Jay Kolbe is co-founder and senior managing partner of Impact Partners, a strategic communications firm that works with family offices. He explains how external communications can help family offices achieve their goals:
Family offices often value privacy. Why should they have a strategy for communicating externally?
If you’re a family office with a purpose, then you need a communications strategy.
Nothing great in the world happens in a vacuum. You have to bring other people along. You have to communicate. It’s hard to find the best hires or the people most aligned with what you’re trying to do without broadcasting a little bit of a signal for them to rally around.
When you look at the marketing funnel, when people go from awareness to consideration to conversion on any decision, in that middle part, they start to look for other people who are making the decisions that they’re about to make. Being able to bring in third-party validators to say, ‘Pay attention to this — this is a trend’ really does enhance the value of what you’re doing. If someone is going to make an investment in a company, they want to see that kind of validation.
Some people operate from a fear-based family office setup — they may have 10 lawyers but zero communications people. They’re more worried about what could happen as opposed to making what they want happen.
What are some examples of situations where communications would help a family office?
Family offices are putting a lot of money into direct investments in startups. They need to get some media attention around the startup so that other people will say they want to be part of it and invest in it, too.
Family offices are also creating funds. They can use media coverage to alert other people that might want to be partners in the fund. Pretty soon that purposeful fund is three, four, five times the size, filled with other aligned family offices.
There is also communications work to be done in the real estate market: who you are, what communities you invest in, what type of real estate you are expert in.
Why do some family offices hesitate to engage externally?
I think the headspace for most family offices is really: ‘I want to keep my head down. I don’t want people to know who we are or what we’re up to.’ They don’t want unwanted media attention, because they believe it will end up in a conversation they don’t want to have about their cars, boats, houses, wealth, etc. That’s not the conversation anyone wants to have, so they get wary of that whole group of people, and they tend not to engage.
But that’s not strategic. If you’re intentional, you can use that very same media channel to project things that are really high value for you: You can be seen as a leader. You can send the signals that bring in people you want to meet with or co-invest with, to come in alongside you.
A lot of times with family offices, it’s not that they don’t have purpose or intention, but they’re not organized communicators. That’s not comfortable for them. They get used to investing in industries that they have experienced directly or are proximal to (within arm’s reach). But the greatest opportunities are bigger than that. If you’re really purposeful and strategic, and you want to have an impact, you have to broadcast what you’re doing and lead. That all comes back to communications.
What does it mean for a family office to have a brand, and why is this important?
Traditionally, family offices have not thought of their brand as the strategic asset. The family office brand really isn’t about publicity, per se — it’s about creating a strategic and intentional platform to bring credibility and leadership to whatever you do. A thoughtful brand helps you attract the right talent, stand out in a crowded landscape, access better deal flow, bring in the right partners and communicate your purpose across generations. It shows people — whether founders, fund managers or policymakers — what your family stands for and how you add value beyond just capital. At the end of the day, it’s about owning not just your brand, but your legacy — and making sure it’s shaped by design, not left to chance.