Strategic communications means more than managing messaging. It means protecting reputation through intelligence capabilities.
Elie Jacobs is founding partner of Purposeful Advisors.
A founder calls, frustrated. A promising prospect went cold after three meetings — no explanation. Then a friendly investor mentioned offhand: “I’ve been hearing concerns in the market about your runway.” The company is well-funded through next year. Days later, another contact asked if the CTO is leaving. The CTO just renewed stock options.
The founder wants crisis communications advice. But the crisis isn’t a story that needs spinning — it’s an intelligence operation they didn’t know was happening. Someone’s been working the back channels, and by the time the founder noticed, they’d already lost the deal.
Too many founders think their communications team handles only press, messaging and social media. Jack Martin’s “Fifth Seat” philosophy argued something far more consequential: communications represents the public at the decision-making table just as legal, financial and operational advisors represent their domains. Dan Bartlett, Walmart’s EVP of corporate affairs, sharpened that idea for today’s environment: the public is not just an audience — it is a stakeholder with influence over deals, talent, regulation and valuation.
Here’s the rub: you can’t represent the public if you don’t know what they’re hearing — not just what you’re telling them — about your company, including what competitors are quietly spreading in back channels. That’s what most founders miss: your biggest communications risk isn’t messaging — it’s intelligence.
If your clients operate in markets where competitors actively recruit employees, where customer wins are public knowledge, where investors back multiple players — this isn’t optional sophistication. It’s table stakes.
One leaked fundraising timeline costs 3 to 6 months of competitive advantage. One advisor sharing the customer list costs deals your client will never know they lost.
Understanding why people leak information isn’t psychology, it’s tradecraft. One of the best-known frameworks intelligence services utilize to understand why people become sources is MICE: money, ideology, coercion/compromise, ego.
In corporate settings, ego drives the board member who casually mentions your client’s fundraising timeline to prove they’re plugged in, or the advisor who shares product roadmap details to demonstrate superior market knowledge, or the mid-level employee trying to show off to a journalist at happy hour.
Money motivates the advisor compensated by multiple companies. Ideology drives the industry evangelist who prioritizes sector over individual company success. Coercion targets someone with undisclosed conflicts competitors leverage.
Most communications professionals map stakeholders once, identify who has influence, score importance and develop a plan. Intelligence professionals know this is inadequate. Effective communications in competitive markets requires continuous intelligence collection and motivation analysis. This systematic approach isn’t novel — it’s adapted from intelligence collection protocols. The novelty is applying it to communications practice.
This requires three disciplines: auditing who has access to what information, assessing stakeholder motivations through MICE, and tracking information flows to identify leaks. Most communications professionals map stakeholders once and expect it to work perfectly. Intelligence professionals monitor continuously and refine constantly.
This isn’t paranoia — it’s systematic monitoring. Quarterly, ask: Has anyone’s access level changed? Have motivations shifted? What information has leaked? When you discover leakage, controlled disclosure helps identify sources.
Once you understand who might leak and why, the next question is how to defend. Intelligence professionals carefully manage information flow — not through deception, but through strategic control of what information exists where.
Controlled disclosure: Compartmentalize sensitive information and track who has access. Feed slightly different versions of non-critical information to different stakeholders — tell Advisor A “launching in Q2,” Advisor B “late spring,” Advisor C “April or May.” You’re not lying — you’re being variably precise. When competitors reference specific framing, you know the source.
Strategic ambiguity: Make competitor intelligence less valuable. Be deliberately vague about fundraising (“well-capitalized”), product roadmap (“exploring multiple approaches”), team structure (“building the right team”). Force competitors to invest more resources while reducing intelligence reliability.
Proactive inoculation: Pre-bunk predictable attacks. Address capitalization with key stakeholders before competitors spread runway rumors. Demonstrate technology capabilities before doubts circulate. Strengthen customer relationships before competitive pressure arrives.
The ethical line is clear: aggressively defend your client’s information, but never fabricate or steal competitors’. Compartmentalizing information is prudent, not deceptive. Controlled disclosure is security, not manipulation. The line: no fabricating false information, no paying sources to spy, no illegal surveillance. Defensive intelligence is legitimate. Offensive espionage is not.
Strategic communications means more than managing messaging. It means protecting reputation through intelligence capabilities. Legal counsel protects against lawsuits. The CFO protects the balance sheet. The COO protects operations. Communications counsel protects against competitive intelligence operations.
This requires understanding what competitors know about your client, who provides that intelligence and how to defend against it. It requires continuous stakeholder assessment, not one-time mapping. It requires monitoring information flows, not just publishing content.
Start simple: map who has access to what, assess their competing loyalties, implement one compartmentalization change. Intelligence capabilities build incrementally.
That founder who lost the prospect to whisper campaign rumors? If their communications advisor had been running continuous stakeholder intelligence, they’d have known which advisor was feeding competitors information — and could have compartmentalized access before it cost them the deal.
Your client’s reputation isn’t just what they say about themselves. It’s what competitors are quietly saying about them in the back channels where deals are won and lost. The question is whether communications professionals understand this expanded mandate — and are prepared to execute it.
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