Communication strategy has never been more critical, or more endangered

Communication strategy is the living instruction manual that translates a brand’s positioning (who you are and why you matter) into the practical, timed, channel-by-channel plan that makes people notice, understand and act.

Think of it as the glue between brand strategy (purpose, tone, value proposition, positioning) and media strategy (audience targeting, channel mix, placements, measurement). When it works, messaging, creative, timing and delivery all reinforce each other.

When it’s missing, creative sings and media delivers, but the message never lands in the way the brand intended.

Historically, marketing functions were siloed. Brand thinking lived with creative or advertising agencies and client marketing teams. Media planning and buying sat with media agencies. PR handled earned coverage.

Constant motion

The late 20th century gave us integrated marketing communications (IMC), a philosophy meant to bridge these gaps. However, even then, communication strategy was often placed wherever the dominant budget or agency relationship lived.

That legacy still lingers with fragmented ownership, inconsistent briefs and a tendency to combine tactical execution with strategic intent.

Today’s communications landscape is an ecosystem of constant motion. Channels multiply; from social and search to streaming TV, influencer platforms, programmatic, and experiential activations, each with its own creative demands and audience behaviour.

Delivery is dynamic; real-time optimisation and programmatic buying mean campaigns evolve mid-flight. Content is relentless; brands need endless variations of copy, imagery, video and formats. Measurement pressure is immense; media is performance-driven while brands fight to protect long-term equity measures like salience and preference.

Amid this fragmentation, communication strategy has never been more critical, or more endangered.

Who should own it?

Which brings us to that the million-rand question, who is responsible?

In practice, creative agencies typically own the message, tone and core visual assets. Some have expanded into media planning; others stay firmly in storytelling. Media agencies own audience, channels, buying and analytics, and increasingly drive campaign strategy due to their access to data and spend.

Comms/PR agencies manage earned influence, reputation and advocacy. Client-side marketing teams should own the integrated outcome, however, often don’t have the in-house communication strategy expertise to operationalise it across all partners.

So, who should own it? Ideally, the brand, through the CMO or head of marketing, should be accountable for the overarching communication strategy. But the operational delivery should sit with a cross-disciplinary communication strategy team that includes strategists from creative, media, data and digital.

This hybrid model ensures that the “why” (brand intent) and the “how” (channel execution) stay perfectly aligned.

Across the industry, four models dominate

• Siloed execution: creative produces, media places, analytics follows. Simple, but disjointed.
• Tactical bundling: creative + activation + media under one roof. Smoother handoffs, but sometimes at the expense of deep specialisation.
• Integrated pods: cross-functional client teams with shared goals. This model works best when well-resourced.
• In-house production + external strategy: clients build internal content studios while agencies focus on planning and performance.

The biggest failure mode? A missing middle. No one explicitly owns the translation layer, the connective tissue that turns brand stories into media-ready narratives. That’s what communication strategy is supposed to be.

How AI is reshaping communication strategy

To add to the many layers, AI enters the equation, disruption or the great enabler. Artificial Intelligence is redefining how we plan, produce and distribute communication. It’s not a future conversation, it’s here now. AI is reshaping communication strategy in three fundamental ways:

1. Scale and personalisation: Generative AI can produce infinite creative variations at lightning speed. Messaging can now be tailored to micro-audiences, tested in real time, and optimised dynamically. That supercharges the power and the responsibility of communication strategy.
2. Predictive planning and dynamic optimisation: AI models enhance audience mapping, media mix modelling and budget allocation, shifting tactical decision-making into algorithmic systems. The role of communication strategy becomes less about controlling execution and more about defining the strategic rules and guardrails for these AI systems.
3. Governance and brand integrity: As AI generates content and makes decisions, it raises questions of authenticity, bias, data ethics and brand safety. Communication strategy must evolve to embed these considerations upfront, not as afterthoughts in legal review.

In short, AI doesn’t replace communication strategy, it magnifies its importance. Without clear communication strategy parameters, AI can just as easily amplify inconsistency as it can efficiency.

The industry is already responding with holding groups investing heavily in AI partnerships and tooling to fold these capabilities into agency offerings (recent high-profile AI deals show that scale players are racing to embed AI into planning and production).

Formalising the framework

To make communication strategy tangible in modern marketing teams, it helps to formalise the practical framework process:

1. Define ownership (RACI): The brand is accountable; a communication strategy lead is responsible; media and creative are consulted; legal and PR are informed.
2. Create a living playbook: A single document that defines message architecture, customer journey, audience segments, channel guidelines, KPIs, and creative principles, updated as and when required.
3. Integrate briefs early: Every creative brief must include media context, and every media plan must be reviewed for message fit before launch.
4. Centralise assets and data: Shared content libraries and unified audience data reduce duplication and misalignment.
5. Embed AI guardrails: Set clear rules for prompt use, content verification, and ethical boundaries in all AI-generated outputs.
6. Balance KPIs: Combine long-term brand health measures with short-term performance metrics, creating a unified scorecard.

Five questions every board should ask tomorrow

1. Who owns communication strategy in our ecosystem; is it named, defined and funded?
2. Where is our communication strategy playbook, and when was it last reviewed?
3. How are AI tools influencing our creative and media decisions, and are we governing them responsibly?
4. Are media, creative and data teams aligned from brief to measurement?
5. How do we balance performance optimisation with brand coherence over time?

Contributed by Nicole Kock on behalf of the AMF Board. The Advertising Media Forum (AMF) is a collective of media agencies and individuals including media strategists, planners, buyers and consultants through whom 95% of all media expenditure in South Africa is bought. The AMF advises and represents relevant organisations and aims to create open channels of communication and encourage and support transparent policies, strategies and transactions within the industry.