Strategic Communication - Maximizing Opportunity for the Long-Haul
Our culture and history are wallpapered with buzzwords and catch phrases. Customer journey. Leverage. Siloes. Transformation. Win-win.
Some of the current crop of trending terms will disappear as quickly as they arrived. Others – such as “sustainable” – are foundational to the business world and likely will be with us for some time to come.
Such is the case for Three Box’s namesake phrase, “strategic communications.”
Somewhere along the line, innovators and legacy institutions alike realized that business wasn’t merely about coming to the office, opening the front door and putting on a pot of coffee. Rather, a successful business… and, brand… model is about having a vision and a pathway to get there. Extracting from the classic “goals-objectives-strategies-tactics” model, strategy became synonymous with success. Soon, it was attached to any number of initiatives. Including communications.
Strategic communications is about the marathon, not the sprint. A mindset as much as methodology, strategic communications recognizes the core premise that a brand’s perception, or any sort of meaningful outcome, is not established with a single message or action, but instead, through a series of planned and intentional activities.
The result? Creation of a shared understanding between message originators and recipients, and action that emanates from that relationship.
Too often, organizations place their focus on the message and medium of the day. Strategic communication is about knowing the lifecycle of the product, service or organization. This understanding enables the development of messages and means of delivery that connects and engages targeted audiences with the organization’s main outputs. Whether looking to create thought leadership, brand messaging, community relations, digital advertising or any other communication tool, returning to the roots of communication – the “Who-What-When-Where-Why” – delivers the starting point for a truly logical, time- and outcomes-focused communication campaign.
Nineteenth century English writer Lewis Carroll, author of Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, is credited with penning the phase “If you don’t know where you’re going, any road will take you there.” While now a bit of a cliché in its own right, Carroll brings the topic of strategic communications into crisp focus. Whether looking to communicate a new product, service or idea, or rejuvenate one that’s been around decades or longer, thinking beyond a news release or website pays dividends.