Chapter 6: Developing Effective Messaging Pillars

Now it’s time to up-level. What are your overall messaging pillars?

Imagine building a house without a blueprint. You might have all the materials and envision what you want it to look like, but without clear plans, the construction process can become chaotic and inefficient. The architectural style, much like your brand's personality, dictates the character and feel of the house. The amenities of the house, such as spacious rooms or energy-efficient windows, are like the brand's attributes and benefits, offering tangible value. The messaging pillars, combining the personality with the benefits, serve as the structural supports, ensuring the house stands strong and coherent, just as they ensure consistency, clarity, and impact across all touchpoints for your brand.

Marrying Your Brand Benefits with Your Brand’s Personality

In the last chapter, you learned how the features of your product or service translate into benefits for the buyer. Now, you’ll take these benefits and articulate them in a way that speaks uniquely to your brand’s personality. In other words, let’s give those benefits some personality! This integration ensures that each of your messaging pillars not only communicates a benefit but does so with a voice and style that reflect who you are as a brand.

Let’s revisit Trello. In the last chapter, we concluded that they have the following benefits:

1. Visualize exactly where you are on a project.
2. It’s easy to use and easy to share
3. And it works great with other tools you already use.

These benefits are solid, and they’ll give your team a clear foundation of what to communicate. But if we marry Trello’s personality with these benefits, they’ll also help the communicators on your team with how to communicate those benefits.

Let’s suppose that Trello has the personality of a friendly collaborator, who takes pride in making teamwork effortless, so you and your team can achieve more together. If that’s so, we might re-write the messaging pillars like this:

1. See your path, together.
2. Teamwork made easy
3. Seamless Integration, Better Collaboration

The benefits combined with the personality make it almost impossible for you not to have a very clear picture of the core benefits and Trello’s unique way of communicating.

Let’s take another example in greater detail. I serve on the board of #LatinaGeeks, a California-based nonprofit aimed at increasing awareness and access to STEM jobs for Latinas. On their website, they emphasize the following benefits:

1. technical knowledge
2. business skills, and
3. entrepreneurship resources

Well, a bunch of non-profits might be able to claim these benefits, but . . . #LatinaGeeks has its own spin on these benefits, and two of the hints are right there in the name! #LatinaGeeks focuses on the Latina community and a celebration of geek culture.

If we were to capture its specific personality components, we might do so like this:

• Archetype: Magician - Makes dreams come true, solves problems
• POV: Conscious, and distinctly Latina
• Voice: relationship-oriented, warm, and optimistic

When it comes to writing the messaging pillars, we need to combine the benefits that #LatinaGeeks delivers with their unique delivery. Their pillars might be something like this:

• Get Tech Savvy, Latina Style: Empowers with technical skills in a culturally resonant way.
• Code. Climb. Conquer.: Encourages advancement and mastery in technical fields, suggesting a journey of growth and achievement.
• Geek Out & Build Your Empire: Inspires embracing geek culture as a foundation for entrepreneurship and community building.

What works about these pillars, is that they give a communicator a much better idea of what to say, and how to say it. And perhaps most importantly, it separates them from other non-profits who might have a similar mission but a different target audience or style.

Here’s the takeaway: you can go a long way in helping everyone in your company be an evangelist if you help them articulate your brand’s benefits in a unique way. You have to go beyond basic benefits like: convenience, speed, collaboration, efficiency, affordability and so on. These are valuable, but not distinctive. They won’t help your content team, your sales team, or your product team have a clear vision of what to say or build.

Your Messaging Pillars Homework

Psst, this one’s easy because an AI like ChatGPT can be really helpful in combining your personality with your benefits.

1. Grab your archetype, POV, and voice from Chapter 4.
2. Grab your key benefits from Chapter 5.
3. Try this prompt to develop your messaging pillars: Help me craft succinct yet meaningful messaging pillars that marry my brand’s personality with my brand’s benefits. My brand’s personality is composed of the _______ archetype, a _____________ point of view, and our brand voice is _____________. Our benefits are ______________, ________________, and _________________. Craft a messaging pillar for each benefit. Make each pillar a punchy slogan-style statement.

Go ahead and give it a try! (Note, this assumes you’ve previously given your AI some background information on your company, your product or services, and your target audience at the very least).

In Summary

• Structure and Style: Just like a house needs a blueprint, your brand needs clear messaging pillars that align with your architectural style (personality), highlight your amenities (attributes and benefits), and provide strong structural support.
• Personality Matters: Infusing your brand’s personality into your messaging pillars ensures that each benefit is communicated uniquely and distinctively, aligning with your brand’s character and resonating with your audience.
• Team guidance: Well-defined messaging pillars give clear guidance on both what to say and how to say it, helping your team maintain consistency across all touchpoints.
• Go Beyond Generic Benefits: It's crucial to move beyond generic benefits like convenience or speed. Instead, focus on specific and emotionally engaging benefits that reflect your brand’s unique strengths and voice.

Just as a well-designed house stands strong, well-crafted messaging pillars ensure your brand's communication is impactful and resonant. With these pillars in place, guess what! You're now prepared to put it all together in your framework. That’s up next in Chapter 7.

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