Authentic Corporate Headshots & LinkedIn Activity Help Employees & Stakeholders Feel Connected to Leaders
Like it or not, modern CEOs need to develop a clear CEO positioning strategy and execute against this to meet employee expectations of being connected, transparent and accessible. According to one expert, the CEO positioning strategy should include four components (We’ll go over two positioning strategy examples to illustrate):
- Strategy: “Every media appearance and message communicated needs to be fully aligned, creating a powerful, overarching narrative and contributing to the long-term positioning strategy and its goal.”
- Link between internal (employees) and external (stakeholders) positioning
- Transparency
- Commitment
For these CEO positioning strategy examples, we’ll focus on two highly visible manifestations of the positioning:
- the corporate headshot of the CEO
- the LinkedIn CEO profile page
CEO Positioning Strategy Example:
Corporate Headshot as a Benchmark
The CEO is a visible figurehead for the company that she or he leads. And his or her corporate headshot (or body shot in some cases) found on the company’s website is an official image in the public domain.
According to Forbes, a good corporate headshot is important to create a positive first impression, reinforce company values and build trust among clients. An HBR study suggested that CEOs’ observable traits, including how they present themselves in media, can influence investors’ perceptions and the firm’s stock price. World Economic Forum research found that the CEO’s public image and decisions can account for a significant portion of the variation in firm performance.
From all this, we believe that the corporate headshot represents an intentional positioning of the CEO to external audiences. In this CEO positioning strategy example, we focus on Fortune 500 CEOs who are leading large organizations, cumulatively totaling nearly 31 million employees and over $18 trillion in revenue. The Fortune 500 are a powerful group of leaders by any measure.
We’re going to focus on a different, but interesting, measure: grey hair. Since there are cultural differences in whether grey hair is acceptable in a powerful leader, we became curious to discover the current situation among these CEOs.
Depending on the individual and the industry, the CEO may frequently appear publicly and be photographed regularly, while in other cases, the most recent image that’s publicly available seems to be the one on the website. To even the playing field, we used the company website images, whenever available, to look at this example of CEO positioning strategy marketing: the CEO’s own image.
We sought to understand how many Fortune 500 CEOs (list published in July 2024) sport visible grey hair in their corporate headshot, and whether this varies by women vs. men, in addition to the expected variation by age.
While there is variation in the age when most people go grey, hair research finds:
“By age 50, half of men and women will have at least 50 percent gray hair.”
A different worldwide study found:
“Calculating the percentage of people showing at least 50% grey hair coverage at age 50 years leads to a global range of 6-23%.”
Combining the midpoint of the range would suggest that 25% of adults aged 50+ have at least 50% grey hair, unless they choose to cover it. So, if this holds true, we’d expect to find at least 25% of Fortune 500 CEOs above age 50 to have visible grey hair.
CEO Positioning Strategy Example:
Hair is More Complicated than You Might Think!
While the approach of reviewing the headshot on the website for each Fortune 500 CEO worked for 95% of the Fortune 500 companies that we reviewed, looking at this positioning strategy marketing example turned out to be a more challenging task than initially envisioned, for several reasons. These included:
- There is considerable variation in male CEO hairstyles. We found men who have a shaved head or are bald, with no visible hair, and so it is not possible to tell their hair color, as well as those who sport just a few grey hairs at the temple, or a grey beard. With women, there is less variation. Most are more clearly sporting visible grey or not. To simplify the approach, we classified those without visible hair on the head or face as bald, and for those with visible hair, considered it grey if there is visible grey. So, a male CEO with a grey beard is considered grey for this assessment, even if the hair on his head is not grey. Bald or a shaved head without hair came to slightly less than 4% of the sample.
- Some CEOs do not have a headshot readily available on their company website. These CEOs appear to be in hiding, without a readily-accessible headshot on the website or other accessible public sources such as newspaper articles or industry publications. Four companies fell into this category, just 1% of the sample.
For me, it’s hard to understand why a Fortune CEO and their staff can’t find the time to have a good headshot taken and posted on the website, with or without grey hair visibly showing. Certainly, this falls short of the desired transparency that employees are seeking.
- At one company, there is an office of the CEO with three individuals with very different hair, so we excluded this from the review.
- In 20 companies, there is a new CEO in place since the list was published in July 2024. In those cases, we used the new CEO headshot.
- While it’s difficult to be certain, some of the corporate website images appear outdated, perhaps taken when the CEO first took the position years ago. In those cases, we used the company website image. Again, it’s hard to understand why large corporations with no lack of resources fail to update the CEO’s headshot regularly. Instead, the outdated approach appears to be a choice to avoid a more recent CEO photo, again a lack of transparency.
CEO Positioning Strategy Example:
Topline Findings of Fortune 500 CEO Headshots
We found 55% of all Fortune 500 CEOs are visibly grey, and 41% are not, at least as far as looking at the website image can reveal. The remaining 5% are primarily bald or have shaved heads, with a handful who cannot be classified.
From our estimates, 90% of Fortune 500 CEOs are 50 or older. This means that Fortune 500 CEOs are coming in closer to the 50% estimates than the worldwide study with lower incidence.
CEO Positioning Strategy Example:
Fortune 500 CEO Headshot Differences by Age
While some of the CEOs have their age readily visible, even their birthday, others do not. There are several sources online that estimate age, some of which appear to be a few years outdated. When there was a complete lack of information, we looked up the year the CEO earned their undergraduate degree, and made the assumption that they were 21 upon college graduation. The most common source to find year of undergraduate graduation was LinkedIn. In other cases, alumni articles had the graduation year. For these reasons, the age might be incorrect by 1-4 years but should not be more than that.
As previously mentioned, most CEOs are age 50 plus, an age range when grey hair can be expected for many.
Approximately 10% of Fortune 500 CEOs are in their 40s, and just two appear to be below age 40: Andrew Teno and Tony Xu. There are also five CEOs who are 80 or older (1%). After excluding the small number who couldn’t be classified due to no image or corporate office, we found that most CEOs who are 60 or older have visibly grey hair, while most under age 50 do not have visible grey (86%).
The most interesting group is likely those between the ages of 50 and 59. There are two groups, one who sport visibly grey hair (49%) and the other who does not (46%), while a smaller cohort (5%) goes for the bald or shaved-head look.
Other studies show that most Fortune 500 CEOs choose to be visibly grey beyond the age of 60. This is consistent with a positioning strategy that suggests a visible sign of age, like grey hair, connotes valuable experience and wisdom. In fact, roughly half of Fortune 500 CEOs in their 50s also choose the visibly-grey approach.
CEO Positioning Strategy Example: Fortune 500 CEO Headshot Differences by Gender
When Forbesanalyzed female fortune 500 CEOs in June 2024, they came in at 10.4% of the sample, numbering 52 out of 500. In the past few months, another four female CEOs have been named, bringing the total to 11.2%.
There is a striking difference by gender, as 93% of female CEOs do not have visibly grey hair, and just 7% (four people) of the Fortune 500 CEOs sport visible grey. While it could be that some of these female CEOs do not have grey hair, most are electing to cover their grey. With one exception, the female CEOs who are visibly grey are older than 60.
As far as age considerations, there are no female CEOs that we could identify in the 70+ category or the under-40 age category. 18% of female Fortune 500 CEOs are under age 50, which is higher than the overall mixed gender group of Fortune 500 (at 10%).
When the female CEOs under age 50 are removed, the small group who do have visible grey increases modestly to 9%. In other words, 9% of Fortune 500 female CEOs over age 50 are visibly grey.
I admire the Fortune 500 female CEO leaders who are visibly showing their grey. They are Carol B. Tomé, Phebe N. Novakovic, Lisa T. Su and Mary Dillon. If I missed any, I would love to be corrected.
While there are broader cultural trends towards more acceptance of grey hair at an earlier age for women (e.g., Instagram account for grombre celebrating going grey), they haven’t caught on in the Fortune 500 executive suite as of yet.
In my young adulthood, I can recall thinking I would not color my hair to cover grey, though I might have colored it “for fun” to add highlights. However, I quickly abandoned this perspective in my 40s and 50s and began coloring my hair to cover the grey. In the past two years, I’ve reverted to my natural hair color, which definitely meets the 50% grey level. I feel more comfortable that this grey hair color reflects well on me, but I definitely have friends who feel otherwise for own hair.
CEO Positioning Strategy Example:
Fortune 500 CEO Headshot Differences by Years as the CEO
Going through the CEO list caused me to reflect upon the different paths to CEO among these Fortune 500 leaders. Some are company founders or co-founders, who have been in place since the company was started. The founder CEO is a model I often see at Vistage companies who are typically mid-sized and smaller businesses.
A second group of leaders are those who have been with the company for many years and risen up to become the CEO. At times, they are children of the company founder, and other times they are long-term, key executive employees. In either case, these home-grown CEOs are well understood by their organizations by dint of their long tenure. Many of the organizations have clear succession plans in place, so that the new leader is not a surprise.
A third group is the CEO who is brought in from the outside, either because there is an unexpected turnover of the CEO, an acquisition or merger, a need for a very different strategic direction and/or because there is not a suitable successor available internally. This category of hired-gun CEOs has likely been a CEO at another organization (or several).
We looked at CEO tenure, and when they were made CEO, to see if this would reveal differences in positioning strategy marketing. Founder CEOs and home-grown CEOs can be expected to have longer tenure in general (except in the case when the company is a new company). It could be, hypothetically, that hired-gun CEOs pay more attention to their image and headshot than the other categories. To be fair, there is more to a good headshot than just hair color.
Approximately a quarter (24%) of Fortune 500 CEOs have 10 years or more in the position (named September 2014 or earlier). These CEOs will tend to be either founder CEOs or home-grown CEOs, though not exclusively. Another roughly quarter (23%) of Fortune 500 CEOs have between five to nine years in place. They are likely a mix of home-grown and hired gun CEOs, as are the remaining tenure groups. A fifth (20%) fall between three to four years, while a full third (33%) have two years or less.
As might be expected, the CEOs with more than 10 years in position have an average age of 63 compared to the total sample at 58. The CEOs with more than 10 years are also more likely to be visibly grey. The CEOs with between three to nine years of tenure have the same average age as the total at 58; age is not necessarily making a difference in their visible grey status. The newest group of CEOs at two years or less are equally likely to be visibly grey (47%) or not (49%) and are on average a bit younger at 55.
Compared with the age of the CEO or their gender, the differences by tenure are much less significant.
Overall, it will be interesting to see if cultural acceptance of earlier greying will make a material difference in the Fortune 500 CEOs in years to come.
CEO Positioning Strategy Example:
LinkedIn Profile with Content
The LinkedIn profile is a second, highly-visible CEO positioning strategy example. In 2020, 62% of Fortune 500 CEOs had LinkedIn profiles.
By 2023, this increased to 73% of Fortune 500 CEOs. Still, that means that approximately 135 Fortune 500 CEOs did not have a LinkedIn profile in 2023.
After looking through the list we studied, there is still a way to go:
- For the more than 100 Fortune 500 CEOs, mainly men, who lack a LinkedIn profile, consider how your lack of accessibility and transparency may undermine your position with employees.
There is a gender difference, with 86% of female CEOs as of this writing in 2024 showcasing a LinkedIn profile page for themselves. While most of these LinkedIn-absent CEOs have corporate LinkedIn pages in the absence of the CEO page, research shows that this is suboptimal for message delivery. One estimate is that the leader’s profile post is more than 500 times as effective as the corporate social media page. - Even with a CEO profile page in place, many of the Fortune 500 CEOs can up their game in delivering messaging content through their LinkedIn profile.
According to experts, a good CEO positioning strategy execution on LinkedIn profile pages includes:
“Post a photo taken by a professional photographer…
CEOs and business leaders should share a mix of content that reflects their expertise, company values, and industry insights. Articles, milestones, thoughts on industry trends and appearances on panels.”
For example, below are three LinkedIn positioning strategy examples from my recent LinkedIn feed that bring a smile to my face and are consistent with these leader’s positioning.
Mary Dillon, CEO Footlocker. Recent post:
“September marks a major milestone for Foot Locker – our 50th anniversary! We had an incredible morning kicking off the celebration with team members and Stripers ringing the NYSE Opening Bell…Thank you to our passionate Stripers and team members for their dedication to driving our Lace Up Plan forward. Together, we are setting the stage for the next 50 years of growth and innovation!”
Gary Cohen, CEO iRobot. Recent post:
“I’m excited to share that iRobot’s Roomba Combo Essential will be featured in primetime on the Home Shopping Network (HSN) on Monday, Sept. 9. This is a fantastic opportunity to show off one of our innovative products which recently earned PC Mag’s Editor’s Choice Award, as well as present the iRobot brand to new consumers.”
Dee Hadley, CMO US Coffee Bean & Tea Leaf. Recent post:
“Coffee Bean & Tea Leaf mobile café in downtown LA. Did you know a CBTL barista invented Ice Blended in 1987…?”
To be sure, many or all of the Fortune 500 CEOs likely work with a communication team and/or social media expert to deliver the content. But the overall CEO positioning strategy needs to provide direction to ensure the desired connection.
This research into CEOs’ personal brands inspired me to unveil a new headshot on the Insight to Action website. Check out our About ITA page to see my updated look. I’ve been active on LinkedIn for years, and have seen first-hand how a CEO can effectively be the “personality” of the company.
For more on positioning strategy, visit our resources page. Or join us at an upcoming office hours.
