 |
| Dustin Siggins |
Have you ever traveled abroad and needed to ask for directions? It isn’t easy when you speak only English and the people you’re talking to speak only the local language.
That’s how a lot of communications professionals feel when we try to show our value to the C-Suite. Executives may listen to our ideas and pitches, but they don’t always get it … because we’re usually speaking different languages.
Speaking comms
Many communications professionals think the C-Suite is full of suits who can talk only about spreadsheets, stock prices and how to pass bad policies down the chain. And they think we have an MBA—in word salad.
That’s what I learned when I transitioned from political PR to making the same pitch to business owners. Earned media is a massive part of the political industry, so I figured sales would be easy.
The response was, shall we say, less than entirely profitable.
- “Why?” was the first question.
- “What’s my ROI?” was the second.
- “Isn’t PR just marketing?” was the third.
That’s why we have to do more than talk about comms. We must show real-world business acumen that the C-Suite respects.
“You have to understand the business,” said Stephanie Roberts, Chief Communications Officer for Hitachi Industrial Equipment Systems Co. and an expatriate who lives in Japan. “A decade ago, that wasn’t viewed as necessary. Today, it’s table stakes. Understanding finance, operations, etc. helps you think in a different, more holistic fashion to see—and show—how the communications function should be integrated into every part of a company’s planning and execution.”
The Chief Financial Officer has no idea how “media coverage” drives what he’s focused on: the bottom line. The Chief Operations Officer probably won’t see how “newsletter engagement” impacts her supply chain. And the CEO is very likely to say “we don’t need one” when you lay out a crisis communications plan.
To paraphrase what executive marketing consultant Samantha Riel recently posted on LinkedIn, communicators need to learn how to translate traditional marketing metrics like click-through rates and impressions into sales, growth and profit.
From comms-speak to C-speak
Surveys show that the C-Suite is changing its tune towards communications. A Deloitte study cited by Roberts showed that CCO positions increased by 133 percent between 2018 and 2023, while “CCO+” roles increased by 88 percent in the Fortune 1,000 between 2019 and 2024.
“Business is reaching a critical mass of C-Suites viewing communications as a need-to-have,” said Dave Trausneck, an executive communications consultant and former Aidoc Senior Manager of PR and External Communications.
But there’s a lot of progress needed before the CCO position gets the same prestige as the CFO, CRO or CIO. In the meantime, many companies underachieve because they don’t have a fully-staffed, well-budgeted communications function—and the “do more with less” comms folks are grinding away in silent frustration or venting on social media.
Yes, it’s a two-way street; executives should also learn to speak comms. But we also have a lot of control to lead up by learning to speak C-Suite.
Learning C-Suite
Lee Densmer, who leads content teams for companies grossing at least $60 million annually, said gaining experience is the only real solution to learning how to speak C-Suite. “It’s not something you can do well until you have 6–8 years seeing the results of your work. But once you can describe results to senior managers in terms they understand, you’ll secure budget, sponsorship and long-term trust that brings stability for the communications function.”
Speaking a new language is hard, so perhaps a solution is to treat ourselves like a client: How would we advise someone ELSE to reframe the narrative from his own words to those of the target audience?
For communicators, forward-looking growth strategies and tactics could change from:
- “We increased media coverage” to “we reached 20 percent more of our target audience through earned media.”
- Instead of “we gained 2,000 new LinkedIn followers,” the language becomes “we used that media coverage to increase our core audience social media following by 50 percent.”
- “Website visits” becomes “there was a 15 percent increase in bottom-of-funnel touchpoints, which were driven by increased media coverage, higher newsletter click-throughs and more social media engagement.”
And when talking about protecting the company’s brand value:
- “Brand risk” becomes “Done wrong, XYZ could cause the company to lose millions of dollars.”
- “Crisis communications” turns into “planning ahead so mistakes don’t lead to an investigation from the Federal Trade Commission.”
- “Damage control” is “Stopping this from costing the company five percent of its market share.”
Top athletes strive to practice like they’re playing the game. If we in the comms team are just talking to ourselves in our own language, we’ll never learn how to drive the most value by earning more trust, more budget and more strategic authority with the bosses.
Driving more value than ever
At the end of the day, our goal when speaking to the C-Suite should be breaking things down to the Ps and Ls—showing that comms is just as important to ROI as any other department.
“The practitioner needs to prepare and share outcomes/benefits of work, with data,” said Densmer. “Measure and report progress quarterly—and not just by sending an Excel file. Interpret the data, present with conclusions and recommendations and tell a story with the information.”
“For global corporations, new competitors arrive every day from every country,” said Roberts. “The P&L keeps the company functioning today—but without building brand trust, customer loyalty is gone tomorrow to any of those competitors. That’s why things that don’t drive this quarter’s profit, such as speaking on a stage or engaging in forward-looking media commentary, are still incredibly valuable.”
This may be the hardest part of translating “comms-speak” to “exec-speak”: Communicators value things that have subjective value, like brand awareness within a target audience and building stakeholder trust long before a crisis hits. After all, Coca-Cola’s brand name is worth far more than the actual soda it puts in aluminum cans.
And for some leaders, brand awareness means something far more important than profit—such as protecting the environment, reducing poverty or saving souls.
That made Billy Atwell’s job especially challenging. “The most basic function of communications is to elevate an organization’s mission by creating brand awareness, driving core messages and building trust with key audiences,” said Atwell, who led communications for three Catholic dioceses. “Bishops are not primarily trained in organizational management and leadership, but most end up shepherding multiple organizations. My job was to explain complex communications and marketing concepts in simple terms so that leadership understood our opportunities, decided what we wanted to do and why we wanted to do it and align the resources we needed to achieve our goals.”
Only once everyone is aligned can “higher things” fall into place. The ROI will follow, and so will the promotions that put the communications function at the big kids’ executive table.
And it all starts when comms learns to ask for—and how to give—directions in the C-Suite’s native tongue.
***
Dustin Siggins is a former Capitol Hill journalist and Founder of the public affairs and PR firm Proven Media Solutions.
While specialization is essential, siloed execution can subtract from the impact of corporate purpose and narratives. The result is missed opportunities to lead. 
