Two Case Studies of Successful Strategic Communication Campaigns
Abstract
Everything an organization and its members say and do communicates. Organizations communicate to survive and thrive in their environments. They do so by promoting themselves and their competitive advantage, targeting opposing or competing organizations, and defending themselves from criticism by others. On the other hand, not all communication is what leaders desire. Say-do gaps and inconsistencies among messages abound. For organizations the size and scope of the U.S. military, these are recurring problems which confuse our partners and provide fodder for criticisms by adversaries. The challenge for leaders is orienting as much of the organizations communication as possible toward specific goals. Strategic communication emerged in the defense community as an integrated process to develop and disseminate desired messages, ostensibly to convince opponents of friendly intentions. Strategic communication became the subject of many books and scholarly articles, especially on the qualities and capabilities of leaders and great orators who communicate effectively with external audiences. However, neither doctrine nor literature provided adequate clarity as to how strategic communication was related to other organizational functions that managed communication. The result has been studies and stories of communication failures of various forms, such as say-do gaps or wrong-headed actions that confused or angered audiences. Identifying failure is easy. The negative effects often manifest themselves quickly. However, what does right look like? What constitutes a successful communication campaign? Unfortunately, the answer in the defense community has been to look at significant seminal events such as the moon landing as exemplars, which ignores or bypasses the preceding histories. The space race as a whole contained many successful and failed actions both before the Apollo XI Mission and after. Single events are not good measures of the success of campaigns.
Document Details
- Document Type
- Technical Report
- Publication Date
- Mar 01, 2019
- Accession Number
- AD1070626
Entities
People
- Thomas P. Galvin
Organizations
- United States Army War College