Struggling with your messaging? It’s easier than you think…

In this newsletter, I’m going to show you the easy way to turn strategy into world class messaging.

Not just messaging actually – but world class sales, marketing, and branding; because at the end of the day all of these things are simply messaging applied in different contexts.

I appreciate this will sound like heresy to many, but personally I think we make these things far too complex.  All there really is to this stuff – in any business – is the following:

1. Strategy: the unique value you offer
2. Product: the thing that delivers it
3. Messaging: the way you communicate it

If the strategy is sensible, the product is effective, and the messaging is clear and convincing, then people will buy your stuff. You can jazz it up any way you like but that’s the truth – and even the greatest and most creative brands in the world are built on a basic messaging framework that anyone can do in about 5 minutes.

Yes, seriously.

But before showing you this framework, let me prove the point with perhaps the all-time greatest piece of creative branding: Apple’s Think Different.

At first glance, this work seems so lofty and artful that you assume it could only have come through a series of outrageous creative leaps which would be beyond the reach of mere mortals like you and me. And for sure, in terms of execution, there is a bit of that going on. But if you scratch the surface, you’ll find that beneath the rhetoric and art direction, there’s nothing more to it than some tarted-up sales messaging that you or I could have written without too much bother.

Let me show you.

Step 1: Strategy

First, we have to start as always with the strategy of the business. What unique value were Apple trying to offer the market at that time? What were they giving they customer they couldn’t get elsewhere?

The answer of course was basically “more simple and accessible computers”. Steve Jobs’ unique ability to blend the technical world of computing with the artistic world of the humanities enabled him to create the first ever truly intuitive and friendly devices in that space – something we take for granted today, but which was pretty huge in the 1990s.

Nothing epitomised this more than the original iMac, and then latterly the iPod – both meteoric leaps in the design and usability of technology, which paved the way for pretty much everything that came afterwards.

Botton line for our purposes is simply that they made user-friendly computers. That’s it.

Step 2: Messaging structure

So how did they get from that pretty mundane strategic offering to something as thrilling as the Think Different creative?

Actually in a pretty simple way.

You see all good messaging, when you get right down to it, can be broken down into the same basic structure:

1. Customer problem
2. Company solution
3. Customer benefit

Honestly, this is always the case, and there is really no point in diverging from it. Everything you could ever need is pretty much contained within these three bullet points.

So how do we fill them in from our strategy?

Well it’s pretty easy. You just have to figure out what problem your strategy is solving for the customer (1), then say why your offer solves it (2), and then finish up with the fabulous state this will leave them in (3).

In the case of Apple, we know they were offering user-friendly computers, so what do you think a potential problem might have been? What would be the issue created by “hard to use” computers? Clearly you can come up with a few answers here, but the basic one is that if you can’t really use computers, then you can’t really execute your projects very effectively. You have great ideas, but your equipment lets you down in making them happen. You feel powerless. Held back. Frustrated.

Apple’s answer to this then is pretty straight forward. Their computers are so simple and intuitive that anyone can use them to bring their ideas to life.

And thus the end benefit is also obvious. It is not “user friendly computers” – that is the strategic mechanism, not the benefit. The benefit is the customer finally being able to fully express themselves and get their projects off the ground.

We can map out this 1-2-3 sales script something like this:

1. “You know how sometimes you can have these big dreams and plans but feel powerless to make them happen?”
2. “Well Apple makes computers which are so simple and user friendly that anyone can bring their ideas to life”
3. “So you can fully express your creativity, and create the change you want to see in the world”

(Credit to Donald Miller, writer of Storybrand, for those opening words “you know how…” which is an absolutely brilliant way of articulating the problem part of the argument. In fact I would strongly recommend you use: “you know how…”, “well…”, and “so…” to build these three parts, as it gives you the right rhythm).

What we have here then is an unvarnished sales script which has been pulled from Apple’s strategy – and I hope you’d agree that most people would be able to build something like this without too much fuss.

For most businesses, this is pretty much as far as you ever need to go. Stick this on your website, use it in your pitches – this little flow is going to cover all of your sales and marketing needs.  Assuming your customer would agree with your problem statement, and assuming that your strategy actually fixes it, then shit is just gonna work.

However if you want to go one step further…

Step 3: Creative overlay

Some brands – especially B2C brands – will want to go further than a raw salesy script like this, by adding some creative “sizzle” to the argument.

This is where the need for artistic creativity and taste comes in. Not just anybody can do this, and you probably shouldn’t try to do it for your own business, BUT again I want to show you that if the messaging structure is solid it doesn’t take that big a leap.

Let’s look at the Apple example.

Now that we understand the messaging logic, we can now see where the extravagant use of people like MLK and Einstein came from.

They were people whose creative vision changed the world. They “thought different”, “had a dream”, and went out to make it happen. Well, that’s just what Apple is trying to help you do too. You have a project you want to get off the ground, and the accessibility of their devices is going to help you do that. OK, it’s probably not quite at these people’s level, but it matters to you.

The inescapable suggestion is: “people with passion projects like MLK need Apple computers to get them done”… even though of course none of the people in the ads ever touched an Apple, but heck that’s just details.

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What I want to impress on you here then that all this stuff is really just basic messaging with a bow on it. That’s all it ever can, or should be, and if you try to complicate it you’re only going to hammer your effectiveness.

Just fill in this chart, and you’ll be 80% of the way to the kind of comms the greatest brands in the world achieved… and miles ahead of most of the other ones out there.

Now if you like that, wait until you see this.

When it comes to messaging, every brand has not one, but two audiences:

Audience 1: customers
Audience 2: partners

Customers – the people using and paying for your stuff – we’ve already covered. Partners on the other hand are those helping you serve them – most obviously your staff, but also potentially suppliers, retailers, and other assorted co-conspirators.

Now the way you communicate to them is different. They are not your customers, and they don’t care about the same thing as your customers. So they need different messaging.

At a tactical level this is obviously going to vary for each parter, but on a more general level the key thing here is to inspire them to join you on your quest by making it sound truly exciting and important.

How?

Simply by using the exact same logic as you did with your customers, but expanding it to thousands of cases rather than just one. The customer sales logic is individual – it’s just about them – but the partner sales logic is mass – it’s about the combined impact on thousands and thousands of customers.

So for Apple this is the difference between one person getting their project done, and millions of people getting their project done. The social impact of that is going to be huge – the combination of those people all doing their own cool things is going to profoundly influence the world.

This is why, when trying to convince Pepsi CEO Mike Scully to join Apple, Jobs famously said “do you want to keep selling sugar water, or do you want to change the world?”.

It’s just a sales script.

So to construct your inspiring vision, simply use exactly the same model as in your sales script, but speak in terms of the wider social impact that fixing this problem for thousands of people is going to have.

Phew, this was a long one.

But hopefully this has given you some confidence. If you can fill out this grid (and I know you can), then you’ll have all the messaging logic you’re ever going to need, and everything else is just going to be “spins” on the same story.

You’ll be able to walk into any room, in front of any type of audience, and instantly get them on board.

Give it a try, and report back how you get on.