Strategic Communication

Strategic communication is the purposeful communication by a person or an organization designed to persuade audiences with the goal of increasing knowledge, changing attitudes, or inducing desired behavior. Strategic communication campaigns are generally designed to respond to the perceived communications needs of significant publics. The term was originally associated with U.S. governmental communications directed toward audiences outside the United States. However, the use of the term has expanded and is now commonly used to describe the overall communications efforts of both individuals and organizations, including political candidates.

Historically, strategic communication has been used to describe the barrage of informational and cultural communication strategies employed by U.S. agencies such as the Voice of America and the U.S. Information Agency during the Cold War in order to position the United States in opposition to the Soviet Union in both Western and Eastern Europe. In 2004, the U.S. Department of Defense outlined strategic communication principles for an “influence campaign” designed to reverse negative opinions about the United States among mainstream Muslims in the Arab world.

A strategic political communication campaign relies on the integrated use of multiple communications strategies from both the public relations and advertising arenas, taking into account both the specific audiences targeted for communication and the media through which those audiences can most successfully be reached. The goal of a strategic political communications campaign is to create an image of reality in which a party's or candidate's positions about important issues appear consistent with those of the audience being targeted. Strategic communications may rely on traditional media, such as print and broadcast media. However, in the information age, strategic communications campaigns increasingly use non-traditional media, especially the Internet. Message consistency and clarity are regarded as crucial to the success of a strategic communication campaign.

[Page 765]A key element of successful strategic communication management in the political arena is audience research. Assessing current audience beliefs and attitudes is critical in designing a campaign that will result in real change. Focus groups and public opinion polls serve to inform strategic communication campaigns, determining issues important to impressionable publics.

Strategic political communication campaigns may employ a wide variety of tactics to reach audiences. Traditional public relations tactics are often the centerpiece of strategic communication campaigns, including the distribution of press releases and video news releases, the staging of press conferences and town hall meetings, and the granting of personal interviews to key members of the news media. Political advertising must also be considered a strategic communication element, because advertisements work in synergy with traditional public relations tactics to create an overall image of a candidate, a party, or an issue.