The Planning Phase of a HexaCom Campaign Bridges Strategy to Execution

Having developed our big picture strategy for a campaign, it’s straight into execution, right?

Not at the HexaCom Group. For our campaigns, there’s an important, bridge phase between Strategy and Execution. This is the Planning phase.

Once again, some military analogies apply in this phase of the campaign. Grand Strategy charts the course. Later on, Execution at the operational level is the pointy end of the spear.

But any student of military history knows the phrase, “An Army Marches on Its Stomach.” While historians debate whether this quote is best attributed to Frederick the Great or Napoleon Bonaparte, the principle applies in war and in political and public affairs campaigns.

At HexaCom Group, we like to think of the Planning phase as setting up the logistical, administrative, and management infrastructure on which we’ll run the effort.

At the end of the Planning phase, we will have:

1. A Timeline – From campaign launch through the end, with key benchmarks and key deadlines and milestones noted. For campaigns, deadlines such as Election Day, start of Early Voting, and the like are critical. For a legislative fight, timelines will orient around deadlines such as committee dates, end of session, and everything in between.
   

2. A Budget – Campaigns must know what and how many resources they have available. And not only an overall budget, but a budget against the timeline already developed. The planning phase will also develop a strict system of tracking expenditures against the budget.
   

3. An Asset Inventory – Along with the monetary budget, planning means knowing what other assets we have, and any limitations on these. For a legislative fight, a corporate client may tell us that we can only have the CEO personally visit policymakers one time, and in a certain window. A political campaign might have a celebrity endorser with similar time constraints. Planning includes budgeting, not only monetary resources, but any non-monetary resources as well.
   

4. Assembled The Team – In the planning phase, we also work with clients to build out the full team. Policy research, opinion research, designers/creatives, coalition specialists, earned media teams, and more as needed and informed by the strategy are hand-picked to round out our lineup. Just last year, we worked with five different opinion research teams across all our projects, each selected because they were the right firm for that particular project.
   

5. Established a Management and Decision-Making Process – Campaigns must have clear lines of authority and establish a decision-making process in the Planning phase. Consultants play a key role in managing all campaigns, obviously, but we need a client to answer to; we cannot be the final decision maker in place of the client, regardless of how much trust they place in us. For a candidate campaign, the candidates themselves are the ultimate decision-makers. For a ballot measure campaign, or public affairs effort, there may be a committee, or an industry association executive tasked to lead. But even when there’s a committee, a process to avoid “management by committee,” especially when it comes to elements like approving content, can be time-constrained or difficult to do by a group. In these cases, we often ask Management Committees to designate a “Campaign Chair” who has the final say on tactical decisions, while still reserving strategic decisions to the full group.
   

6. Set up the Reporting Process – In the Planning Phase, we also establish a clear reporting process for our clients. We’re big believers in a recurring weekly check-in meeting for the committee with a standard agenda, written reports, budget and timeline review, and having team members involved to go over their portion of the campaign. If the campaign establishes a Campaign Chair, we’re often on with them several times a day, but that no replace a designated time for regular reporting. We’ve found this just gives more discipline to the campaign over the often months long or even years long engagement.
   

The right strategy charts the course for your campaign, but strategy backed by good planning is the hallmark of a winning campaign – a HexaCom Group campaign. We won’t join the battlefield until our strategy is backed by good planning, and this helps you win.

How can we plan your next victory?