Intro
I Love You.
It was probably one of the first messages you ever received. It was wrapped in emotion and delivered with passion. It is, and remains the perfect message. Authenticity is critical. It is very difficult to fake. It’s impact hinges on delivery. And it’s situational – delivered at the right moment it elicits an immediate response. At the wrong moment it falls between the cracks of everyday chatter.
So what’s this got to do with the business of messaging? Simple. Business success hinges on effectively delivering messages. Without them differentiation might exist, but goes unrecognized. Value is then depleted. And products and services fall between the cracks.
Think of your favorite brands, companies, people. In nearly every instance a simple and compelling message screams at you. For others the message isn’t so clear but imbedded in the brand. Nike screams “Just Do It”. BMW drives you to “The Ultimate Driving Machine”. For Virgin it isn’t so clear – no tag-line captures the messages delivered so clearly by its founder Sir Richard Branson – fun, maverick. Equal doses of this can be found at Southwest Airlines who over the years have distilled this same spirit to one word “Nuts!”.
Just like the words “I Love You”, messages by government and corporate needn’t be spelt out in black and white, emblazoned across billboards, or the first lines of every press release. In fact, some of the most effective manifest themselves in action and behavior. As thousands of Virgin Airlines’ and Southwest Airlines employees do every day, the deliver the message through their actions.
For decades marketers and activists have sought to craft the perfect message. But the rules for effective messaging now extend well beyond how to create a message – they extend to the rules for sharing and receiving messages as well. We have entered a new “participatory era”. Those that once transmitted messages are now faced with consumers not only keen to create the message and engage in conversations based upon them – but also consumers armed with digital printing presses and streaming media channels. New rules of engagement call for new kinds of messaging.
Messaging Anxiety
We are bombarded with messages. Email, websites, employers, TV, and now podcasts surround news and imbed content with messages.
Richard Saul Wurman coined the phrase Information Architect in 1975 went on to explore Information Anxiety - our love-hate relationship with information and gives some practical strategies to control it as both consumers and producers. Most anxiety emerges not from messaging overload but from consumers unable to receive the message they are searching for.
"The first question that most consumers are going to ask about your company is what do you do? This is one of the most profound questions that the business world will ever answer; yet, most do an abysmal job of answering it. You can open the pages of any technology magazine to see how poorly many companies answer this question...
...What does your organization really do?...Companies trying to sound hip and sophisticated deprive their potential customers of an opportunity to understand their business."
Technology companies have answered this simple question with the largest effort to create new phrases ever mounted. We provide “technology solutions”, “platforms”, services orientated architectures”. As a result, the buyer is required to not only understand the company and product – all they really wanted to understand in the first place – but also a plethora of catch-phrases and buzzwords. Wurman then proposes that every company have a company story that "tells the world what your business is all about. It should be a tale of passion, triumph, motivation, and opportunity." He adds, however, "It shouldn’t have anything to do with your company mission statement."
Too often problems with messaging focus on creativity, message proliferation or the right media. Marketers efforts center on developing the right message for the right product. They are doomed to failure. At the heart of effective messaging is a clear understanding of what the consumer needs to hear in order to act. Great marketers start with the space in the buyers mind that they want to occupy.
The graveyard of failed product launches and companies is full of products and services that failed to capture the mind of buyers. A failure that Al Reis describes clearly – “These products didn't fail in the marketplace, they failed in the mind. They tried to stand for something that didn't fit prospects' perceptions about the brands.”He goes on to point out a stunning example of how to do this right:
“Take Pepsi-Cola, for example. What comes to mind when you think of Pepsi? Back in 1963, the brand launched an advertising program that has to be the "ultimate" cola campaign. "The Pepsi Generation." This idea took advantage of a key psychological principle. The younger generation looks for ways to rebel against the older generation. Since the older generation was drinking Coca-Cola, it was easy to convince the younger generation that they should be drinking Pepsi.”
Great messages drive to a space in the mind. Bad messages drive anxiety.
Messaging Success
Messages from corporations are paradoxical. When you know you are receiving them you generally don’t want them. When you don’t know you are receiving them they find a way of imbedding themselves in your brain like a child’s nursery rhyme. Sometimes, as brand groupies, we seek them.
Each year corporations and governments spend billions of dollars shaping and delivering messages that walk the fine line between what we want, and what we refuse to accept. Most fail to resonate and a select few become home runs. BMW is the ultimate driving machine. Nike shouts “Just Do It”. Coke invites you to the “Coke Side Of Life”. You could probably based a generational game show on what Coke tagline you can remember. The oldest I can remember is “Coke Is It”. And here-in lays the key ingredient to messaging success. Repetition.
1. Repetition
There is no question that creativity matters, particularly in delivery. But without repetition even the most creative messages are lost. Backed by hundreds of millions of dollars of spend and countless hours of prime-time television “Life Tastes Good” has little resonance for any consumer. Compare that to BMW. For 31 years[i] they’ve asserted themselves as the Ultimate Driving Machine.
The Coke Side Of Life
Responding to Coke’s messaging effervescence, “The new work “understands that Coke trade dress -- the red color, the ribbon, the contour glass, the logos -- are magical icons with immeasurable power,” wrote Advertising Age's Bob Garfield. “It understands that the fizzing, bubbling sound of a soft-drink pour is one of the most fetching, evocative and appetizing sounds on earth.
“Owning the mind” is central to any marketing activity. No matter how you look at it – geography, market or category, leading brands are brands that can be identified by a single word or concept. BMW owns "driving." Mercedes-Benz owns "prestige." Volvo owns "safety." Southwest Airlines own “value”. What Coke owns is best evidenced by the dramatic rise in Pepsi as a brand in recent years.
In his book, Adcult USA, James Twitchell tells a story about Rosser Reeves. An executive of Minute Maid once complained about Reeves's refusal to fiddle with the advertising, saying "You have 47 people working on my brand, and you haven't changed the campaign in 12 years. What are they doing?" Reeves replied: "They're keeping your people from changing your ad."
2. Creativity
Creativity – or the demand for it – is probably the greatest culprit for killing great messages. Under it’s halo we take the obvious and obfuscate it.
If brands are promises, so are messages. How messages are delivered are as important as the product they promote or promise they deliver. At their recent launch Coke attempted to bring the ”Coke Side Of Life“ to life. Unfortunately their site is pretty much a conventional corporate site and if I want to learn more it directed readers to a press kit. Yawn. No wonder kids are switching to Pepsi. In fact, something called ”Make Every Drop Count“ figures more prominently. My Coke – the portal through which the message is delivered is even more confusing and certainly doesn't directly help bring this to life - take a look at the wallpapers. Nothing there.
Change is confusing enough. Poorly executed change is devastating.
If you are going to create a new message - which does amount to a value proposition - you'd better make sure your communities and customers can experience and live it. And for it to work, it has to be able to live freely across all your mediums, unencumbered by other slogans, taglines, ideas... Just look at Nike.
Tom Pirko, of consulting firm Bevmark said it all the the WSJ piece: ”Marketing magic cannot be re-created. It has to be created with an original thought that is breakthrough.“
3. Conversation
Great messages are, by default, a conversation. They elicit and become framed within dialogue. What separates yet another banal tagline from a great message is the effect.
Tagline = Cold Message = WarmthTagline = Transmission Message = ConversationTagline = Anonymous Message = PersonalTagline = 1:Many Message = 1:1Tagline = Fixed Message = MutableTagline = Closed Message = Participatory
Andrew Lark
chief marketing officer
loglogic.com
blog.loglogic.com
T. 408 215 5912
F. 408 215 5962
C. 408 656 9446
E. alark@loglogic.com
I. kiwilark
I Love You.
It was probably one of the first messages you ever received. It was wrapped in emotion and delivered with passion. It is, and remains the perfect message. Authenticity is critical. It is very difficult to fake. It’s impact hinges on delivery. And it’s situational – delivered at the right moment it elicits an immediate response. At the wrong moment it falls between the cracks of everyday chatter.
So what’s this got to do with the business of messaging? Simple. Business success hinges on effectively delivering messages. Without them differentiation might exist, but goes unrecognized. Value is then depleted. And products and services fall between the cracks.
Think of your favorite brands, companies, people. In nearly every instance a simple and compelling message screams at you. For others the message isn’t so clear but imbedded in the brand. Nike screams “Just Do It”. BMW drives you to “The Ultimate Driving Machine”. For Virgin it isn’t so clear – no tag-line captures the messages delivered so clearly by its founder Sir Richard Branson – fun, maverick. Equal doses of this can be found at Southwest Airlines who over the years have distilled this same spirit to one word “Nuts!”.
Just like the words “I Love You”, messages by government and corporate needn’t be spelt out in black and white, emblazoned across billboards, or the first lines of every press release. In fact, some of the most effective manifest themselves in action and behavior. As thousands of Virgin Airlines’ and Southwest Airlines employees do every day, the deliver the message through their actions.
For decades marketers and activists have sought to craft the perfect message. But the rules for effective messaging now extend well beyond how to create a message – they extend to the rules for sharing and receiving messages as well. We have entered a new “participatory era”. Those that once transmitted messages are now faced with consumers not only keen to create the message and engage in conversations based upon them – but also consumers armed with digital printing presses and streaming media channels. New rules of engagement call for new kinds of messaging.
Messaging Anxiety
We are bombarded with messages. Email, websites, employers, TV, and now podcasts surround news and imbed content with messages.
Richard Saul Wurman coined the phrase Information Architect in 1975 went on to explore Information Anxiety - our love-hate relationship with information and gives some practical strategies to control it as both consumers and producers. Most anxiety emerges not from messaging overload but from consumers unable to receive the message they are searching for.
"The first question that most consumers are going to ask about your company is what do you do? This is one of the most profound questions that the business world will ever answer; yet, most do an abysmal job of answering it. You can open the pages of any technology magazine to see how poorly many companies answer this question...
...What does your organization really do?...Companies trying to sound hip and sophisticated deprive their potential customers of an opportunity to understand their business."
Technology companies have answered this simple question with the largest effort to create new phrases ever mounted. We provide “technology solutions”, “platforms”, services orientated architectures”. As a result, the buyer is required to not only understand the company and product – all they really wanted to understand in the first place – but also a plethora of catch-phrases and buzzwords. Wurman then proposes that every company have a company story that "tells the world what your business is all about. It should be a tale of passion, triumph, motivation, and opportunity." He adds, however, "It shouldn’t have anything to do with your company mission statement."
Too often problems with messaging focus on creativity, message proliferation or the right media. Marketers efforts center on developing the right message for the right product. They are doomed to failure. At the heart of effective messaging is a clear understanding of what the consumer needs to hear in order to act. Great marketers start with the space in the buyers mind that they want to occupy.
The graveyard of failed product launches and companies is full of products and services that failed to capture the mind of buyers. A failure that Al Reis describes clearly – “These products didn't fail in the marketplace, they failed in the mind. They tried to stand for something that didn't fit prospects' perceptions about the brands.”He goes on to point out a stunning example of how to do this right:
“Take Pepsi-Cola, for example. What comes to mind when you think of Pepsi? Back in 1963, the brand launched an advertising program that has to be the "ultimate" cola campaign. "The Pepsi Generation." This idea took advantage of a key psychological principle. The younger generation looks for ways to rebel against the older generation. Since the older generation was drinking Coca-Cola, it was easy to convince the younger generation that they should be drinking Pepsi.”
Great messages drive to a space in the mind. Bad messages drive anxiety.
Messaging Success
Messages from corporations are paradoxical. When you know you are receiving them you generally don’t want them. When you don’t know you are receiving them they find a way of imbedding themselves in your brain like a child’s nursery rhyme. Sometimes, as brand groupies, we seek them.
Each year corporations and governments spend billions of dollars shaping and delivering messages that walk the fine line between what we want, and what we refuse to accept. Most fail to resonate and a select few become home runs. BMW is the ultimate driving machine. Nike shouts “Just Do It”. Coke invites you to the “Coke Side Of Life”. You could probably based a generational game show on what Coke tagline you can remember. The oldest I can remember is “Coke Is It”. And here-in lays the key ingredient to messaging success. Repetition.
1. Repetition
There is no question that creativity matters, particularly in delivery. But without repetition even the most creative messages are lost. Backed by hundreds of millions of dollars of spend and countless hours of prime-time television “Life Tastes Good” has little resonance for any consumer. Compare that to BMW. For 31 years[i] they’ve asserted themselves as the Ultimate Driving Machine.
The Coke Side Of Life
Responding to Coke’s messaging effervescence, “The new work “understands that Coke trade dress -- the red color, the ribbon, the contour glass, the logos -- are magical icons with immeasurable power,” wrote Advertising Age's Bob Garfield. “It understands that the fizzing, bubbling sound of a soft-drink pour is one of the most fetching, evocative and appetizing sounds on earth.
“Owning the mind” is central to any marketing activity. No matter how you look at it – geography, market or category, leading brands are brands that can be identified by a single word or concept. BMW owns "driving." Mercedes-Benz owns "prestige." Volvo owns "safety." Southwest Airlines own “value”. What Coke owns is best evidenced by the dramatic rise in Pepsi as a brand in recent years.
In his book, Adcult USA, James Twitchell tells a story about Rosser Reeves. An executive of Minute Maid once complained about Reeves's refusal to fiddle with the advertising, saying "You have 47 people working on my brand, and you haven't changed the campaign in 12 years. What are they doing?" Reeves replied: "They're keeping your people from changing your ad."
2. Creativity
Creativity – or the demand for it – is probably the greatest culprit for killing great messages. Under it’s halo we take the obvious and obfuscate it.
If brands are promises, so are messages. How messages are delivered are as important as the product they promote or promise they deliver. At their recent launch Coke attempted to bring the ”Coke Side Of Life“ to life. Unfortunately their site is pretty much a conventional corporate site and if I want to learn more it directed readers to a press kit. Yawn. No wonder kids are switching to Pepsi. In fact, something called ”Make Every Drop Count“ figures more prominently. My Coke – the portal through which the message is delivered is even more confusing and certainly doesn't directly help bring this to life - take a look at the wallpapers. Nothing there.
Change is confusing enough. Poorly executed change is devastating.
If you are going to create a new message - which does amount to a value proposition - you'd better make sure your communities and customers can experience and live it. And for it to work, it has to be able to live freely across all your mediums, unencumbered by other slogans, taglines, ideas... Just look at Nike.
Tom Pirko, of consulting firm Bevmark said it all the the WSJ piece: ”Marketing magic cannot be re-created. It has to be created with an original thought that is breakthrough.“
3. Conversation
Great messages are, by default, a conversation. They elicit and become framed within dialogue. What separates yet another banal tagline from a great message is the effect.
Tagline = Cold Message = WarmthTagline = Transmission Message = ConversationTagline = Anonymous Message = PersonalTagline = 1:Many Message = 1:1Tagline = Fixed Message = MutableTagline = Closed Message = Participatory
Andrew Lark
chief marketing officer
loglogic.com
blog.loglogic.com
T. 408 215 5912
F. 408 215 5962
C. 408 656 9446
E. alark@loglogic.com
I. kiwilark
posted by Ciaran Parker at 3:35 AM
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