“Communication is a profession.” How many times have you, as a Communications Director, said this phrase? How often have you felt the need to legitimize your contribution to the company’s strategic plan in front of other departments flashing their indisputable KPIs?
While the finance team has EBITDA and marketing boasts customer acquisition, what can the Communications Director show in the boardroom? Traditional indicators have structural weaknesses: barometers that are too slow and non-actionable, incomprehensible KPIs, and disputed ad-value equivalents. It’s no wonder your projects get deprioritized and your role is dismissed as “just the colored-pencil department.”
It’s time to move from justification to demonstration. Unlike other departments, you don’t simply carry out a plan—you’re a partner to all strategic plans. Proving your decisive impact means establishing a clear, direct, and demonstrable link between communication and the executive leadership’s top priorities. Let’s explore three themes that resonate at the executive level: stock price (for public companies), market share, and business model. These are three areas where you can shift perceptions:
From Awareness to Brand Value
Rather than talking about awareness or image, focus on your impact on investor perception—and, by extension, valuation multiples. Nvidia, once a graphics card manufacturer, became an AI leader in just a few years, thanks to a strategic shift in brand perception that had a tangible effect on its market capitalization. Imagine identifying the “tech” signals in your market that boost that perception. By leveraging these markers in your communication, you demonstrate your ability to tangibly influence company value.
From Thought Leadership to Market Leadership
Show how your communications strategy helps win market share. A well-orchestrated message can make a company appear larger than it is—triggering a Pygmalion effect that speeds up market entry. In its early days, Doctolib was just one of many startups offering online medical appointments. But its bold, leader-style communication and ability to dominate informational pathways made it seem like the market leader. The result? Public hospitals, health authorities, and doctors adopted it as the go-to platform—well before it actually led the market.
From Reputation Management to Recommendation Engineering
Defending your image reactively is no longer enough—communications must now act as the social engineer of a recommendation machine. The most powerful brands today aren’t just known—they’re endorsed. Take Decathlon. Once a standard sports retailer, it became a relationship-driven brand by activating user feedback, ambassadors, and product use stories. It no longer says, “Here’s what we sell,” but gets customers to say, “Here’s how I use it.” This shift from product to purpose is something communication can help lead and prove its strategic value in doing so.
Generative AI: Your New Metrics Power Tool
But how do you actually measure “tech perception,” market leadership, or recommendation strength? That’s where generative AI comes into play.
It allows the creation of custom KPIs that draw on multiple data sources—media, social media, search behavior, web analytics—and go beyond raw numbers to include qualitative insights. These are tailored, strategic metrics that finally allow Communications Directors to quantify their impact.
This AI-driven metrics revolution is exciting forward-thinking Communications Directors. They see AI not just as a tool for optimization, but as a strategic command center. Where many feared AI might replace roles, it might actually prove their legitimacy.
Caroline Faillet, General Manager of the JIN Group.
