Member Exclusive: 5 ways communications fits into the strategic value chain

Take a big-picture view of the value chain to uncover value creation opportunities

By Justin Joffe, senior director of learning and development, Ragan

At a Communications Leadership Roundtable last fall, comms leaders were given a challenge: Find where communications fits into the strategic value chain. The answer? Everywhere and nowhere at all.

When you look the classic value chain model, communications plays a part at each link, but most communicators aren’t looking at their work through the value chain lens.

Christina Frantom, internal communications lead at Mercedes-Benz U.S. International, says the group’s answer demonstrates how communicators too often try to force their own strategies and processes into already established business models.

"We should be mapping our comms strategies against pre-existing business processes,” said Frantom. “Instead of reinventing the wheel or throwing a wrench into it, we should be pulling stories and other content from those models."

She urges communicators not to think of the value chain as a finite process with a beginning and an end — and instead consider it a value cycle.

“Don’t think of your customer journey as a static experience that ends with a sale," Frantom said. "Instead think of ways to add value to your customer experience so you can re-engage them at multiple points in the process. It is an entire cycle that’s constantly spinning. Comms professionals are responsible for making sure there’s momentum at every point in the value cycle, so it keeps spinning.”

Communicators know it’s spinning when all stakeholders are winning, she said. Here are five places where Frantom sees comms adding value:

1. Supply chain

Disruptions to the supply chain are a case in point. “Supply chain logistics are mostly invisible in product or service delivery, and nobody understands supply chain until it breaks,” she said. “Then, when it breaks, everyone’s an expert.”

She cited the Suez Canal crisis in 2021, when a large container ship was stuck along one of the busiest trade routes in the world for six days, costing companies billions of dollars. Frantom said communications was a critical component to provide context and education during the crisis and transparency after.

When your brand experiences a supply chain disruption, doing a comms post-mortem is one of the best ways to learn from the incident and determine how comms can play a role in the future.

“You should ask what responsibility does your brand have to your customers, your employees, to all of your stakeholders. What resource are being put toward making sure that these disruptions don’t happen again?”

Comms can also measure things like an increase in supplier engagement rates or sustainability certifications through collaborative efforts. Comms can tell stories around where and how materials travel, sustainability efforts in sourcing, and much more.

Related Article: Roundtable Recap: Using your communications currency to build value

2. Manufacturing

Communicators don’t play a direct role in manufacturing, but they can still have outsized impact by amplifying the brand’s narrative around the manufacturing process.

Maybe the organization has an innovative production process or a unique level of craftsmanship. Either would make for an excellent employer brand play.

But manufacturing processes can also change due to other influences and organization-wide goals. As communicators, it’s important to review the emerging issues that can disrupt the value chain.

“We are in a time of increasing geopolitical fragmentation,” Frantom said. “Assessing the maturity of your current value cycle will help you prepare for whatever external factors lie ahead.”

Being prepared with messaging and content in case of disruption or change to manufacturing can preserve or even improve value.

3. Marketing

When communicators can pull out people or process stories and tie them back to how the brand is positioned that creates marketing value. They might spotlight an innovative process or highly skilled workers as the secret sauce of a luxury product, for example.

The traditional qualitative and quantitative mix applies here – think campaign engagement and lead-gen traffic to product pages.

“Marketing isn’t just for increasing sales,” she said. “Recruiting partners and employees as well as reputation management are such valuable efforts. While all marketing roads do eventually lead to sales, there are a lot of invisible factors that can be hard to quantify, even in a mature value cycle.”

4. Sales

That link between marketing and sales is fairly explicit. Driving customers to product pages may spark a boost in inquiries about purchasing. But communications stories can also play a more direct role by equipping salespeople with sharable content showcasing innovation and craftsmanship.

That message pull through can easily tie to an increase in sales that are attributed to your manufacturing content.

“Some of the best content engagement comes from people and process stories,” Frantom said. “We are often selling into a multigenerational market. You never know what factors are going to move buyers, so it is best to have unique content in the field that only your brand can produce.”

5. Customer/employee experience and reputation

Telling stories about the customers who are satisfied with their purchase is one easy win for comms along this step in the value cycle. But when you consider employees as your first customer, comms can make a reputation play here, too.

"Making sure that you are treating your employees as your first customer is something that so many brands miss,” explained Frantom. “How many of us are giving employees what they need to be true brand ambassadors?”

Metrics like customer satisfaction and Net Promoter Score are an indicator of effectiveness. Frantom encourages other communicators to ask, “How are you using reputation management to recruit and or to sell into diverse markets?"

Reputation is a vital aspect along the entire value cycle and requires a bird’s eye view to manage it effectively.

“It’s such a delicate process — if everybody’s making profits at one point of the value cycle and there’s someone who isn’t being cared for by the rest of the cycle, then they are vulnerable to disruption or failure, then your whole cycle is a mess,” said Frantom.

Consider the case of Stanley

Frantom thinks of the unexpected virality of Stanley, makers of the insulated, 40-ounce water bottle that became an overnight sensation on “WaterTok” in early 2024, as an example of how a brand can successfully engage with an unexpected opportunity by preparing at multiple points in the value cycle.

“This was an unintentional moment, except it wasn't because the brand was prepared,” she said. “They were ready. They had their supply chain set up to respond to that amazing demand that happened because of a viral video."

By meeting suddenly spiking demand, Stanley reached into the value cycle and ensured that all stakeholders were winning. In turn, this allowed the brand to quickly boost its reputation and its business. That kind of action and activity are what’s exciting about the communications profession, Frantom said.

“You have to make sure everyone’s winning, and that includes all of your suppliers, employees, customers, the general public, and everyone involved at all those different levels,” she continued.

 “And when you do, your efforts pay off big time – you gain new market share, you improve your product, optimize your manufacturing process, and then you are able to resell to loyal customers who feel valued by your strong, mature value cycle.”