26 Aug Six Steps to Building a Successful Strategic Communications Capability
By BravoEcho
The Wall St. Journal recently reported that Chief Communications Officers have more power and scope than ever before — an overdue realization that communications should sit alongside marketing, and that its remit is much broader than crisis management. A comms team’s ability to build trust and reputation is a non-negotiable for corporate success. These six steps turn comms into a competitive advantage.
1. A strong strategic foundation.
Communication’s organizational role and value must be explained and reinforced through a clear mission, a statement of purpose, and objectives that connect comms to high performance and business growth. One CEO told us that after building her comms capability not only were the communications themselves more efficient and effective, but her leadership team was better-aligned and decision-making improved considerably.
2. The right set of tools.
We see five tools as essential, guiding both the internal team and external partners.
- Audience Plans clarify “Who” your intended audience is. They outline objectives and strategies, shape plans and measurement, and ensure integration with other initiatives.
- Content Plans define “What” messages and experiences you’ll create, and list the corporate and product messages to be communicated.
- Channel Plans detail “How” messages will reach their intended audience by defining the media mix — traditional, social, PR, events, Influencers, Creators, etc.
These Plans sound simple, but making the Who/What/How visible and mapping communications against them shows how complex it can be, building the case for deep, deliberate collaboration between comms and marketing, IR, HR, government affairs, and C-suite thought leadership.
- A Corporate Communications and Marketing Calendar offers what one CEO called his “air traffic control.” The benefits of the integrated planning its building necessitates become clear with an increased ability to combine efforts for cumulative impact, generate a higher return on comms and marketing investment, and resolve conflicts between initiatives.
- A Measurement Framework is needed to monitor reputation among key audiences. Reputation’s drivers — and their constituent attributes — should be tracked along with trust and advocacy. Regular research can flag emerging issues and test potential responses, enabling the comms team to anticipate what’s coming. This foresight reduces scrambling, and builds the comms team’s credibility within the organization.
3. A development process.
Clear company-wide process ensures initiatives start well, are reviewed at key development points, and materially contribute to the company’s success. This isn’t sexy, but it underpins any successful comms capability.
Enterprise and department initiatives, and individual projects, all benefit from the discipline of explicit tollgates — plan approval, project initiation, concept development, creative development and production, and distribution. Budget requirements, cross-functional scope, governance, and performance metrics should all be woven in.
Holding a lessons-learned session after every initiative — addressing what worked, what didn’t, and why — will force self-reflection and instill the belief that each effort should be bettered by the next.
4. Standards for creative excellence.
Delivering consistently high-quality communications demands clear standards that set the bar high for everyone, regardless of location, function or whether the activity is internal or external.
- Brand Standards offer creative teams “rules to create by”
- Message Frameworks tie specific copy to the benefits and RTBs in the brand’s positioning
- Principles of Communication guide the behavior of everyone and everything that comes in contact with customers and other stakeholders
Insights make comms more relevant, engaging, and impactful. Use data analytics, trends, and primary research to discover the motivations, anxieties, information needs, and methods of engagement for specific segments of employees, customers, and stakeholders. And insights should live upstream, not lie buried in a post-activation report.
5. A team with the right spirit and skill set.
Reputation and trust are such fragile assets that assembling a team of comms specialists is vital. They must be strategic comms experts, with the knowledge and passion to perform under new levels of visibility, responsibility, and expectations.
The comms leader should have an executive-level position to signal the role’s importance to the organization. They should be collaborative and co-operative, but self-assured enough to be assertive when company actions threaten its reputation. They also need the heart to understand the essence of the company, and mentor and motivate employees.
6. Tech and AI as force multipliers, not human replacements.
AI and automation expand what a comms team produces — faster drafts, smarter distribution, real-time sentiment tracking, scaled personalization. But AI should be used with intention. AI can’t read a room, build a relationship, navigate organizational politics, or exercise ethical judgment in a crisis. And as we’ve written elsewhere, AI isn’t capable of ideas that captivate, prose that persuades, or copy that moves hearts and minds. The best comms teams use AI to provoke, push, inspire, and produce variants, but it doesn’t replace their thinking, taste, vision, or judgment.
A final word.
Building a successful strategic communications capability requires new behaviors that embrace process and apply standards throughout the organization. The required discipline is difficult and needs executive-level alignment and endorsement to make it happen. But it’s vital it does happen, because comms is where every initiative, plan or investment meets the outside world. Reputation takes years to build and minutes to lose. A strong comms team is its architect and guardian, delivering communications that connect emotionally, engage rationally, and turn stakeholders into advocates. Comms’ value is being recognized — now comms teams must live up to it.