Commentary
What a Communications Strategy Actually Is
Veritas Prime · 14 June 2026 · 6 min read
A calendar of activity is not a strategy. A strategy states what change you are trying to produce, in whom, and how you will know it worked.
Many organisations have a communications plan. Fewer have a communications strategy. The difference is consequential.
Strategy begins with the change you need
A strategy names a specific shift in belief or behaviour among a specific audience — a regulator's confidence, an investor's risk perception, a community's consent. Everything downstream is an instrument for producing that shift.
Audiences, not the public
"The public" is not an audience. It is an abstraction that produces undifferentiated messaging. Real strategies identify a short list of audiences whose decisions matter and address them on their own terms.
Message architecture
A disciplined organisation can state its core proposition, three supporting arguments and the evidence for each — and every spokesperson uses the same architecture. Consistency across channels is what turns activity into position.
Measure the change, not the output
Impressions, reach and clip counts describe activity. Strategy is measured by whether the intended audience moved: the meeting granted, the policy amended, the consent secured, the risk repriced.