Attempts to deal with irregular migration have become more expensive, expansive, diffuse, complex, and contested, with responsible actors needing to balance an ever-greater number of demands and obligations. • As such, public communication is today a prevalent tool used by actors seeking to achieve migration policy objectives via information, persuasion, and motivating behaviour. • Yet we still know relatively little about how public communication can be most effectively used to uphold rights and safety, reduce irregularity, smuggling, and trafficking • This report asks how we can achieve a step-change in persuasive communication on irregular migration. • Identified weaknesses of current approaches include poor understanding of target audiences, naïve informative contents, and a lack of impact assessment.