What Makes Strategic Messaging Strategic: A Current Case Study

By Clark S. Judge, managing director.

For most readers, the opinion section of a newspaper or news site is stimulating entertainment. For me, the most consequential are strategic moves on a chess board.

For example, WHWG is currently campaigning for a significant state-level policy improvement that we hope will ultimately reach all 50 states. We launched this drive with a single op-ed.

The signer was a highly regarded policy expert in a prominent non-conflicted position. The launch was on a highly regarded website dedicated to the general subject.

Many articles appeared on the site that day. If ours drew a thousand readers, I’d be surprised. But it did what must be done to launch a campaign.

Coming from a credible author and publication, it laid out both need and solution. It framed the solution in terms any fair-minded person could embrace. It was specific about who could make it happen and why they should. In other words, it raised a flag.

We enlisted numerous supporters of the idea to carry the flag. Some produced articles endorsing the case for it and the larger concept that animated it.

By now several hundred thousand people have heard of the proposal. Prominent policymakers have begun embracing it.

This is strategic messaging.