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Communications Strategy 113

perhaps ultimately to the identity that has become established within the organization
over the years?
Useful though such criteria of evaluation are, there is unlikely to be a clear-cut
‘right’ or ‘wrong’ choice because any strategy inevitably has some dangers or dis-
advantages. So, in the end, choice is likely to be a matter of managerial judgement
by the dominant coalition (with or without the direct input of corporate commu-
nications practitioners).The process of selecting strategic options cannot always be
viewed or understood as a purely objective, logical act. It is strongly influenced by
the values of managers and other groups with interest in the organization, and ulti-
mately may very much reflect the power structure within the organization (see
Section 4.4).

Phase 3: Strategic action

Strategic action is concerned with the translation of the strategic intent or chosen
strategic option into action.The ways in which this is done can be thought of as the
overall strategic programme of the organization, and successful implementation of
strategy is likely to be dependent on the extent to which the various components of
the programme work together to effectuate the programme and achieve the strategic
intent.Various strategic programmes will emanate from the strategic intent, but the
focus here is only on the sort of steps that are important in planning communica-
tions strategy implementation.These are the following:

1. Specifying the role of communications and defining communications objectives. A first
fundamental issue that needs to be decided upon before working out the content
of the communications strategy, the communications programme, is the role that
communications is to play in the overall corporate and market strategies for the orga-
nization.The basis of strategic choice is, as mentioned, whether communications plays
a lead or support role – whether it has a full-scale or more subsidiary role in effectu-
ating the corporate and/or market strategies of the organization; what contributions
it therefore needs to make; and what stakeholder groups this involves. From this, it
will then be possible to determine the communications objectives as well as the commu-
nications tactics that are feasible to use. Communications objectives, for the communi-
cations strategy as a whole and relating to each key tactic and stakeholder audience
addressed, should be as tightly defined as possible: specific, measurable actionable,
realistic and targeted (SMART). Here it is crucial to think through how communi-
cations may be used to influence audience attitudes and behaviours and test out the
reality of any assumptions. Once objectives have been determined, it is then neces-
sary to identify and plan for the key communications tactics: the messages and chan-
nels to be used.

2. Planning communications tactics. After communications objectives have been
defined, and the contribution of communications to corporate and/or market strate-
gies has been specified, the next step is to determine the elements of the communi-
cations programme: the stakeholder audiences to address and the message and
channel tactics that will be used. Stakeholder analysis carried out in the earlier strategic