Get Messaging Out of the Marketing Ghetto

I can’t believe I’m saying this, but people often focus too much on the creative side of new messaging projects. By too much, I mean exclusively.

Yes, the messaging has to be compelling, flexible, and spot-on for the target audience. But all that development work is wasted if you don’t have a plan for making your messaging live beyond the first website revisions and a carefully crafted guidebook that no one reads. For messaging to succeed, everyone (not just the marketing team) needs to use it—in conversation, emails, presentations, wherever. Based on our experience working with a variety of clients on messaging projects, these are the keys to successful implementation:

Enthusiastic leadership. Driving adoption is not as simple as having the grand pooh-bah say “do it.” Leadership needs to embrace it, use it, model it—internally as well as to external audiences. Otherwise, messaging will be seen as optional.

Communicating the benefits. Good messaging solves problems. It provides easily grasped explanations of difficult concepts, clarifies key goals and values throughout the organization, and provides ready answers (even cut-and-paste options) to common questions. Let people know how the new messaging will help them talk about their work more comfortably, effectively, and consistently.

Training. Walking people through practical exercises for using the messaging in real-life situations is essential. This is especially true for sales teams and customer-facing staff: they’re primary message carriers and they need to feel comfortable with their approach. Facilitated role-playing sessions are ideal. It’s also a good idea to provide a refresher a few months down road.

Using new messaging will feel uncomfortable at first—even if it hits the authenticity mark and rings true to everyone throughout the organization—simply because it’s unfamiliar. Without ample reinforcement, people will revert to the words they’ve always used, even if those words inspire reactions like “Huh?” or “Excuse me, I have to go get another drink now.” Then your messaging platform breaks down—and I hate to see good creative go to waste.

Good Messaging Is Worth 1,000 Pictures

Thinkshift recently completed messaging work for several clients, which got me thinking about what good messaging is all about.

Good messaging is credible and exact. It handles the communications task at hand, whether it’s a pithy quote from the CEO in a press release, a boilerplate description of the company, or the brand voice and framework for a report, presentation or website. A messaging document should provide messages that are as close to plug-and-play as possible, with examples for as many contexts as makes sense.

Good messaging gets used. Reporters use it when writing about the company. Partner organizations use it when they describe you on their website. Employees use it, not just in presentations and formal communications, but also on their LinkedIn and Facebook pages and when they talk about their work with friends. For one client, the test came with the release of significant company news requiring media outreach and a new partnership. It was extremely gratifying to see the messaging work take hold and appear in newspaper articles, customer blog posts and on the partner website. Meanwhile, employees used it on their LinkedIn pages and elsewhere.

This doesn’t just happen naturally. We don’t just create messages, toss the client a guide and expect them to get it right away. Introducing the messaging, explaining how to use it and when, showing examples and providing training for written and spoken use are key.

Good messaging is flexible. Messaging should be used consistently, but shouldn’t be rigid. It should grow and change with the organization, and be adaptable to the person using it, the communications vehicle, audience or a other factors.

The key test—and I find this especially satisfying—is whether people genuinely like the messages. They won’t unless the messages are written in natural, ordinary language, so that people are comfortable using them without rewriting. When that happens, employees and others become advocates. They are able to provide the right message and information succinctly.

And that kind of communication brings an organization to life. You can’t do that with jargon, corporatespeak or vague and imprecise phrases.

If ‘Greener Than Thou’ Doesn’t Work, What Does?

A recent piece in the New York Times reveals that living green is driving couples into therapy when one half of the couple is greener than the other. One partner might sneak unsustainably produced meals, set the thermostat too high or drive too much—chiding and guilt ensue. If it goes on long enough, the happy couple is no longer happy. Even families are tense as greener children clash with their not-so-green parents.

This seems a bit ridiculous (for a number of reasons), but it got me thinking about what does work when trying to convince someone (or some company) to change their unsustainable ways. This is the topic of an annual conference called Behavior, Energy and Climate Change; among its lessons:

  • Information alone doesn’t work. People usually need some other motivation. Money saved is good; money earned is better.
  • The payoff (or bad result from inaction) needs to be relatively immediate. The threat that your town may be under water when the glaciers melt or knowing that you’ll break even on that solar system in a mere 15 years doesn’t get many to change.
  • Competition helps. If you know what your neighbor is doing, you want to do better.
  • Tracking progress also motivates, especially if you can see how much money you’re saving.

It’s hard to change behavior, and harder still to communicate in ways that make a difference. When I consider these campaigns, the successful ones have this in common: they lead by example. A company credibly demonstrates that they are walking the talk, and others follow or do business with them. Or a campaign fosters friendly competition, so participants naturally follow one another.

Meanwhile, my former housemate will be pleased to know that I’ve drastically shortened my shower times….

What Works When Communicating About Climate and More

I wrote in April about what decision science research tells us about how people respond to environmental issues and what that means for communicators. Now the Center for Research on Environmental Decisions (CRED) at Columbia University has released an illustrated guide to the psychology of climate change communication—handily summarized by Grist blogger Jonathan Hiskes here.

Even if you’re not communicating directly or specifically about climate change, take a look. There are nuggets here that can be useful to people trying to influence behavior on a spectrum of environment-related topics—from clean tech companies trying to get staid industries to adopt new technologies to universities trying to boost participation in campus sustainability efforts.

Much of the advice boils down to the fundamental communications truth—it’s not about you; it’s about your audience. Know who they are, speak their language, put problems and solutions in their context, be concrete, don’t exaggerate, and give people easy ways to act. You’ve no doubt heard these rules before (we certainly can’t shut up about them), but this guide gives you the science behind why you ignore them at your peril, and may give you fresh ideas on how to to apply them.

Green ‘Consumers’ Want to Save the Planet? Not So Much

More evidence that “save the planet” is bad messaging: Suzanne Shelton of the Shelton Group reports that her firm’s recent national survey of people identified as green buyers found six myths about green “consumers,” including that their top concern is the environment and that their main motivation when reducing energy use is to “save the planet.” The stat there: “When asked the most important reason to reduce energy consumption, 73 percent chose ‘to reduce my bills/control costs’ and only 26 percent chose ‘to lessen my impact on the environment.’”

This shouldn’t really be surprising. A growing body of research suggests that we’re hardwired to focus on the immediate and undervalue future benefits. Marketing gurus have been hammering home for decades the need to answer the key buyer question, “What’s in it for me?” And really, how would you expect people who are treated and see themselves as “consumers” to behave? (A topic I ranted on recently.)

Yet “save the planet” and its variations continue to appear in marketing and advertising by sophisticated companies and nonprofits. Either they believe there are more treehuggers out there than there are; they’re committed environmentalists themselves who can’t believe that everyone else won’t see the light when it’s pointed out to them (the classic error of mistaking yourself for your market); or they just want to paint themselves as green by communicating that they think saving the planet is a good idea. Regardless, it’s time for a new pitch.