# What is Strategic Communications?

Canonical: https://evoke-international.com/articles/what-is-strategic-communications/
Entity type: article
Last modified: 2026-10-15T16:07:18+00:00

## Description

When people ask me what I do, and I respond with, “I own a strategic communications company,” I’m generally met with a blank stare. That’s often followed generally by, “Strategic communications? You mean like PR, Marketing and Advertising?” To which I have to say, “Yes, it’s part of what we do but much more complex than that.” At this point, I generally tell them to get a refill of whatever they’re drinking and sit them down to explain exactly what strategic communications really entails and exactly what it is - I mean they did ask. Bless. So, what is it? For Evoke it’s pretty specific and drawn from years of work in countries in conflict, emerging from conflict, or in countries managing other challenging social change efforts. For awhile those types of campaigns were called “influence campaigns”, or “winning hearts and minds”. But the limits of that thinking quickly became apparent. If your aim is to help empower people, you don’t do that by telling them what to do. So efforts to engage, empower, and grow positive change have now evolved into social change enabling campaigns - and no, before you ask, it is not “propaganda”. These campaigns only work if they truly connect with people, with their hopes and aspirations. So these campaigns are far more nuanced than that, based on factual (not fake) news, and do not have nefarious intentions. So where did it all start and where and why was the naming evolution necessary? I can only tell you our story and what it means specifically to us. We needed a new term, because ‘strategic communications’ is a very broad term used by many people to cover a wide variety of ideas. It is used by practitioners to mean everything from preparing for a shareholder meeting, to making a political statement, to announcing a new product. So “strat comms” can mean almost anything. But we do something much more specific. We’ll talk about that, but you really should go and get that refill now. So let me me give you some context first before we dive in. Back in the mid 2000’s the U.S. was embroiled on two fronts in Afghanistan and Iraq battling against Al Qaeda, the Taliban and numerous other offshoot terrorist groups. I won’t get into the politics of those conflicts but will just stick to where we fit in with all of this. The countries involved realized that conflict could not just be won through sheer might and will and that their intent, purpose and message needed to be imparted to the public to garner support, unity and understanding. The problem was that they were talking ‘at’ people and it was not being received well at all. In fact, it was driving anti-western and anti-coalition sentiment. I was part of an incredible team of people who recognized that we had to pull apart everything we were doing and start from ground zero because what was being done clearly wasn’t working. A team of social scientists, anthropologists, marketers, advertising experts, psychiatrists and strategists, were brought in and we realized that we needed to create a three-way communications system - speaking to the people, but also listening, closely, getting their feedback, and then showing the outcomes of that dialogue - good, bad or indifferent. This is now known as engagement, but it wasn’t so obvious nor utilized back then - campaigns were primarily based off the ‘tell them what we want them to hear and sell, sell, sell’ mantra. Based off the new approach and data, strategies were developed to match the non-kinetic with the kinetic activities on the ground. Kinetic being the operational, tangible and physical actions happening on the ground with the non-kinetic, the messaging, narrative and dialogue. The two had to work in tandem to back the other up - talk without action and is just that talk, and action without talk may have limited effects - they need each other to be effective. So a new form of ‘strategic communications’ was born, backed by the qualitative and quantitive data we received from the research teams on the ground. We had

## Image

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## Short Description

So, what is strategic communications? For Evoke it’s pretty specific and drawn from years of work in countries in conflict, emerging from...