When a Company Changes Faster Than the World Understands

At Fujifilm, Anthony Farina is drawing on decades of communications experience to tackle a distinctly modern challenge: making corporate reinvention understandable while changing how communications itself works.

What happens when a company has spent decades reinventing itself, but much of the world still remembers what it used to be?

For Fujifilm, the question is particularly striking. Founded in 1934 as a photographic film manufacturer, the company has evolved into a global enterprise spanning healthcare, life sciences, electronics, business innovation, and imaging. Its expertise in chemistry, materials, and imaging helped make that evolution possible.

Yet the name still evokes photographic film for many people. Some even wonder whether Fujifilm remains in business.

The transformation is real. Understanding it is another matter.

When Anthony Farina joined Fujifilm Americas as Chief Communications & Brand Officer in April 2025, he encountered a challenge that went beyond telling a more compelling corporate story. The communications organization itself needed to evolve to support a business that had changed dramatically.

And he would have to make that happen without additional resources.

The advantage of having seen different worlds

Anthony Farina arrived with more than 35 years of experience spanning journalism, government, and global corporate communications. He had worked in newsrooms, served as press secretary to Delaware’s governor, and led communications for DuPont and CSL—organizations with different histories, cultures, and business priorities.

Farina’s early months at Fujifilm were not without uncertainty. But, rather than beginning with a sweeping reorganization or requesting additional resources, he approached his first year as a design problem.

His starting point was deceptively simple: listen.

Not merely to understand what business leaders wanted to communicate, but to understand what they were trying to accomplish. This distinction changes the conversation. Instead of asking, “What do you want to say?” communications begins by asking, “What is the business objective?”

It also changes the role of the communicator: from responding to requests to helping determine how communications can contribute to business priorities.

Simplicity is a leadership decision

Farina’s approach took shape around five interconnected disciplines: listening, strategy, geography, structure, and execution. But the significance lies less in the framework than in the choices behind it.

A clear strategic North Star became essential. For Fujifilm Americas, that meant building, protecting, and defending the reputation of Fujifilm and its businesses.

The organization also needed to operate across geographies without assuming that global consistency required identical local execution.

Anthony Farina advocated a light layer of global governance, clear decision rights, and sufficient autonomy for teams working across different markets and cultures.

Internally, he moved toward an integrated operating model combining communications business partners with a center of excellence providing specialized expertise.

The objective was not simply to produce more content. It was to make existing capabilities more useful to the business.

Rather than waiting for additional headcount, the emphasis was on recognizing and developing the talent already in place.

This is where accumulated experience may make a difference. Simplification can look obvious after it has happened. Recognizing what to simplify … and what must remain intact … requires judgment.

Moving before everything is perfect

His philosophy also challenges the assumption that responsible leadership requires waiting until all uncertainty is resolved. Anthony advocates moving at 80% confidence, learning from feedback, and improving in real time.

That approach has produced visible early results.

According to Fujifilm Americas’ first-half fiscal 2026 communications results, social posting increased 50%, while total impressions rose 456%. The number of executives participating in intentional thought-leadership programs doubled compared with the previous fiscal year. The team also expanded digital channels and developed new multimedia capabilities.

These are measures of communications progress, not yet proof that the wider world has fundamentally changed its perception of Fujifilm. But they demonstrate something important: a communications function can begin changing how it operates while simultaneously supporting the larger business story it needs to tell.

The company has also gained visibility through initiatives including its life sciences rebrand, the opening of a major biomanufacturing facility in North Carolina, and recognition among TIME’s Most Influential Companies of 2026.

For Anthony Farina, the larger objective is to connect communications decisions with business outcomes—and make that contribution visible.

When experience becomes a catalyst

There’s a temptation to treat speed as a function of technology, resources, or organizational urgency. Anthony Farina’s experience suggests another possibility …

Sometimes progress begins with the ability to recognize which assumptions no longer serve the organization.

A communications department doesn’t necessarily need to become larger to become more strategic. Global alignment doesn’t have to eliminate local judgment. And a compelling corporate story cannot compensate for a communications function that isn’t sufficiently connected to the business.

None of these observations provides a universal formula. Fujifilm’s circumstances are distinctive, as is Farina’s career. But his approach raises a question relevant well beyond Fujifilm:

What if the advantage of experience isn’t simply knowing what has worked before, but recognizing what needs to work differently now?

For a company that has spent decades reinventing what it does, that may be precisely the kind of thinking required to help the world understand what it has become.