The campaign is over, but who is communicating the institution?

DAR ES SALAAM: OVER the past several weeks, I have used this column to reflect on public communication campaigns, drawing from some of the experiences and lessons I have gathered during my years in the profession.

We have discussed why strategy must come before slogans and channels, why some campaigns connect with people while others disappear almost as soon as the posters come down and why communication must ultimately go beyond visibility to create understanding and, where necessary, influence action.

As I bring this series to a close, I have been asking myself where this conversation should end.

I could write another article about campaigns, messages or audiences, but that would leave out what I believe is one of the most important parts of the story: Leadership itself.

Communication can only be as strategic as the institution and particularly if its leadership allows it to be.

After years of working in communication, I have seen organisations that communicate almost every day.

Press releases are issued, photographs posted, events organised, executives interviewed and social media platforms kept busy. But activity is not necessarily strategic communication.

An institution can be highly visible and still be poorly understood. That is where the CEO comes into this conversation. A campaign may run for three months, but an institution communicates every day.

It communicates through its decisions, the way it treats employees, the response it gives an unhappy customer, the quality of its services and the way leadership behaves when something goes wrong.

Once we understand communication this way, it becomes difficult to justify bringing the Communication Unit into the room only after important decisions have already been made.

When communication comes too late

Here is a familiar situation. Management meets on Monday and makes an important decision. Finance is satisfied. Legal has cleared it. The technical people have done their work.

On Tuesday, somebody calls Communication and says, “Please prepare a press release. We need the public to understand this.” But perhaps the communication question should have been asked on Monday.

How will the people affected by this decision understand it? What are they likely to ask? What could they misunderstand? How will employees explain it? How might the media interpret it? And, most importantly, what will customers actually experience when it is implemented? Those are not publicity questions. They are management questions.

A technically correct decision can still create resistance. A necessary institutional change can create fear if it is poorly explained. Equally, management can communicate a wonderful service improvement, but if the customer’s experience tells a different story, the communication eventually loses credibility.

This is why I have always been uncomfortable with Communication, waiting for everybody else to finish their work before being called in to “tell the story”.

When that happens repeatedly, Communication becomes an announcement rather than a strategic management function.

Then, when a decision produces resistance, the same team is asked to “manage the perception.” There is a limit to how much communication can repair a decision it was never given an opportunity to interrogate.

The CEO is already communicating

Whether CEOs consider themselves communicators or not, people often read an institution through its leadership.

They listen to what the CEO says, but they also watch decisions, behaviour and consistency. If an institution talks about transparency but goes silent whenever difficult questions arise, stakeholders notice.

If management says customers come first but complaints remain unanswered, customers notice. That is where reputation is really built.

Not in the slogan or the glossy annual report, but in the relationship between what an institution says and what people experience.

Over the years, I have come to see that relationship through a simple chain: Decision → Communication → Understanding → Action → Experience → Trust → Reputation Every part matters. Communication that creates understanding but is followed by poor service creates disappointment.

This is why perhaps the CEO’s question should move beyond “How much media coverage did we get?” to something more demanding: “What changed because we communicated?” Before approving a campaign budget, leadership should know whether it wants to create awareness, improve understanding, change behaviour, increase service uptake, encourage compliance or rebuild confidence. These are different objectives requiring different approaches.

A million people seeing a message does not mean a million people understood it. The numbers still matter, but they should lead us to the more important questions: Did people understand? Did they respond? Did anything change? Did confidence improve? And did communication contribute to the organisation’s strategic objective? That is where communication moves from activity to value.

ALSO READ: Why public communication campaigns must be strategic — Part IV

But communicators must also earn the seat

It would be unfair, however, to place all responsibility on CEOs. Those of us in Communication also need to look in the mirror. We frequently argue that Communication deserves a seat at the strategic table. I agree, but sitting at that table carries an obligation to bring something strategic to it.

We cannot expect to become trusted advisers to leadership if our conversation begins and ends with press releases, events and social media posts.

A strategic communicator must understand the organisation’s strategy, stakeholders, operating environment and risks. We must also have the confidence to advise.

Sometimes that means respectfully telling the CEO: “The decision may be necessary, but if we communicate it this way, this is how our stakeholders are likely to hear it.” At other times, it means warning that what looks like an operational problem is becoming a reputational problem.

That is not being difficult. That is part of the job. But professional courage without competence quickly becomes opinion.

If Communication professionals want leadership to listen when our advice is uncomfortable, we must bring evidence, stakeholder intelligence, judgement and a genuine understanding of the organisation to the table.

When the crisis arrives

The value of that relationship becomes clearest when something goes wrong. It may be an accident, a service failure, an allegation, a controversial decision or a social media post that suddenly attracts national attention.

Then the CEO needs advice, journalists are calling, employees want to know what to say and social media is moving faster than the organisation’s approval process.

Suddenly everybody wants to “protect the reputation”. But reputation cannot be manufactured on the morning a crisis begins. If stakeholders trusted the institution before the problem, they are more likely to listen when it explains.

If credible relationships with stakeholders and the media existed before the crisis, those relationships become valuable when facts are contested. If leadership had developed a culture of openness and timely communication, speaking during difficult moments becomes much easier.

In that sense, crisis communication begins long before the crisis.

A question to take back to the office

So, as this series comes to an end, I would leave CEOs with a few questions. Does your communication leader understand your strategy well enough to advise you rather than simply publicise you?

Does Communication receive important information early enough to anticipate stakeholder reactions? Is the communication professional in the room before major decisions are announced, or brought in afterwards to prepare the statement?

And when communication advice is uncomfortable, is there room for it to be heard? But perhaps one question brings everything together: When you make an important decision, who in the room is asking how the people outside that room will understand and experience it?

If nobody is asking that question, there may be a gap in the organisation. We began this series with public communication campaigns, including some that I had the privilege of being part of during my professional journey.

A campaign eventually ends. But the institution continues communicating through every decision it makes, every service it provides, every promise it keeps or fails to keep and every experience it gives people.

This is the thought I would leave with leaders and communication professionals alike: Communication is not what happens after leadership has finished its work. It is part of the work of leadership itself.

So, the next time an important management meeting is about to end and everyone is preparing to close their files, perhaps the CEO should pause and ask: “What will this decision communicate, and what will our stakeholders actually experience?”

The communication professional in that room should be ready to answer with insight, evidence, judgement and an understanding of the people the institution exists to serve.

Because institutions do not build trust simply by communicating more. Trust grows when what leadership decides, what the institution says, what it does and what people actually experience begin to tell the same story.

Perhaps that is where this series should end. Not with the campaign, but with the leadership behind it.