Successful advocacy and political influence are built on careful strategy, drawing on the key disciplines of:
Policy and political analysis
- Understanding political objectives and tendencies, anticipating government policy; translating government policy into ‘real’implications, critiquing and developing alternative policy.
Government relations
- Influencing government policy through formal channels - such as agency consultation and select committees
- Influencing government policy through relationships with key decision-makers - politicians and their officials
Media
- Knowing whether, when, how and in which media to advocate a cause
Stakeholder Relations
- Building partnerships of common interest, bringing on board influential third parties, and managing other third party risks.
Collectively, these activities make up more than the sum of their parts, so that advocacy becomes an art of engagement, information and persuasion.
Network’s advantage is our ability to bring these disciplines together. We provide integrated policy, government, media and stakeholder services from the earliest stage of government policy conception, through the policy development, decision-making, legislative and implementation phases.
Every situation is different, with its own subtleties and dynamics, but a successful advocacy strategy will set out which buttons to press, at what time and in what order.
The Network team has members from both public and private, policy and public relations backgrounds enabling us to offer a comprehensive strategic understanding of how the government machine ticks.