Every communicator shudders at the mere mention of tactic-centricity. To the seasoned professional, there is no worse sin that deciding on a channel for delivering communications before developing a strategy for it.
I agree wholeheartedly, in principle. Just sometimes, however, it’s ok to go the other way around, especially in the realm of digital. Why? Simply put, people are still uncomfortable with digital because they’re not quite sure what it’s going to look like. If your starting point is: give me time and resources to develop the smartest approach, then once we know, we’ll decide on tactics (or delivery channels), plenty of non-connoisseurs will be uneasy.
Starting the other way around, by saying, look, here’s the channel we’ll most likely use and this is how others have used it before, but give us time before we launch to develop a strategy for how to best utilise it – it becomes an easier sell. So it’s worth sidelining those principles, just once in a while.
Steffen Moller 