was enough to give a clear sign that Meta – which just four years ago had banned Trump from its platforms – was now fully on board with the direction of travel. Yet, Zuckerberg followed it up with a two and a half hour sit down with another Trump-backer, Joe Rogan, on his wildly popular podcast. And went further in tying his new approach to that “cultural tipping point” he spoke of.

He claimed Biden-era officials has screamed down the phone at Meta employees to take down content during the pandemic and argued that the previous administration had declared open season on US tech firms rather than rallying behind them as they faced investigations, and fines, from international regulators.

But he also called for more “masculine energy” in corporate America, debated hunting tactics with Rogan and enthused about his passion for jujitsu. As a piece of corporate positioning – however genuine or cynical – it could not be misinterpreted.

Other corporate leaders have not gone as far as Zuckerberg, but there has been a clear trend to go with the prevailing mood, whether quietly or with fanfare.

Many firms have opted for a submarine approach, going quiet on issues that – had Kamala Harris won – they would have been shouting about. Others have tailored messaging to different audiences, and took a calculated risk that this won’t be noticed or called out.

Meanwhile, others have tried to repackage their message to fit within the new environment, hoping that they can salvage their critical projects. At the heart of it all, however, is a question about authenticity.

Some firms are genuinely embracing the new agendas enthusiastically because their commitment to the old ones were inauthentic to start with. Some are simply pretending and taking the path of least resistance. But some will stand firm and try to ride it out, however unpleasant that might become for them in the short to medium term.

After all – four years is a long time, but it is not forever.

Each organisation will have to weigh these questions and the answers – inevitably – will be informed at least in part by that key judgement about “what it means for us”, whether they end up on one side or the other or to attempt to sit on the fence.

In any case, how they communicate their purpose, values and priorities over the coming years will be more important, more politicised – and more under scrutiny - than ever.