WHAT WE DO

Digital regulation and policy

Our team has played a central role in drafting, negotiating, and adopting key digital files. We are intimately familiar with the decisions, interests, positions, ambitions (and even blunders) that led to the adoption of the final texts. We know the strengths, the weaknesses, and the intention behind every paragraph. We know and maintain excellent relationships with the entire digital ecosystem, from decision-makers to industry players, innovators, academics, compliance specialists, and activists. Some examples of what we can do together:

REGULATORY COMPLIANCE AND ETHICS CONSULTING

We assist you in understanding compliance requirements, necessary steps you need to take, tools at your disposal, and legal provisions that might be favorable to your unique situation. We facilitate your collaboration with certified compliance entities, and we leverage our regulator perspective and legislative understanding to monitor your compliance journey from start to end and to advise you at every step.

POLITICAL INTELLIGENCE AND ADVOCACY SUPPORT

We track political and policy developments and study the dynamics of policy-making on every file of interest. We follow positions, statements, interests, political dynamics, advocacy efforts, and negotiations, tracking interconnected and longitudinal evolutions. We distill this intelligence into actionable advocacy advice, both dynamically and as part of a long-term approach.

POLICY ANALYSIS AND DEVELOPMENT

We help you and your team navigate the nuances of regulation and advise on aligning your strategy to anticipate regulatory developments and implementation through comprehensive research and reports, group trainings, and one-on-one briefings. To support your advocacy, we assist you in drafting high-impact legal texts and amendment suggestions, alongside powerful, convincing arguments.

Business development

We run a business, and we are highly attuned to the fact that our collaborators also have business, or business-like, objectives. Advocacy, public affairs, regulatory compliance, positioning and communications are means to an end, which is competitiveness and growth. Our team is experienced in subordinating means to strategic objectives and has a nuanced understanding of the interplay between public affairs and business. Here’s how we can help you grow your business: 

AI AND DIGITAL TRANSFORMATION

Through our work on drafting and negotiating the EU Artificial Intelligence Act, we are highly specialized in AI regulation, AI governance, AI ethics, and AI compliance. We work with you to deploy this expertise in your AI adoption, advising you on AI solutions, market trends, hype pitfalls, and AI capabilities and shortcomings, so that you leverage AI with a maximum impact on your business and on your bottom line. When this involves large-scale structural changes within your company, we turn to our network to secure the best expertise available on AI and digital transformation, and we accompany you throughout the journey.

CLIENT ACQUISITION

We take a holistic view of the ecosystem in which we operate, and we keep an economist's eye out for wherever supply meets demand. We work with you to identify potential clients, we scout interest and work to understand their needs, and we report back to you with actionable recommendations for next steps. We leverage our ecosystem-building activities to bring potential clients into our network, to cultivate our relationship with them, and to facilitate mutually-beneficial conversations, either in direct business meetings or through serendipitous conversations. We do this for every one of our collaborators, injecting value into our relationships and into the ecosystem.

PUBLIC PROCUREMENT

In areas where our public sector network is strong, such as AI, emerging technologies, law enforcement, and security and defense, we help you understand public sector needs and how your business could fill them. We monitor evolutions in funding and procurement, both at the European level and at Member States level, and advise you on potential partnership or business opportunities. And, where appropriate for both sides, we facilitate meetings with decision-makers who could be interested in your solutions.

Public affairs

Our team has senior-level experience that reaches far beyond the EU bubble. This gives us a unique, high-impact, toolkit for enabling our clients' effective advocacy. We have shaped top-level decisions and built national campaigns, political parties, and grassroots movements in Washington, Brussels, and Member State capitals. We take a multivariate approach to advocacy objectives, leveraging influence vectors, networks and coalitions, indirect advocacy through complementary channels, and intelligence to craft our advocacy plan. And we have the network, know-how, and credibility to implement it and deliver sustainable results. Some examples:

STAKEHOLDER ENGAGEMENT

We identify key players relevant to your objectives and study their positions, priorities, evolution, and thinking, giving you cutting-edge intelligence on who you should meet, why you should meet them, and how you can bring value to your engagement with them. 

ECOSYSTEM MAPPING

We work with you to identify who are the relevant decision-makers, supporters, opponents, and potential coalition partners, not just in your direct area of interest, but also in complementary or separate ecosystems with overlapping objectives. We do this not just through detailed research, but also by gathering political intelligence from our constant engagement with the ecosystem and vectors of influence.

COALITION BUILDING

We help you bring together relevant stakeholders in a variety of formats, from ad-hoc briefings for decision-makers and technical staff, industry meetings to disseminate your advocacy priorities, and meetings for stakeholder consultations and engagement, to long-term, structured, and organized coalitions for sustained objective-driven advocacy.

INDIRECT ADVOCACY

Advocacy is not linear. Ideas circulate freely across interest groups and industries, making their way into the decision-making space through various (and at times unexpected) entry points. We study overlaps, intersection points, and synergies between different layers of decision-making and help you build unlikely coalitions that make your priorities stand out in the predictable Brussels chatter. We find and bring to your side allies and supporters you never knew you had.

KNOWLEDGE MANAGEMENT AND CURATION

Sometimes all you need is exceptional research. We systematically follow all developments related to our fields of subject-matter expertise: Artificial Intelligence, emerging technologies, security and defense, the transatlantic partnership, and Ukraine. We scan reputable global publications, we engage with world-class think tanks, we participate in working groups in international organizations, and we stay up to date with regulatory developments around the world. We provide exquisite reports and intelligence, accompanied by crisp analysis and concrete recommendations, in support of your advocacy efforts.

ADVOCACY STRATEGY AND TRAINING

We work with you to build and refine your advocacy strategy, leveraging our understanding of policy-making, politics, and lobbying for a comprehensive, multi-dimensional, long-term advocacy strategy in Brussels or Member State capitals. We support your advocacy team with training and advice on the strategy, strategic objectives, and implementation, and, more importantly, on the most relevant advocacy tools for delivering tangible results in their day to day job.

Positioning and narrative building

Advocacy and business development efforts are catalyzed by an effective narrative, informed by empirical data on public opinion and sensitive to the political currents and undercurrents that shape the policy agenda. A solid reputation with decision-makers and the wider policy ecosystem can mean the difference between success and failure. Our team has built narratives with global reach around political actors and policy priorities, with conscious, intentional, and long-term planning around specific goals. Here’s how we can do this for you:

HIGH-END EVENTS

We plan, organize, and run high-impact, high-profile events in support of your mission. We stand out in an oversaturated events market through our exceptional convening power, derived from a simple but effective approach: for every event we plan, be it a private roundtable or a three-day conference, we dedicate considerable resources to mapping relevant stakeholders, making sure that every participant derives value from attending and brings value to other attendees. This rarely happens in open-format events, so we favor invitation-based formats where we are in personal contact with every single attendee.

COMMUNICATIONS CAMPAIGNS AND MEDIA RELATIONS

The policy landscape ebbs and flows based on dominant and secondary narratives that vary across geographies and time. Nuances in these narratives vary alike. We identify and analyze relevant narratives and the political motivations behind them, and we work with you to position your company so that narrative alignment acts as a multiplier on your business strategy and advocacy efforts. In support of your communications strategy, we leverage our media contacts and we craft crisp and effective communications materials such as press releases, op-eds, and social media campaigns.

IMPACT MEASUREMENT AND REPUTATION MONITORING

We track the effectiveness of your campaigns and messaging using both quantitative and qualitative methods. We follow what “the establishment” thinks of your company, of your advocacy, and of your influence, and we offer concrete and actionable suggestions for leveraging those insights to your favor or, in crisis situations, for adopting effective corrective measures. We watch your back, and we keep you updated on any potential or concrete challenges.

Customized solutions

Our team’s competitive advantage is rooted in our eclectic experience. We have built and negotiated regulations with a global impact; we have delivered complex projects for heads of state and high net-worth individuals; we have built political movements, grassroots campaigns, organizations, and effective teams; we have completed contracts with top global companies; and we are equally comfortable in Brussels, Washington, London, and European capitals. We rely on what we have learned in these experiences to give all our products a competitive edge, bringing to bear skills, ideas, tactics, and strategies that are uncommon for the “Brussels bubble”. As such, we are always open to (and excited about) opportunities that require us to more fully leverage this diversified skill set. Some ways in which we can help:

HEADHUNTING AND TALENT ACQUISITION

In nurturing and growing our network, we meet many exceptional individuals who are open to growth opportunities, we get to learn where the work gets done and where ideas originate from, and we develop a nuanced assessment of the level of influence, reputation, and talent of various players operating in our spheres of activity. When you are looking for the right hire or are seeking to build a new team, we can help by scouting the market and providing a list of exceptional (and vetted) targets, by marketing your opportunities to our highly-curated network, and by providing in-depth qualitative assessments on potential candidates.

SOFT LANDING AND REPRESENTATION

If you’re looking to establish a presence in Brussels, London, or a major European capital, we work with you at every step of the process, from walking you through the basics of policy-making and advocacy in the European capital, to establishing your legal presence, setting up your office, recruiting and training your team, building your network and political contacts, and making sure you are on the right radars and in the right communities. And if you need a bridgehead but are not looking to expand just yet, we are happy to be your eyes, ears, and discreet advisors in the EU capital.    *In accordance with our mission, Vanguard does not collaborate with entities owned or controlled by authoritarian regimes or linked with extremist ideologies.

LEADERSHIP TRAINING

In our work, we have found that personalized training, tailored to an organization profile, objectives, and market position, is the lowest-hanging fruit for successful advocacy. We provide tailor-made training for decision-level executives on policy-making, specific policy, the EU establishment, and the politics of it all, opening the way for higher-impact, more sophisticated, advocacy projects. In parallel, we offer political training, media training, and advocacy training for mid-level and junior staff, increasing the value they derive from our collaboration and the impact of their own work. 

Vanguard projects

As a mission-driven company, we undertake our own projects when we consider they add strategic value to our mission and are in accordance with our values. Among those are projects for ecosystem development, in the form of high-level events, closed-doors roundtables, or networking receptions; political and policy inputs, in the form of white papers, non-papers, grassroots or media campaigns; and leadership and advocacy training, in particular for rising political figures aligned with our mission and values. While we keep this track independent of our contracted services, we are keen to develop partnerships and explore varying collaboration configurations based on mission compatibility and values alignment. How can we work together:

ECOSYSTEM DEVELOPMENT

We build curated high-level events aligned with and in support of our mission. We are happy to partner for these events, giving our partners visibility benefits and, where appropriate, a seat on stage or at the table to present their positions. For Vanguard-branded events, we run our partnerships through an ethics review, ensuring that our events maintain their independence, objectivity, and alignment with our mission and values.

POLITICAL AND POLICY INPUT

We independently shape the public conversation in a direction most favorable to our mission. To that end, we engage with think tanks, academia, and senior-level experts to produce high-impact policy recommendations on issues of relevance for the geopolitical standing of the European Union. For these initiatives, we welcome partnerships and collaborations supporting our work or indicating relevant research agendas, insofar as they are not conditioned on influencing the substance and outcomes of our research.

POLITICAL EMPOWERMENT

In support of our mission, we identify promising up-and-coming political figures, political parties, and social movements that embody our values and are naturally aligned with our mission. We work to empower them and we give them the tools they need to succeed through leadership and media training, advocacy tools, and political consulting services. For these efforts, we welcome partners who can contribute resources or know-how to our toolset, for example by providing specialized training in their area of expertise, by providing pro-bono services, or by supporting our team in dedicating more time and resources to such ongoing engagements.

Get in touch: contact (at) vanguardeurope.eu