The Hidden Cost of Underestimating Communications
Could leadership's approach to communications be costing businesses more than they realise?
How much growth do creative businesses unintentionally miss because their leadership underestimates communications?
Working across the creative industries, I meet exceptional businesses, talented people, ambitious founders all doing outstanding work. Many understand exactly how communications supports their commercial ambitions.
But there is still a gap between the growth some businesses say they want and the attention their leadership gives to the activities that could help them achieve it.
Communications is a key case in point.
Applied properly, it helps a business become known for something valuable. It builds credibility, gives prospective clients reasons to make contact and creates familiarity before a sales conversation begins. It can support entry into new markets, strengthen recruitment and help good work reach the people who might commission more of it.
These are business outcomes. They deserve leadership attention.
Yet communications is still too often treated as something to delegate, occasionally approve and question when the pipeline looks thin.
Appointing a marketing or business development lead is a useful start. Giving that person a mandate to explore PR & Communications is another. But their enthusiasm can only take the business so far if the people controlling the budget and direction have no shared understanding of what communications is there to achieve.
That gap has a cost: missed opportunities, slow decisions and expertise commissioned without the conditions to make it useful.
Nobody expects a CEO to be a communications specialist. But curiosity is part of the job.
How might prospective clients discover us through AI search? What role could LinkedIn play in building familiarity with the people we want to reach? What evidence would make our expertise more credible? How should communications support our growth priorities?
You do not need all the answers. You DO need to take the questions seriously.
There is a responsibility on those of us advising these businesses, too. We need to connect our recommendations to commercial priorities, explain how progress will be assessed and be honest about what communications can deliver.
The strongest partnerships begin with that shared understanding. Before inviting a partner to develop a strategy, leadership should agree on the problem, the ambition and its own willingness to participate.
Sometimes that conversation will reveal that the business is not ready. Recognising that early is a useful outcome.
What concerns me is seeing brilliant creative businesses limit their own prospects through assumptions they have never properly examined.
The opportunity is considerable. Realising it requires leaders to bring the same curiosity to growing their business that they bring to their clients’ challenges.
