Decades of research on public communication campaigns has generated a large volume of insights that are often siloed and fragmented across many fields and topic areas, making it difficult for researchers and practitioners to distill these insights into an overarching framework. Further, most research and theory focus only on a select few of the factors that determine the total impact of communication campaigns. In this article, we present a general framework for understanding the effects of strategic communication campaigns. We define the driving force as all the efforts, contexts, and systems that advance the campaign’s goals, and the restraining force as those that restrict the campaign’s goals. The total impact of any driving or restraining force can be understood as the product of its reach, effect, and durability. Reach refers to the proportion of people in the target population that are exposed to the corresponding driving or restraining force. Effect refers to the size of the impact of that force, among those who are exposed. Durability refers to the extent to which the effect of that force lasts over time and/or resists opposing forces. We highlight how this framework can be used to distill, connect, and interpret large amounts of extant research and theory, how it can be used by practitioners to design future campaigns and diagnose the degree of success or failure of past campaigns, and how it can be used by researchers to design research programs and identify persisting knowledge gaps.