Designing Your Communication Plan for Impact
The communication plan is often viewed as a logistical document—a calendar of events, a list of press releases to be drafted, or a schedule of social media posts to be…
Build a Measurement Framework That Proves Your Value
Communicators often face the significant challenge of proving the value of their work to the wider business. You may know that your latest campaign was a success, but knowing it…
Stop Confusing Visibility with Impact
Communicators struggle to articulate the impact of their work on organisational goals. It is so easy to equate activity with achievement. We send press releases, post on social media, and…
Stop Measuring Communication Activity and Start Measuring Impact
As a communicator, you create things. You write press releases, publish social media posts, organise events, and distribute newsletters. These are your outputs: the tangible, immediate, and countable results of…
How to Turn Key Messages into a Powerful Tool of Influence
If a clear brand positioning is the strategic foundation of your work, then key messages are the pillars you build upon it. Positioning is the internal, guiding idea of what…
Positioning Is the Non-Negotiable Foundation of Your Work
Every communicator can be guilty of this. It is tempting to focus on the visible aspects of our work: the clever social media campaign, the perfectly crafted press release, or…
What Remains the Same – The Fundamentals That Define Great Communicators
Over the past four articles, we explored three trends for 2026 and their implications for communicators. We discussed how uncertainty makes narratives harder to land, how the revival of community-led…
Turn Limited Resources into New Opportunities
Communicators carry a responsibility that extends beyond delivering campaigns or content. Our role is to secure alignment from stakeholders, build confidence in our organisation’s plans, and deliver outcomes that matter.…
How to Pitch Your 2026 Communication Plan with Confidence
As the new year approaches, many communicators will be preparing or contributing to master plans that require stakeholder approval. These plans are not just lists of activities but resource-dependent commitments…
From Principles to Practice: Building Communication Plans That Win Resources and Support
In the previous article, we explored five principles for smarter communication planning. These principles guide how communicators can frame their master plans for 2026: Negotiate at the level of outcomes,…
From Observation to Action: Reporting Issues Before They Escalate
Reporting to management and stakeholders is not just the closing step in issues management. It is a structural necessity during the monitoring stage. While many communicators focus on escalation once…
From Overlooked to Urgent: Why Issues Deserve Your Attention
Crises rarely appear from nowhere. They are usually the culmination of smaller issues that have grown over time. To understand how to anticipate and manage these developments, it helps to…
Mismanaging Issues as Crises: Common Mistakes and How to Avoid Them
In communication, distinguishing between an issue and a crisis is not just a matter of terminology. The distinction determines the resources you use, the level of urgency applied, and the…
Managing Multiple Executives on Different Agendas
In a perfect world, each executive would have a dedicated communications advisor. These advisors would be in sync, coordinating efforts with shared timelines and strategic outcomes. But that’s not the…
Making Executive Communications Measurable
You’ve aligned the executive team, briefed key spokespeople, and secured a strategic opportunity—whether that’s a media interview, panel appearance, or stakeholder roundtable. The planning was tight, and the comms team…
Preparing Your Executive for Different Audiences
You’ve secured executive buy-in. They’re enthusiastic about the communication strategy and eager to take on media, customer, stakeholder, and supporter engagements. At first glance, this seems like the ideal scenario.…
Stop Managing Executives Ad Hoc, Use a Communications Agenda
A communications agenda is not simply a set of tasks or a calendar of appearances. It is a strategic tool that helps align the executive’s role with the organisation’s visibility,…
Frameworks and Tools for Executive Communications
Executives are expected to express their organisation’s value in ways that reflect a clear understanding of their audiences’ concerns, expectations, and questions. Doing this well takes more than talking points…
Aligning and managing your executive with a communication agenda
Executives are expected to express their organisation’s value in ways that reflect a real understanding of their audiences’ concerns, expectations, and questions. That includes employees, customers, regulators, investors, and other…
What is Executive Communications, and Why Does It Matter?
Trust is a foundation-level value that businesses need to earn and maintain. It is no longer enough for organisations to talk about trust in marketing materials—it has to be seen…