It’s Go Time! The Execution Phase of a Campaign Is the Moment of Truth

You’ve heard us say that “Strategy Wins Campaigns.” And it does. If you control the narrative, more likely than not, you’re going to achieve your goals and win your campaign.

We don’t say that to minimize the Execution Phase of the campaign. It’s obviously a critical component when you put your Strategy and Planning into actions. So, let’s talk about our approach to Execution in a HexaCom Group campaign.

During Planning, we assembled the team and mapped out the budget and timeline to bring structure to our Strategy. Now we get down to delivering on the components. Whether we’re executing with our own personnel or with a team of vendors and partners who we hand-selected for each campaign, the three critical components of great Execution are:

1. That each element ties back to the Strategy,

2. That it’s performed on time and within budget,

3. That each component of Execution is individually excellent in achieving its purpose.

Execution that ties back to the Strategy is critical. The Strategy and Planning phases didn’t say, “we need any old video ad or mailer to be delivered on a particular date,” or in a public affairs campaign, that we need “any random community group to call an arbitrary legislator to express an opinion.”

It said we must communicate to this target audience, hypothetically, that a ballot measure they’re voting on is a flawed proposal that will not solve a problem they’re concerned about, but actually make it worse, linking to arguments we discovered in policy and opinion research.

So, while we love creative and beautiful, well-produced ads as much as the next person (and we’ve done plenty!), creativity and high production value are not the ends. A simple ad that powerfully delivers the right message to the right audience may not win an award, but it will win a campaign.

That’s why, again, when we’re executing, we are constantly asking ourselves and our teams, why are we executing this way? How does it advance our campaign strategy?

With that mindset, the execution, if not easy, at least flows naturally, because it has a purpose.

After that, it’s all about attention to detail to deliver top results. On Time. On Budget. Well-designed, produced, and fulfilled. Double check. Take a pause if necessary to review your work. Communicate constantly with team members and partners on how their part of delivering each execution is going.

I went through Navy boot camp later than most...I was 24, graduated from college and already working in politics, and almost all the rest of my recruit company were 18-year-olds fresh out of high school and away from home for the first time. Many of them struggled with some of the lessons being taught in basic training, but I learned a lot about attention to detail from my time in the Navy that I have applied to campaigns. 

My company commanders (Navy version of Drill Sergeants) asked me once to explain it the company after someone had complained why they cared so much about hospital corners on their racks.

We teach Navy recruits how to fold their shirts and make their racks (beds) a certain way, and put things in their place, and follow a check list, not because we really care about their shirt folding skills, but because when you go out into the Fleet, and you don’t do EVERYTHING the right way, someone can get killed. Everything goes in its place, EVERY TIME, because a loose item on a ship that gets struck by enemy fire becomes a missile in its compartment that injures or kills a shipmate.

Those lessons have served me well in the Execution phase of political and public affairs campaigns.

Strategy wins campaigns...but when Strategy, backed by good Planning, is Executed with brilliance, precision, and attention to detail...those are the best campaigns.