The Power of Messages

Currently I’ve been extraordinarily busy with end of year planning and messaging. Lots of companies are asking us to come in and run our messaging workshop in order to make sure they are hitting on the right messages to their audiences in 2008. I absolutely love this exercise, it illuminates the disconnect between what customers, partners, media, analysts and even internal owners see as your core value proposition.

  • Who are you?
  • What do you stand for today?
  • Tomorrow?
  • How do you explain your main benefits?

I talk a lot these days on the venues in which to communicate and the power of community. But if you don’t know how to describe yourself our what you provide it really doesn’t matter how strong your community is or what communication techniques you are using. We have a pretty cool methodology that brings people through an entire day and ends up with a messaging platform that then is integrated in all communications activity from the web site, news releases, media interviews, blogging and more. But the one exercise I’m really looking forward to this week with one client is a core value exercise. Here is how it goes:

  • The folks in the room see images spread across the wall…an eagle, a baby, the Eiffel tower, an American Flag;
  • Each person is given three post-it notes, three are for images they believe visually represent their core values and three that do not;
  • We collect the groups of images and discuss what this means to each of the people and why the chose the image;

Suddenly people are talking about who they are as a company and what they stand for; words come up that just start fitting into what they do, but more importantly how they FEEL about themselves. You are creating the right message based not only on what you do, but your passion for actually doing it. Now that is truly powerful messaging.

Now…how do we communicate the messages?

/kff

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This entry was posted on Monday, December 10th, 2007 at 7:54 pm and is filed under PR, Social Media, messaging. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

3 Responses to “The Power of Messages”

  1. Jess Says:
    December 11th, 2007 at 9:59 am

    Wow, that exercise sounds very interesting. Discovering who we are as a company/organization by examining our own values and beliefs. Therein lies the path to authenticity.

    Thanks for sharing. Something to think about…

  2. The Impact of Words: Using Tag Clouds | Engage in PR Says:
    March 11th, 2008 at 5:43 am

    […] have talked here before concerning one of my favorite aspects of my job over the years: messaging workshops . At the time I wrote: I absolutely love this exercise, it illuminates the disconnect between what […]

  3. Revisiting Messaging: All on the Same Page? | Engage in PR Says:
    May 7th, 2008 at 5:40 am

    […] We’ve talked several times here about the importance and fun in messaging exercises. We’ve also dabbled a bit on how you can use the messaging to be consistent in how you externally communicate. One area we have not discussed, in terms of messaging, is company alignment or the communicating of new messaging within your organization so that everyone, from engineering to sales, is on the same page. […]

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