We often talk about the importance of creating eye-catching messages.
Crafting and honing key messages are essential comms skills.
Every organisation needs messages that persuade, influence, convince and compel.
Whether you have a new product you are about to launch, have made a crucial health breakthrough, or are making news for negative reasons, you only have one chance to create the right message.
But where do you start?
How do you create a memorable message?
And how do you make it resonate?
There were some of the questions we explored during our latest masterclass for members of the Media Team Academy – our learning and development programme for comms and PR professionals.
Elisa Colton, one of our brilliant journalist trainers, was joined in our studios by Adam Fisher, a member of our content and training teams and an experienced comms professional and journalist.
They began by exploring what a message is.
“This sounds incredibly basic,” Elisa said, “but I think it is worth working on.
“I delivered a media training course a couple of weeks ago and was talking about the importance of crafting a message and getting it across, and a delegate put their hand up and said, “What is a message exactly?”.
“So, I think it is worth defining what a message is.”
Adam said: “I think it is a good question because when we talk about messaging, it can feel vague.
“For me, it is about considering what you want the audience to do when they hear or see your interview and how you want them to feel.”
Elisa also believes it is crucial to consider that messages can change.
“If you are a FTSE 100 company, for example, and you are talking to university graduates who you want to join your organisation, you need a clear message about who you are as a company and the kind of person you want to join you.
“So, you might use language that appeals to their sense of purpose or career focus.
“If you are going into a shareholders meeting or are doing an interview with the Financial Times about governance, you need to think about it differently and have a different call to action.”
Audience
And this leads us seamlessly to the importance of understanding your audience.
“The audience are the most important people – not the journalist you are talking to,” Elisa said.
“You need to know your audience and what will work for them.
“Journalists are good at tapping into what their audience wants – we will not get the clicks if we put something on air or in the newspaper that people are not interested in. We can measure it now and assess whether our audience is engaged.
“As comms professionals, you must prepare your spokespeople to talk to that audience.
“Sometimes, it is helpful to think of the audience as one person. When I worked on the BBC local stations, we had Dave and Sue characters and created these personas on who we knew was tuning in and listening.
“And it goes beyond simple demographics like age and where they live.”
To explore this further, the panel compared King Charles III and Ozzy Osbourne. They are both wealthy men, born in the same year, who have been married twice and live in castles.
“But they have very different approaches to things,” Elisa said.
“So, you have to think a little more about the problems and challenges people face and their interests.”
Adam added: “It is crucial to spend some time on this and put yourself in the shoes of your audience.
“Once you have done that, you can adapt your message and stories and make everything more relatable for the people you want to reach.
“You need to break it down and be specific about who you want to talk to.”
Are you talking to your audience or the audience of the media outlet carrying out the interview?
This question is often asked during our media training courses and message development and testing sessions.
“They have to overlap, otherwise why are you doing the interview?”, Elisa said.
“You must be clear on your objectives. If you want to reach the parents of university students rather than the students themselves, for example, you need to talk to different media outlets and platforms.”
Adam added: "You have to target the media your audience uses. Otherwise, you will not reach them.”
Messaging
Let’s get into message development.
How many messages do you need? The temptation is to try and get across several messages in an interview.
But having one key message is essential.
“It’s interesting because people are often told three is the magic number for messages in a media interview or presentation,” Adam said.
“In our experience, that is too many. People have a lot going on, and they will not remember everything you say. If you try to shoehorn several messages into the interview, the chances are they will remember none of what you want to get across.
“We often give the feedback from our media training interviews that a spokesperson tried to get across so many messages we did not know where they wanted the focus to be.
“My advice is to go into an interview with the headline you want to create in your mind and work towards that.”
Elisa added:” If I’m listening to the radio on the way to work in the morning and hear two or three stories, a couple of hours, later I’ll only remember one thing – at best – from what was discussed.
“So, one clear message – around 20 words long – is crucial.”
Delivery
How that message is delivered has a huge impact.
“If it is delivered with passion and enthusiasm, it is more likely people will remember what you have to say,” Adam said.
To highlight this, the panel looked at an interview former Prime Minister Rishi Sunak gave about the then government’s reluctance to hand over WhatsApp messages to the Covid inquiry.
In the interview with Sky News, he continually repeated a reactive line, making him sound robotic.
“It’s a bit of a shambles,” Adam said.
“And it shows why it is crucial to have adaptability and flexibility in your message rather than sticking rigidly to something that has been prepared.
“The language is also weird. People don’t say “in the spirit of candour” in everyday conversation.
“For me, the lesson from this example is that people don’t remember the message. They recall that Mr Sunak was evasive, unnatural and used strange language.”
Elisa added: “It’s important when developing a message that it is something your spokesperson will sound natural delivering.”
What techniques can you use to develop and enhance your message?
Let’s start with a framework called messaging house.
“This is a simple model, but it is an effective way of helping people visualise what goes into a message,” Adam said.
“It looks like how a child draws a house. You have the key message in the roof. It is supported by examples and stories and it is then underpinned with statistics and other forms of evidence.”
To bring this to life, he showed how a messaging house could be used to develop a message about our new AI training companion, called Thirty Seven.
He said: “My key message might be something like, “We have launched a new AI-powered training companion that allows spokespeople to prepare for media interviews and presentations whenever they need it”.
“I might support that by talking about how I used Thirty Seven to prepare for a media interview and how it made me feel more confident.
“And the further evidence could come from sharing some of the feedback Thirty Seven gave me about my practice interviews.”
But you need to tread a little carefully with this model.
Adam said: “One of my concerns with messaging house is it feels rigid – houses are not built to be flexible.
“And in my experience, it can become quite corporate. Once you start talking about a messaging house, lots of senior leaders get involved, and you get that dreaded, ‘the CEO is taking it home to review over the weekend’, which tends to result in lots of red pen changes stripping it of meaning.”
What else do we need to think about with messaging?
Topicality
What role does topicality play in message development? Is it worth hanging your message on a current news hook?
“This is definitely an approach to consider,” Adam said.
“We are all interested in what goes on in the world and what people are talking about. You might be able to discuss the cost-of-living crisis and sustainability, to give a couple of examples. Cyber security is another hot topic because of what happened at M&S and the Co-op. So, you may have a message that works with these topics.
“The key consideration is whether your message moves the conversation forward, adds to what people already know or offers a different perspective. Or are you repeating what is already being said? If you are doing that, you will not get any cut-through with your message.
“It has to be original or say something different or unexpected.”
Offering a solution to a problem is also crucial.
Elisa said: “Just because something is in the news, doesn’t mean you need to add to the raising awareness around that. You need to offer something more.
“If I’m in the newsroom on the fourth day of story and someone contacts me and says, ‘If you do this…, it could solve this issue’, that might work well.”
Adam agreed, adding: “This a great way of getting cut-through for your message.
“Raising awareness on its own is not a strong message. It takes me back to my journalism days when we had a shouty sub-editor who always used to yell that raising awareness was not a story.
“That’s always stuck with me, and I believe it is true when we think about messaging. You must go beyond that and say what you want people to do.”
Metaphors
Metaphors can help make messages compel and stick.
“I’m a big fan of metaphors in messaging,” Adam said.
“We saw this a lot during the pandemic, with Jonathan Van Tam’s press briefings.
“He took complex ideas and compared them to everyday items to help audience understanding.
“He was comparing the development of vaccines to camping on the side of a mountain, penalty shootouts and yoghurts.
“This was a great way of making the subject relatable and memorable.
“The only caution I would add is to ensure spokespeople test metaphors before they use them in an interview. Mr Van Tam said he tested his messages on his family before he used them.”
Numbers
Numbers and statistics can help prove your message - if used creatively.
“Numbers can be hard to visualise,” Adam said.
“We were working on a course the other week, and a delegate described something as being 60 metres by 30 metres.
“When you are watching or hearing an interview, it’s hard to process that size.
“A great way of bringing that to life and making it more relatable is through comparison.
“We see the media do this a lot. Things are compared to Olympic swimming pools, football pitches, double-decker busses and Wales.”
Elisa added: “I am not a numbers person and don’t take them on board. So, simplifying them is key.
“Another thing you can do is rather than saying ‘a fifth of the population’, say ‘one in five of us’ because we’ve all been in a room with five people. It becomes less abstract. The audience starts to think about people they know.”
Jargon
This must be avoided in messaging.
“As soon as your message becomes infiltrated with jargon, it will not resonate with the public,” Adam said.
“Things like 'synergies' and 'future-focused' are a big turn-off.
“Another one to be wary of is ‘elevate’, which has become closely associated with AI-writing tools. People may think AI has created your message if you use that word in a message.
“Instead of these words and phrases, stick to the language a teenager would use. The average reading age in the UK is between nine and 11, which gives you an idea of where you need to pitch your message if you want people to understand it.
“The other consideration is that we are a multi-cultural country, and some of your audience will not have English as a first language. The simpler you make your message, the more people you will reach.”
Storytime
No matter how good your message, you need stories to make it resonate with the audience
“It’s irritating as a journalist to hear someone just spouting a message,” Elisa said.
“We want stories and anecdotes that support it.”
Adam added: “I feel I often give feedback that someone had a strong message in an interview but did not back it up with a story.
“And stories are vital. People need to be able to see themselves in what you say, and we can do that through stories.
“The other great thing about stories is it is hard for a journalist to challenge a story.”
“That’s particularly true with personal stories,” Elisa said. “People talking about their experience is powerful.
“If you’re doing something because you don’t want anyone else to go through what you have experienced, for example, that adds real weight to the message.”
How do you gather stories you can use in messaging?
It is something comms teams often tell us they grapple with – they know stories are happening in their organisation, but they do not get to hear about them.
“This can be a challenge,” Adam said. “But there are things you can do to make it easier.
“If you have a long-term strategic campaign, you can map out the stories you need to find at the start – ‘this is the message we want to get across, and these are the stories we need to find to support it’.
“You can also look to build a storytelling culture in your organisation. By that, I mean that internal meetings and presentations begin with a story so others in the organisation can see the importance of storytelling, and it trickles down into all communication.
“You can also encourage your spokespeople to keep a record of personal achievements and interactions with customers so they build a story bank they can call upon.
“And the other thing is to roll out a basic level of media awareness training throughout the organisation. Good stories are going to happen on the shop floor. So, people at all levels need to know what makes a story and what journalists want.”
Elisa added: “If something good happens in your organisation, share it on social media – people want to hear stories about other people.”
Loosen the messaging noose
This heading sounds sinister.
But it is our way of emphasising the importance of empowering spokespeople to put messages in their words.
Adam said: “Give spokespeople the freedom to adapt what you want to say rather than repeating a message verbatim.
“It helps to make the message sound more natural and adds to the authenticity of what is being said.”
The power of repetition
Don’t be afraid to repeat your message.
“People feel it is not natural to keep repeating a message, but repetition is your friend,” Elisa said.
Adam added: “Often, during our courses, a delegate will have a good message but only use it once in an interview.
“You need to get it across more often. Not by repeating it word-for-word – that’s not going to work, as we saw with the Rishi Sunak interview.
“Change and adapt the language of your message as you repeat so it does not feel robotic.
“You also need to consider that if your interview is pre-recorded, getting your message into each response will ensure it features in the clip the journalist uses.”
There is also something to consider here called the illusion of truth. This essentially means that the more someone hears a message, the more their brain considers it to be a fact.”
Negatives
Negatives can derail your message.
A vital part of message development is considering how others might perceive the message, potential pushbacks and what else is ‘moving’ at the time,
Elisa said: “You must ask yourself, ‘Will this sound tone deaf at this time?’ and think about how it will be received by those beyond your target audience.”
A good example of not considering the negatives came when the government announced plans to modernise the NHS in 2022, and the message contained a Netflix/Blockbuster comparison.
Sajid Javid, the then health secretary, spoke about a “Blockbuster healthcare system in the age of Netflix.”
Adam said: “On the face of it, that is quite catchy comms.
“But journalists exposed the negatives in it. There were questions about trying to make the NHS a monthly subscription service and whether the NHS would go bust like Blockbuster.”
Elisa added: “I also think this message does not work for all demographics. The older generation may not be that aware of Netflix, and younger people may not be familiar with Blockbuster.
“You have to consider whether your message creates avenues for challenging questions.”
Negatives feature prominently on our message development guide, which you can download here.
“It is a useful way to think about messaging with your audience,” Elisa said.
Crisis messaging
Does messaging differ during a crisis media management incident differ?
“I think it does,” Adam said.
“There’s a famous quote often attributed to former US president Theodore Roosevelt that neatly summarises how I feel about this.
“He said that ‘People don’t care how much you know until they know how much you care’.”
“What that means is that you have to get empathy and compassion across at the start of a crisis response.
“That must be your starting point.
“And from there, you can outline the action you are taking to make things right and reassure your audience.”
Elisa added: “Another key thing is to not sound defensive.”
To highlight what a good crisis message looks like, the panel offered the example of OVO Energy.
Britain’s third-biggest energy provider found itself in hot water after issuing ‘keep warm’ advice to customers at the peak of the cost-of-living crisis that included doing star jumps, cuddling pets, challenging children to a hula-hoop contest and eating ginger.
The company was accused of being “insensitive” and “clown-like”, and there was a significant backlash in the media.
And CEO Stephen Fitzpatrick was put forward to face the media.
“My overriding feeling when watching that clip is that he cares,” Adam said.
“He owns the mistake, he seems genuinely apologetic, feels sincere, and you sense changes will be made to try to prevent something similar happening in the future.”
Our messaging top tips
Let’s wrap this up with some top tips for creating a powerful message
- Focus on one key message
- Be clear on what you want the audience to do
- Keep it simple
- Loosen the message noose
- Examples and stories
- Stick with it
- Negatives
- Test your message
Fancy one more?
Curiosity is our bonus messaging tip.
Adam said: “If you get someone hearing your message to think ‘that sounds interesting’, you have opened their mind to learning more and finding out more about it.
“You can spark that curiosity by having messages that are unexpected, original, unusual or surprising.”
Don’t forget you can catch up with this masterclass, and all the previous ones, in the video library section of The Media Team Academy hub.
