AANZ May Expert Session with Jeff Valenzuela & Melanie Drumm | Strategic Communications

This podcast link and summary are from Townhall’s Expert Session held online in May 2024
Podcast: Strategic Communications: The Startup’s Unseen Competitive Edge: Lessons from Political Campaigns and Sports Teams for Building Resilience and Driving Growth

Executive Summary

This expert session, hosted by the Angel Association New Zealand, underscores strategic communications’ critical yet often underestimated role in the startup ecosystem. Unlike established corporations with dedicated teams, startups operate with inherent risks, lean structures, and reputations usually tied directly to their founders. The session, led by Jeff Valenzuela and Mel Drum from Town Hall, a communications consultancy specialising in complex projects, posits that startups can significantly benefit by adopting a “campaign mentality”—drawing parallels with the strategic communication rigour seen in political campaigns and professional sports teams. The core insight is that effective strategic communication, encompassing proactive messaging, precise stakeholder engagement, robust risk assessment, and adept crisis navigation, is not merely a “nice-to-have” but a foundational element for achieving ambitious goals and ensuring long-term viability. This analysis provides actionable insights for founders, investors, and business leaders to operationalise good communication practices and enhance their ventures’ resilience and market position.

The Unique Communications Imperative for Startups

Startups exist in a distinct environment, characterised by innovation, inherent risk, and a high failure rate. They are frequently founder-based, meaning the organisation’s reputation is inextricably linked to that individual. Unlike larger enterprises, startups typically lack extensive communication teams, often relying on a single individual or a multidisciplinary team to manage all communication efforts. This unique context makes the case for strategic communications “powerful”.

Even without a formal communications plan, startups constantly engage in strategic communications, whether consciously or not. From explaining their existence and problem-solving approach to detailing milestones and funding sources, founders continually answer critical questions from stakeholders like regulators, investors, customers, and even family. The objective is to make these ongoing interactions as strategic, efficient, and effective as possible, proactively shaping the narrative rather than solely reacting to external forces.

Lessons from the Campaign Trail and the Playing Field

The expert session draws compelling parallels between startups, political campaigns, and sports teams, highlighting shared core traits:

• Individual Focus: Startups and political campaigns often revolve around a single, influential individual (the founder or candidate) whose reputation broadly defines the entity.
• Idea-Driven: They are built around a specific idea or set of ideas that must be articulated and championed.
• Rapid Fundraising: A critical necessity is to raise significant capital quickly, whether for an election cycle or business growth.
• High Risk, High Reward: All three endeavours are inherently risky but offer the potential for substantial rewards.
• Constant Scrutiny: Startups, campaigns, and sports teams operate under a continuous “microscope,” facing high accountability.
• Fast-Paced & All-Consuming: These environments demand intense, non-traditional work hours, often feeling “all-consuming”.

Given these similarities, the principles of strategic communications perfected in political campaigns—message development, external communications, risk management, and targeted outreach—directly apply to startups. Similarly, sports teams effectively use values-based communication (e.g., “togetherness,” “team,” “accountability”) to resonate deeply with their dedicated fan bases, demonstrating the power of intrinsic, universal values in building loyalty and managing perception.  Adopting this “campaign mentality” centres on understanding that “message matters,” knowing your target audience, assessing vulnerabilities, and maintaining perspective.

Pillars of Proactive Communication

Effective strategic communication begins with defining and consistently articulating your story. Key elements for a startup include:

1. Develop Universal Key Messages: Don’t leave your narrative to chance. Create clear, accessible core messages that everyone within the organisation and its network (including board members and investors) can consistently use. This foundational narrative should answer fundamental questions: What problem are you solving? Who is it for? What’s your point of difference? What are your qualifications? Why is it important?. This forms the basis for an “elevator pitch” and a broader communications toolkit.
2. Avoid Jargon: It’s crucial to communicate clearly while innovating. Steer clear of technical or industry-specific jargon that can alienate your audience. The goal is to make your message universally understandable.
3. Adapt as You Evolve: Startups innovate rapidly. Your communication strategy and language must keep pace with these changes, making it a continuous exercise.
4. Preach Message Discipline: Consistency across all channels (website, social media, presentations) is vital. If you’re bored of hearing yourself say the same thing, your audience is likely just starting to internalise it.
5. Leverage Values-Based Communication: Identify and embed your company’s core values into your messaging. Values resonate powerfully with audiences because they are intrinsic and universal, fostering deeper connections and serving as a powerful communication tool. Using people within the organisation to tell the story also leverages personal connection and highlights company values.

Strategic Stakeholder Engagement

Beyond crafting your message, knowing who you are talking to is essential. Stakeholders are any party with an interest in or affected by your business. While primary stakeholders typically include investors, employees, customers, and suppliers, the list can extend further.

A structured approach to stakeholder management is essential:

• Identification and Mapping: Categorise stakeholders based on their influence/power (authority over your goals) and interest (personal investment in your activities). A “stakeholder map” (e.g., a quadrant chart) visualises this, helping prioritise engagement efforts. This is not a one-off exercise but should be revisited periodically as influence and interest levels can change, and new stakeholders may emerge.
• Tailored Engagement Strategies:
  • High Power, High Interest (Manage Closely): Requires significant investment, including one-on-one meetings and regular check-ins to build mutually beneficial relationships.
  • High Power, Low Interest (Keep Satisfied): Ensure they are informed and on board with your direction, avoiding potential roadblocks.
  • Low Power, High Interest (Keep Informed): Maintain active communication through LinkedIn, EDMs, or webinars.
  • Low Power, Low Interest (Monitor): Primarily involves listening and monitoring for emerging sentiment.
• Build Relationships Proactively: A key principle is never to make the first interaction with a stakeholder an ask. Proactive relationship building ensures a foundation of trust and understanding, making future requests more effective.

A cautionary tale: TikTok’s recent attempt to mobilise its U.S. user base to contact Congress against a ban backfired because it demonstrated the very influence lawmakers feared, proving a severe misreading of stakeholder sentiment. This highlights the critical importance of understanding what stakeholders don’t want to hear as much as what they do.

Navigating Issues and Crises

Proactive preparation is the best defence against a crisis. Startups should anticipate potential issues and their reputational impacts, integrating communications risks into their broader risk registers.

Crises can arise from various sources:

• Own Goals: Internal mistakes or missteps.
• Victim of Success: Rapid growth can attract unwanted scrutiny, akin to “tall poppy syndrome”.
• Outside Circumstances: Trends within your industry or a crisis faced by a third party (e.g., a vendor’s data breach) can pull your company into a reactive situation.

When a crisis hits, a structured approach helps mitigate damage:

1. Focus on Key Stakeholders: Resist the urge to react solely to media. Please communicate with investors, employees, suppliers, and customers first.
2. Draft Your Position: You can craft a clear, succinct story in your voice, including key messages, likely Q&A, and a short position statement.
3. Align with Partners: Coordinate with investors, government agencies, or business associations to ensure a consistent, complementary narrative.
4. Track the Situation: Monitor media, social media, and stakeholder inquiries to identify emerging themes and correct misinformation.
5. Communicate Strategically: Decide when and how to communicate, even to explain why a complete response isn’t possible (e.g., privacy).

Managing Media Relations

While the media is a stakeholder, it is crucial not to grant them an “outsized role” in your communication strategy. Many opportunities now exist for more direct messaging to target audiences.

• Perspective is Key: Avoid giving disproportionate attention to media coverage, especially negative pieces, if the primary impact is on other key stakeholders.
• Be Prepared for Interviews: If engaging with media, always be prepared. Know the inquiry’s who, what, when, where, and why, and define what information you will or won’t share. Never make up an answer or assume anything said is “off the record”.
• Build Relationships: Proactively build relationships with relevant journalists in your industry, even when there isn’t an immediate story. This can position you as a go-to expert for future inquiries.

Operationalising Strategic Communications: Business As Usual

Integrating strategic communications into daily operations is vital for startups with limited resources. The core “business as usual” (BAU) elements include:

• Core Narrative Development: Ensure everyone consistently articulates “how you talk about yourself”.
• Stakeholder Mapping and Management Plan: Systematically identify and strategise “who you are talking to”.
• Comms-Inclusive Risk Register: Understand “what makes you vulnerable” by integrating reputational and external communication risks into your risk assessments.
• Crisis Scenarios: Develop plans for the top three to five worst-case scenarios, ensuring preparedness for reactive situations.
• Maintain Perspective: Constantly refer to your core narrative and stakeholder map to guide decisions, especially under pressure.

For startups with limited budgets, prioritising professional advice for developing the “core narrative” from the outset is highly recommended, as this foundational work pays dividends across all aspects of the business, including fundraising. Strategic communications is not a luxury but a critical investment in any startup’s long-term success and resilience.