PITCH: Deliver effective international communications campaigns

Introduction

In an increasingly crowded and contested global information landscape, modern international communications require rigorous discipline and strategic clarity. The PITCH framework provides government communicators, diplomats, and overseas teams with a practical toolkit to navigate this complexity. Built on a foundation of truth, creativity, and cross-government collaboration, PITCH outlines how to build authentic trust, advance the UK’s interests, and project our values effectively on the world stage.

What is PITCH

PITCH is a framework for delivering effective strategic communications in a contested international information environment. It stands for:

Partners and allies
Insight
Trusted voices
Compelling content
Honesty and integrity

Strategic communication means using the full range of communication tools in a planned, systematic way to achieve a clear outcome, whether that is changing perceptions, shaping understanding, or advancing the UK’s values and interests on the world stage. In a global media environment that is increasingly crowded and contested, the highest levels of professional discipline are needed for communications to succeed.

PITCH brings together a decade of Government Communications good practice alongside learning from the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office (FCDO) and the Ministry of Defence. It is built on one clear principle: truth told powerfully, consistently, and creatively. It is not about spin or manipulation. It is about communicating authentically to build trust, shape understanding, and make the UK’s case effectively to international audiences.

The UK has genuine strengths to draw on. From the professionalism of our diplomats and the creativity of the GREAT campaign to the UK’s leadership of the Global Coalition Against Daesh communications, our international reputation for effective communications gives us real influence. Allies respect our ability to work across departments and agencies. Our campaigning approach has been adopted by others because it brings coherence in a noisy information environment. PITCH is designed to spread that good practice more widely.

Who is PITCH for

PITCH is primarily for UK Government officials responsible for international communications, including diplomats and officials representing the UK overseas. Directors and Heads of Communications working with international audiences should be familiar with the framework and share it with their teams.

The guidance is designed to work for those new to strategic communications and for more experienced practitioners. It introduces the core concepts and also brings together good practice techniques as a reference for campaign planning.

How PITCH connects to other tools

PITCH works alongside two other Government Communications frameworks.

The OASIS framework (Objectives, Audience insight, Strategy, Implementation, Scoring and evaluation) is used to plan all government communications campaigns. PITCH is best applied at the strategy and implementation stages of OASIS to develop and explore communication tactics, but it aligns to all five stages.

RESIST 3 is the counter-disinformation toolkit that helps communicators identify, monitor, and respond to false and misleading information. PITCH builds directly on the strategic communications element of RESIST 3, focusing on proactive international communications. The best way to tackle disinformation is to tell a credible, compelling story about what you are trying to achieve.

Why use PITCH

Modern communication is borderless. Digital content crosses national boundaries instantly, and the global information environment has become an arena of intense geopolitical competition.

Adversaries – including Russia and China – invest heavily in information operations to undermine democratic values and weaken international cooperation. The UK’s 2023 Integrated Review Refresh identified hostile information manipulation as a significant threat and committed to strengthening our response.

Effective strategic communication runs through all the UK’s levers of influence: diplomatic, economic, and, when necessary, military. Truth told powerfully, consistently, and creatively delivers real benefit to our international standing, trade, and democracy. The GREAT campaign, for example, delivered £4 billion of additional economic benefit over a decade.

PITCH gives government communicators the tools to respond – proactively and credibly – in this environment.

Partners and allies

Effective international communications must be fully integrated with policy, diplomatic and operational activity. Without that alignment, even the most creative campaign will struggle to land.

Start by being clear about the shared policy and operational goals that your communications can inform, shape and help deliver. Understand the policy aim first, then develop communications objectives that contribute to achieving it. International communications objectives typically focus on economic benefit, such as encouraging investment in or visits to the UK, or on changing perceptions, such as building favourability towards the UK.

Ensure message discipline and consistency across all relevant teams. Internal alignment is just as important as external communication. Any inconsistencies in how the UK communicates can be exploited by adversaries, so a coordinated, whole-of-government approach matters.

Build and invest in networks of contacts in partner governments. Working with allies enables rapid information sharing, message amplification, and a coherent counternarrative to disinformation. Bilateral meetings between ministers, ambassadors, and officials offer valuable opportunities for proactive press and social media activity. Multilateral organisations provide a platform to speak directly to policymakers and diplomats from across the world, as well as to wider public audiences through international media.

Continuously monitor and evaluate your communications using digital analytics, media monitoring and operational data. Reflect on what is working, iterate your approach and respond quickly to changes in the environment. Where budgets allow, use research and polling to assess progress against your objectives.

Insight

Good communications start with a deep understanding of your audience. Gather insight to build a rounded, clearly defined picture of your target audience and the local context. Draw on research and local knowledge from trusted sources to understand the economic, social, cultural and political landscape.

Use this insight to shape every core element of your communications strategy:

Resources: Consider the size and spread of your target audience against your available budget. You may need to prioritise specific audience segments.
Channel strategy: Choose channels and platforms your audience trusts and where they will be most receptive to your messages.
Messaging: Make sure the tone and content of your message will genuinely resonate with your audience.
Timing: Relevance and timeliness are critical to influence.

Understanding how audiences are vulnerable to misinformation and disinformation is essential. Use information vulnerability mapping to assess:

Which audience segments are most susceptible to false information
What platforms and channels they use to consume news
Which misinformation narratives they are most likely to encounter

Use the RESIST 3 principles to monitor, identify and respond to disinformation as part of your wider proactive communication strategy.

Trusted voices

Identify individuals or groups who can help land your key messages more effectively. Think about the goals of the campaign, the subject matter, and the target audience to select the most appropriate, relevant and credible third parties.

A mapping exercise can help you understand the stakeholder landscape. Consider politics, business, community, and culture, but do not limit yourself to traditional ideas of who is influential. Modern sources of societal influence look very different from a decade ago. Prioritise those most likely to reach your target audience, based on their prominence in media, the volume and quality of their content, and their following on digital channels. Authenticity is essential. The closer the match between the trusted voice and the subject matter, the more effective the message will be.

Trusted voices can include practitioners in partner governments, multilateral organisations, independent media such as the BBC World Service, and credible community figures. Any content produced in partnership with influencers must be transparent, trustworthy and accessible. When done well, it creates personalised and engaging content that extends your reach. When done poorly, it can damage public confidence in government communications.

Compelling content

In a digital, visual world, pictures and video are more powerful than a script or press release. Every initiative needs striking visuals and a credible story built on strong proof points that connect to your audience’s values and interests.

The most effective communicators tell stories rather than deliver narratives. A story has characters, a setting, a conflict and a resolution. It moves people. Think about how your key message could be expressed in three words, a single image or a short video.

When designing content, consider the three Vs: visual, volume and value-driven.

Be visual

Prioritise easy-to-digest visual content. For digital channels, move beyond static graphics and consider executions that stop the scroll. Develop a variety of content that suits different platforms and contexts, while maintaining consistency in messaging and branding to build recognition and recall.

Think about volume

Consider the timing and frequency of your communications. In fast-moving situations, maintaining a high pace of activity can help establish trusted voices, sustain engagement, and counter attempts to manipulate narratives. Use cultural moments and current events as hooks for core messages where appropriate.

Be value-driven

Promoting what the UK stands for is a powerful proposition. From culture, education, and sport to democratic values and thought leadership, your job is to translate these assets into influence. Not everyone’s values align with ours, so understand your audience and focus on areas of shared interest. Show the mutual benefit of working with the UK. Wider geopolitical statements can lose impact at a local level, so anchor your communications in local programmes and development where possible.

Use the full range of channels available to you, from traditional diplomatic engagement and media relations to digital owned and earned channels, and emerging platforms. Explore opportunities that online environments present for reaching new audiences.

Honesty and integrity

Transparency and credibility must be at the heart of all international communications. Truth is always the strongest argument. It is more effective than any attempt at covert manipulation, and it is what our democratic values require.

All government communications must comply with the Civil Service Code and our propriety and ethics guidance.

Communications must be:

Relevant to government responsibilities
Objective and explanatory, not biased or polemical
Clearly not party political
Conducted economically and appropriately
Justifiable as expenditure of public funds

Trust is built by delivering on what we promise and demonstrating credibility consistently over time. It is easily lost if it is seen to be compromised. Ethical conduct is not a constraint on effective communications. It is what makes our communications credible and lasting.

There are occasions when operational security requires that specific activity is not attributed or disclosed. Any decision not to attribute activity must be conscious, lawful, appropriately authorised, and clearly justified, for example to prevent loss of life or to reach audiences who cannot directly receive information from the UK Government.

Given the rise of artificial intelligence (AI)-powered disinformation and deepfakes, the responsibility to communicate authentically and build trust has never been greater.

Read more about how we use AI in government communications (members-only content).

TRUST principles

Trust is easily lost. Ethical conduct is not just a legal obligation – it is a powerful asset.

The following principles, which have been summarised by this toolkit, have been used by national security communicators to guide their work:

Transparency: Information statecraft will be conducted in a legal and ethical manner, in line with domestic and international law and our national values. Democracies must strive to be transparent in their actions.
Respect: Democracies should respect the dignity of individuals and groups. They should avoid using information warfare tactics that manipulate or coerce people.
Usefulness: Democracies should ensure that their information tactics serve a specific purpose, such as promoting awareness of important issues or preventing harm.
Safeguards: Democracies should employ safeguards to prevent the misuse of information tactics. These include strict oversight, codes of conduct and authorisation.
Truthfulness: Above all, democracies should prioritise truthfulness in their information warfare tactics. They should avoid spreading false or misleading information and instead seek to provide accurate and reliable information to the public.

Case studies

Russia-Ukraine war

In 2022, the UK Government Information Cell brought together a cross-government team working with NATO, EU, and Five Eyes allies to identify and expose Russian disinformation. The team declassified intelligence, coordinated shared responses, and held regular calls with up to 150 allied government communicators at a time.

European Political Community Summit, Chișinău, Moldova

On 1 June 2023, Moldova hosted the second ever meeting of the European Political Community. A team of UK Government communicators from the Cabinet Office supported the Moldovan government with international communications and media coordination for an event attended by 49 European leaders and over 800 journalists. The summit generated 4,946 international media articles.

Shared Values campaign

Government Communications International worked with 14 partner governments to co-deliver a counter-brand campaign promoting the strength of democratic values. Over two years, the campaign reached over 85 million people organically across 165 countries.

Cricket diplomacy

In 2022, the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office UK Pakistan Network created a bilingual video series – delivered in Urdu – to mark 75 years of UK-Pakistan relations. The series reached more than 1.5 million social media users across 24 countries and generated over 500,000 views.

Counter-Daesh Communications Cell

The UK leads the Global Coalition Against Daesh’s communications work through the Counter-Daesh Communications Cell (CDCC). Insight-led campaigns – informed by detailed audience analysis – helped the CDCC reach and engage audiences previously underrepresented in its work, including women in Iraq and Syria.