This book aims to offer a comprehensive exploration of what works in campaigning, providing a practical how-to guide of one hundred key steps or tools for developing effective campaigns applicable to any issue. Content includes how to begin a campaign, motivating people, and research and development, including issue mapping and planning using the campaign planning star. It also discusses organising communications including visual language, constructing campaign propositions, and insight into news media. It offers suggestions on how to keep a campaign going, how to use old and new media and what to do and what not to do. The final chapter reviews the bigger picture, including why campaigns need brands, and examines how campaigns became a form of politics and provides new research material on how issues mature and become 'norms', and the consequent problems for campaigning.

According to the intoroduction, "campaigns are wars of persuasion. Use of communication is often the key to success or failure. By itself, public concern is rarely effectively focussed: hence this book is mostly about how to use communication to enlist and focus the support of others. While there are lots of books about issues, this one is about the tactics and strategies of campaigning and communication, looking as much as possible at underlying principles."