Keep reading to learn the first step to being a strategic communicator.

Brainstorm versus Data-Backed Strategy

A few years ago, a friend of mine brought me into his higher ed institution to demo our platform to his communications team.

I wanted to show them how to build and measure a targeted media campaign. So I asked a simple question: Give me your target media list for your next campaign.

He dropped the list into the chat. A clean list of political publications — because the campaign was targeting lawmakers. Smart. Logical.

Then I asked: "Where did this list come from?"

He said: "We came up with it in a meeting."

Not from research. Not from data. Not from a dashboard that told them where lawmakers actually get their news, what sources they engage with, or what they share. They sat in a conference room and brainstormed.

The list wasn't entirely wrong, but the methodology wasn't sound — and more importantly, they had no baseline. No measurement of how they were currently showing up in those publications, or whether the coverage was framing them the way they needed to be framed.

Here's the thing: the data to answer all of those questions existed — it always does — but nobody had looked at it.

That's the E problem.

The Uncomfortable Truth About Audience Understanding

In our DDC Maturity Assessment — which has now been taken by communications teams across 300+ organizations — audience understanding scores an average of 37 out of 100.

That is the second lowest category we measure.

Most communicators can tell you exactly what they did last quarter, but very few can tell you who they were trying to move, where that audience was when they started, and whether it actually worked.

This isn't because communicators are bad at their jobs. It's almost the opposite.

Communicators are exceptional at speed. They live close to the audience — talking to media daily, absorbing signals constantly, keeping their finger on the pulse. That proximity gives them real instincts, which is why they can instantly tell you what messaging should land, which channels make sense, who to pitch.

That speed is a superpower until it's not.

Because relying on your gut is a perfectly reasonable way to get the job done, but it's an impossible way to prove that you did.

And if you can't prove it, you can't earn a seat at the table.

Two Questions to Start With

Before you design a campaign, build a report, or pitch a story, ask yourself:

Who determines whether we succeed? And what do they currently believe?

Don't say something like "prospects." Be more specific and say something like Enterprise customers in the Financial Services industry. A specific external persona — whose behavior or perception directly shifts the business outcome you identified in last week's North Star exercise.

There are four categories that matter to almost every organization: customers, talent, regulators, and investors. Each needs different messages, at different moments, through different channels. But they can't carry different values — that inconsistency will undermine you.

The strategic communicator doesn't just identify who those people are. They measure where those people are right now — what they know, what they feel, and what they do.

That's the WHO-X framework. WHO is your audience. X is their current state. And Y — the destination you're trying to move them to — is what your campaign is actually designed to achieve

When You Get It Right, Everything Changes

A global hotel brand I worked with wanted to demonstrate the impact of communications to the business. Their North Star was clear: more bookings from Africa, and a credible digital transformation story for investors.

Once we had the North Star, the impact issue and the audience question answered itself. To drive Africa bookings, we needed to reach people actively considering travel to the region. To deliver on the digital transformation promise, we needed to shift how both employees and customers understood the technology changes happening in the customer journey.

Two distinct audiences. Two very different messages. One North Star holding it all together.

Then there was a medical school whose communications team came through one of my workshops. Their instinct was to target prospective students. Completely understandable.

But when we dug into who actually moved the needle on enrollment and rankings — it wasn't students. It was residency program directors, because their perception determined where the school ranked, and rankings determined where students applied.

The influence needed to happen in a very particular place, to a very particular person. That kind of surgical precision is only possible when you've done the work of mapping your external stakeholders against your North Star — and then taken a baseline measurement of where they stand.

Your Exercise This Week

Last week, you wrote down your CEO's key metrics and what they're currently trying to improve.

This week: who are the external stakeholders that determine whether those metrics move, and where are they now?

Pick one. Just one. And then ask: where are they right now? What do they know, feel, and believe — and how do I know that?

If the honest answer is "we talked about it in a meeting" — that's your starting point.

→ Take the DDC Maturity Assessment and see how your organization scores on audience understanding

Want to go deeper?

🏃 Join us at the next DDC Run Club session — we unpack the Compass framework live, and attendees who complete the full series earn a badge. 250+ communicators from organizations you'd recognize show up every week. JOIN RUN CLUB

🎧 Earning Your Seat | Episode 2 — Tim Marklein Tim is one of the sharpest minds on measurement in communications. In this episode we go deep on exactly this question: what does it actually mean to measure audience understanding, and what does data tell you that your instincts can't? → Watch or listen here

Next Week: S is for Star Players

The southern point of the Compass is about the internal alliances that make everything else possible — the other departments and functions you need to build relationships with so you can help them deliver on the North Star.

Not by sharing share-of-voice reports. By feeding them intelligence they can actually act on.

That's next week.

— Dino