Actions without strategy are just noise.

A communications strategy is the navigational campaigning equivalent of a lighthouse and a map rolled in one. The strategy is the campaigning SatNav. And it should be part of any campaign, business or political, from day one.

Tactical work (identifying, articulating, crafting, honing, delivering your stories) are mere tweaks without a sound strategy underpinning and guiding them.

The communications world is fast and increasingly complex. A single-minded focus on your core functions and “outcomes” and the resultant messages is essential to keep your identity and your activities clear and effective. If you have a solid, focused and clear communications strategy, you will not be blown off course by the inevitable “unknowns” that conspire to upset every campaign. Instead, if you are blown off course, your strategy will act like a SatNav and guide you towards your goal or destination.

Strategy Questions – Who, What, Where, When, Why, How

  1. What do you want to achieve? What is the core “deliverable”?
  2. How to achieve your objective systematically?
  3. Campaigns usually need to mobilise political, media and public opinion. Who are those audiences – the decision-makers or the influencers? “Stakeholder Mapping” helps you understand your audience(s) – who could (or should) be interested in what you are doing.
  4. What is your message? Who is developing it? Who is delivering it? Is it clear and robust and consistent?
  5. Insurance and risk management. Crisis Management can protect reputations and campaigns if something goes wrong
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MessageCraft® Storytelling Strategy Process – Strategy Session

Our strategy session is the essential hard-work and homework that provides the navigation tools for the crafting AND delivery of your narrative and your story. These de-fluffing sessions always bring extraordinary clarity and focus – and sometimes fresh thinking!

In certain cases a wholesale refocus and redirection of an organisation have come as a result of my sessions – especially with organisations that may be a bit older and may have been sidetracked and become less focused.

My practical business experience means that I appreciate and understand the practical implications and processes that are involved. A strategy session should not be some airy-fairy consulting process that results in recommendations that are hard or impossible to implement and that will have uncertain, untested or insufficient returns.

Strategy outranked tactics in the NO2AV campaign – getting Labour on board the official NO campaign was a basic and essential building block to winning the referendum.

Launching an annual Media Awards event for the Human Trafficking Foundation will prove to be more effective and long-lasting than pitching to any one journalist or newspaper.

What is your strategy? Let’s get your objectives and strategy clear – then we can work on the tactics.