The Best Communications Strategy Starts With a Question. Just Not the One You're Asking.

There is a question that almost every communications engagement skips. Not because it's hard to ask. Because everyone assumes they already know the answer.

The question is this: What do people already believe?

Not what do we want them to believe. Not what should they believe once we've told them the whole story. What do they believe right now, before we've said a single word?

The answer to that question changes everything. The message. The medium. The timing. The spokesperson. The framing. Every strategic decision that follows depends on understanding where an audience actually is, not where we wish they were.

Why the sequence breaks down

Most organizations walk into a communications strategy conversation asking what they should say. That's the second question. It's the natural place to start if your job is to produce communications. But it's the wrong place to start if your goal is to actually move people.

Consider what happens when you skip the first question. You build a message that makes perfect sense to you, because you know what's true. You find the right words. You identify the right channels. You launch.

And then nothing moves.

Not because the message was wrong. Because it was aimed at an audience that didn't exist. It was aimed at the audience you imagined, the one that was ready to hear what you had to say. The actual audience was somewhere else, holding a different set of beliefs, waiting for a different kind of conversation.

What the right question unlocks

When you start with what people already believe, the strategy changes completely. You stop trying to introduce a narrative into a vacuum and start understanding what you're actually working with. Sometimes that's a misconception that needs to be addressed directly. Sometimes it's a latent belief that your message can simply confirm. Sometimes it's a complete absence of awareness, which requires a different kind of entry point altogether.

In each case, the path forward looks different. And in each case, you only find that path by asking the first question before you write a single word of the second answer.

The practical application

Before the next campaign brief gets written. Before the next press release gets drafted. Before the next spokesperson gets prepped. Ask the room: What do the people we're trying to reach already believe about this organization, this issue, this moment?

If nobody knows, that's the first deliverable. Find out. It will be the most useful thing you do before anything else gets produced.

The organizations that get this right aren't the ones with the best messaging. They're the ones that understood where their audience was before they started talking.