Crafting for clarity – 5 steps to successful messaging

Campaign Collective member, Nicola Putnam, has over 20 years’ experience managing communications in the public and private sectors. As one of our experts in message creation, Nicola helps organisations develop the right messaging to take their campaign from good to great. 

How does she do this? Nicola shared with us her top five tips for crafting clear, impactful messaging:

“Your objectives are set, your audiences mapped, channels identified, and you know what you are going to say. You’re ready to roll with your new brand or campaign, but will it really have the impact you anticipate?

“As communicators we like to think we know the importance of a strong message. What is the burning thing we need to say? How can we best articulate it? And can we back it all up with sound evidence? 

“All important considerations. Yet without the important element of consistency in your messaging, clarity and impact can so easily be lost. Creating a set of honed, finely-tuned messages to run through every facet of your brand or campaign at the outset, can absolutely achieve that and also ensure that you harness communications energy effectively. 

“So re-wind to the building blocks of your campaign and follow our five steps to ensure you are crafting for clarity in your messaging.

1. Identify the experts: Can you mine the knowledge of those who are at the coal face of the issues your campaign faces or the context in which your brand will operate? Their insight can be an invaluable foundation to your messages.

2. Gather ideas and phrases: Create a bank of raw ideas and language that capture the essence of the campaign issue or brand, making sure you include as much passion and emotion as possible. Look for patterns and common themes – taking time at this stage will certainly reap you good rewards.

3. Try and try again: Next, play with your raw ideas, trying out different associations and combinations of language to create a bank of succinct, pithy phrases, soundbites and sentences.

4. Find your top campaign message: From your bank of content, work to distil one or two sentences that capture the essence of everything you have created and collected. This will become your overarching campaign or brand message.

5. Develop messages to support: Finally, create a complementary set of sub messages, potentially utilising the power of three, that echo and build upon the overarching message. As needed, you can continue onwards to create further sets of messages that echo your main message but drill down to communicate discrete audience-specific information.”

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If you would like advice or support developing your organisation or campaign’s key messages, email us at contact@campaigncollective.org