When I speak with marketing professionals, one of the chief benefits that they point to in implementing a messaging process is that it helps them align their organizations around one message architecture. And when one message architecture is in place, it’s much easier to get the organization moving in the same direction.
But how do you get all these executives, influencers, company employees and partners aligned? Just what are the mechanics of the messaging process?
The messaging process has four steps:
- Gather the Team
- Establish a Schedule
- Execution Phases:
- Discovery
- Team Strategy Workshop
- Messaging Validation
- Evangelism
1. Gather the Team
When gathering a team together, it’s best to select and involve the team members based upon role, and to define roles in relationship to the messaging process, rather than relationship to the company. For most projects, team roles boil down to (in order of depth of contribution): Team Leaders, Core Team, Extended Team and Influencers. This implies a hierarchy of importance by role and helps prioritize the weight given to input and involvement for each team member.
For example, you may have a particular customer who has been extremely active in defining a new product or category – plus they just “get” your business. You really want their active participation in the project and will weigh their input heavily when crafting the final messaging. In that case, you may assign them to the Extended or even the Core team.
On the other hand, you may have a powerful executive within your company. You need to include them in the process, but their input just won’t be that hands-on. Therefore, you may opt to assign them to the Extended team or even as an Influencer.
2. Establish a Schedule
The complexity of your project schedule varies according to complexity of the messaging project, such as how many people are involved, how many brands need to be positioned, and how complex a messaging hierarchy is required.
It makes sense to break the schedule out to align with the Execution Phases of the process: Discovery, Strategy Workshop, and Messaging Validation.
3. Execution Phases
There are three execution phases to the messaging process: Discovery, Team Strategy Workshop and Messaging Validation. The execution phases involve a lot of tasks, people and documents, so it’s helpful to use some sort of project management tool to help you manage the project.
I’ve developed what I call a Project Navigator, which I would post to my blog as a file, except, my blog subscription doesn’t let me post files. So, instead, let me just tell you what’s in it, and you can create your own.
Tool: Project Navigator
Using Microsoft® Excel™, create a series of tabs at the bottom of the document — basically, you’re creating worksheets. On these, I put:
- Project Schedule: A high-level schedule for the project itself.
- Roles & Contacts: Tracks the role of each team member and their contact information.
- Status by Team Member: Tracks what each team member is contributing and status.
- Bibliography: Provides a repository (bibliography) of all inputs, such as presentations, videos, books, web site articles, etc., and their sources.
It’s a great little tool but you’d be surprised the big impact it can have. Just tracking the bibliography of inputs can be daunting, especially on enterprise projects. Plus, in the end, this tool demonstrates what went into the project for anyone who needs to know.
In my next post, I’ll break down the steps to the Discovery phase in the execution of a messaging process.
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