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No. 003

Strategic Communications · Advisory

What Does a Strategic Communications Adviser Actually Do?

Strategic communications is one area within the wider public relations (PR) profession. It focuses on advising companies early, when an important moment — such as a merger, a stock-market listing or a difficult situation — affects how people see the business.

Illustrative AI-generated Strategic Communications character, not the interviewee.
Illustrative video character

Practitioner

Kay Lau

Account Director · Brunswick Group

Experience
9+ years in strategic communications
Status
Verified Practitioner
View public professional profile
Public professional headshot of Kay Lau, Account Director at Brunswick Group.

Based on an interview with Kay Lau and her approved written answers, edited and condensed for clarity. Client details remain private.

In one sentence

A strategic communications adviser helps organisations understand their stakeholders — the people or groups affected by a company or able to influence it — and decide what to do, what to say and when, around important decisions.

Three things to know

01

It goes far beyond media coverage

The media is only one audience. Investors, employees, regulators and others may matter just as much.

02

Different audiences have different concerns

Employees may worry about their jobs while shareholders weigh whether to support a proposal. Each needs a clear, relevant answer.

03

Business understanding and judgment matter alongside writing

You can’t advise a company on communications without understanding what it is actually trying to achieve.

25 seconds inside the career

See the role in action

AI-generated illustration based on a fictional example inspired by a practitioner interview · Not the interviewee’s real workplace or actual day-to-day.

Employee and shareholder reactions are imagined possibilities, not events from a real transaction.

What just happened?

  1. Understand the deal
  2. Identify stakeholders
  3. Anticipate concerns
  4. Clarify the facts
  5. Plan communications

The adviser anticipated how different groups might react to a proposed acquisition. Her next task is to help management decide what to communicate, to whom, through which channels and when.

How the job works

How a Business Situation Becomes a Communication Plan

A surprisingly large part of the job is thinking, gathering information and coordinating — not simply writing press releases.

  1. 1

    Understand the situation

    Establish the facts and separate them from assumptions. Start with the business, not the wording.

  2. 2

    Identify audiences and their concerns

    Who is affected? What does each group think today, and what will they ask?

  3. 3

    Develop messages backed by evidence

    Make a complicated situation clear, and support each message with facts.

  4. 4

    Coordinate timing, channels and delivery

    Decide who should hear what, through which channel, and in what order.

  5. 5

    Monitor and adjust

    Did the people who matter understand the company differently?

    Keep listening

    Monitor news, investor discussion and employee concerns after the announcement.

    Adapt the response

    When facts change or misunderstandings spread, update the communication plan and address unanswered questions.

Illustrative example · Simplified and not a specific client case

The situation
A large company is preparing a major announcement, such as an acquisition. It involves technical details most people can’t immediately follow.
The audiences
Employees may worry whether their jobs are affected. Shareholders may want to know whether to support the proposal. Regulators, the media and the other company involved each have their own questions.
The questions ahead
The team anticipates likely concerns and counterarguments — for example, rumours about why the deal is happening — and plans how to address them.
The plan
Messages are developed for each group, senior managers are prepared for difficult questions, and the timing and order of communication are agreed.
After the announcement
The team keeps monitoring sentiment and engaging different stakeholders, because views can shift quickly. Communication supports the process; it does not decide the outcome on its own.

What it takes

The Skills Behind Good Advice

Writing gets you into the profession; judgment determines how far you go.

Clear writing

Making something complicated clear, precise and persuasive — not flowery.

Business understanding

Following a client’s industry, new regulations and policies yourself, rather than waiting to be told.

Interpersonal skills

Understanding what someone is saying — and sometimes what they are not saying.

Judgment

Deciding what is important and what is noise, when to push and when to wait.

Curiosity

Constantly asking questions about businesses, people and the wider world.

Attention to detail

A tiny mistake can matter enormously when the stakes are high.

At junior levels, people notice the quality of your output. As you become senior, people increasingly rely on the quality of your judgment.

Who you work with

One Business Situation, Many Perspectives

People you work alongside

  • Company management (such as the CEO and CFO)
  • Company communications and investor-relations teams
  • Lawyers and bankers
  • HR and government-affairs teams
  • Colleagues across specialisms, sectors and countries

Audiences the company needs to reach

  • Investors and shareholders
  • Employees
  • Regulators
  • The media
  • Customers and communities
  • The other party in a transaction

Advice only works if the client trusts your judgment enough to act on it — and sometimes that means telling them something they don’t want to hear.

A communications adviser facilitating journalists’ questions to company management at a fictional media conference.

One possible setting: helping management navigate media questions. Preparation and advice begin well before the cameras arrive.

AI-generated illustration · Fictional scene, not the interviewee or their actual workplace.

Go deeper

Explore the parts of the career that matter most to you.

Early on, the work typically includes research, monitoring news and industries, analysis, drafting, media and stakeholder work, and learning how client projects operate. Advising a CEO comes much later.

Sometimes a company has a communications problem because it actually has a real business problem. Changing the words won’t fix it — what the company does and what it says have to match.

Good advice can therefore change the company’s own decisions, not just its wording.

Media coverage is an output, not necessarily the outcome. Sometimes the best result is no headline at all.

The real question is whether the people who matter understood the company differently, trusted it more or made a different decision as a result. Results are often harder to measure than in some other fields, so advisers keep monitoring how views develop.

Earlier in the career

  • Research and monitoring
  • Analysis and drafting
  • Managing workstreams and coordinating teams
  • Working directly with clients

More senior

  • Identifying the real problem
  • Advising senior management
  • Anticipating issues before the client asks
  • Building relationships and winning work
  • Developing younger colleagues

Early in your career you’re often asked, “Can you produce this?” Later you’re asked, “What do you think we should do?”

AI is making easier

  • First drafts
  • Summarising and background research
  • Generating scenarios and questions
  • Comparing documents
  • Routine monitoring

Becomes more valuable

  • Judgment and original thinking
  • Understanding context and people
  • Knowing whether AI’s answer is good
  • Deciding what not to say
  • Taking responsibility for a recommendation

In the practitioner’s view, AI can suggest many ways to answer a difficult question, but it cannot take responsibility for telling a company which answer to give.

Pay typically combines a base salary with a performance-related bonus, which tends to matter more with seniority. It generally rises with experience, responsibility and the ability to manage client relationships, and varies by market, firm and specialty.

The practitioner suggests weighing pay alongside learning, exposure and long-term options rather than starting salary alone.

You may enjoy it if…

  • You’re curious about business, politics, media and the world
  • You enjoy learning new industries quickly
  • You like ambiguous problems without one correct answer
  • You’re interested in why people behave as they do
  • You stay resilient when plans suddenly change

Think twice if…

  • You want highly predictable hours and workflows
  • You need a clear answer to every problem
  • You want to specialise deeply in one narrow subject
  • You dislike client service
  • You mainly love creative writing or social media

PR covers many kinds of work. Some firms focus on supporting companies around regular events such as results announcements and annual meetings, including press releases, media interviews and logistics. Strategic communications advisers tend to get involved earlier, around high-stakes moments, and consider a broader set of audiences.

Marketing campaigns often have clearer measures, such as how many people a campaign reaches. Strategic communications outcomes — like whether stakeholders understand a decision — can be harder to measure directly.

If I were a student again

Practise Understanding a Business and Its Audiences

Try this with one business story a day.

Pick any company in the news — no business experience needed — and ask yourself:

What happened?Who is affected?What does each group care about?What should the company do next?

Alongside this, practise explaining yourself clearly and speaking in front of others. Don’t try to build a “perfect PR CV” — genuine curiosity about why companies behave as they do matters more.

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