Straight to the Point

Volume 2, Issue 1

This Issue's Contents:

Feature: Time for a Spring Tune-Up?
Change is constant in business meaning that your messages can begin to diverge. Take control of your messages to improve their consistency and retain their resiliency in the face of change.

Apply It!: Preparing for a Messaging Review
Follow these six steps to get your messaging review off the ground.

Service in Brief: Brand-Aid by Kaszas Communications
The best brands in the world receive ongoing maintenance. Kaszas Communications offers Brand Aid to help keep your brand fresh and relevant.

Don't Take Our Word For It
Kaszas Communications helped PointShot Wireless get its initial messaging off the ground as well as refine it based on what the company learned from its markets.

Time for a Spring Tune-Up?

Rarely does a company talk about its "message" (noun) or its "position" (noun). More commonly, we talk about "messaging" and positioning" (verbs). We know intuitively that these are ongoing business activities, and our addition of the "ing" suggests that we also know there is an element of fluidity to developing our messages and positioning statements.

Intuitively we know messaging is dynamic, but in practical terms we are often not proactive in managing that change. The result is that the image companies present can diverge over time as change occurs within the business, target markets and the introduction or discontinuance of new business units, products and services.

That's where a messaging tune-up comes in to play. Some of the best companies are always "in the shop", stress-testing their brands and making adjustments as required. Yours may not be a large company with substantial marketing resources, but a messaging tune-up is not out of reach. Messaging can be incorporated into the quarterly or annual business reviews that you likely already undertake. A marketing communications partner with messaging expertise, like Kaszas Communications, can help guide and propel the messaging tune-up process.

Stress Tests

Your messaging needs to be consistent, yet flexible enough to withstand dynamic internal and external pressures. External pressures that may impact your messaging include:

Changes in the competitive environment. New competitors may come online, others may challenge your position, and mergers and acquisitions within your industry can change the competitive landscape. Your core positioning should not necessarily change, but the way it is communicated will need to be refined to appropriately position you as a leader or alternative in the market.
Changes in policy or law. An example is a mortgage lender operating in a low-interest environment. Its pitch may be: "buy a mortgage today and take advantage of low interest rates." If interest rates rise, however, the pitch will need to be refined: "buy a mortgage and own a home for less than the cost of renting." Note that the core positioning statement (that the company is a mortgage lender) has not changed.

Internal pressures that will impact your messaging may include:

New corporate direction. Will you invest in re-branding or merely shift your position and how it is communicated?
New business units. How will you manage your messaging and positioning across the new business units to ensure they contribute to the overall brand rather than diluting it?
New product and service offerings. How will these be positioned within the existing brand and product matrix? How do new offerings impact mature offerings? Will overlap between lines need to be addressed? How can your messaging help buyers make the best choice in product for their needs?
Discontinued offerings. How will your communications help manage the impact of discontinued products or services? What will be your message to buyers? And how will discontinuations affect other products and services in the line?

Online Test Lab?

A word must be said about the role of the web in messaging and positioning. Often, companies think that a new message or market presentation is just a web page away. But it is too easy to use the web to experiment with messages. The web is too often perceived as a low-cost method of getting a message out - but consider the cost of getting the wrong message, or inconsistent messages, out to the web's massive audience.

In fact, revising your web site should be approached no differently than you would approach the complete overhaul of your print collateral. The web is NOT a messaging test lab. Rather, it is one of the most critical marketing communication vehicles in the marketing mix today.

That said, the web can be a useful place to start when you are assessing and re-conceptualizing your messaging. Here's why:

Your web site gathers everything together in one place - all your products, services, markets and corporate messages. Take a look at what is there and where there are gaps. Draw a content map of the existing web site to help conceptualize what needs to be updated.
It combines visual and text messages together - and perhaps audio or multi-media - in one of the most comprehensive sensory experiences that audiences will have with your messaging. Is there consistency between all components?
It is three-dimensional, allowing you to 'click through' your messaging from any number of angles and taking any number of paths. This can help you to assess the consistency and effectiveness of messaging from an external perspective.
Web site traffic statistics and search engine results can give you insight into the key terms your audiences use to find you, and the paths they take within your site. These provide clues that can be blended into your messaging tune-up.

Preventative Maintenance

To mix metaphors a bit, "a stitch in time saves nine." Regular tuning of all your messaging (make it part of your annual review process) will minimize both the damage that out-of-date messaging can do as well as the cost of a substantial overhaul if messaging has been left to diverge for too long.

In this issue of Straight to the Point, we provide you with some concrete actions you can take to prepare a messaging tune-up (read "Apply It!"), we tell you about our messaging/positioning services (read "Service in Brief"), and we share with you the messaging tune-up experience of one of our current clients (read: "Don't Take Our Word For It!").

If you are undertaking - or want to undertake - a review and tune-up of your messaging, contact Kaszas Communications today for details on our messaging and positioning services.

Apply It!: Preparing for a Messaging Review

A messaging review is only effective if all key stakeholders - such as the entire management team - buy into the need for it and understand its value. Key to getting everyone on board with the effort is to involve everyone right from the start.

That doesn't mean the project will be an unmanageable free-for-all of wide-ranging opinions and input. Follow these six steps to get the tune-up process off the ground with minimum stress and politics.

Even if everyone is in agreement that you're due for a messaging tune-up, the following actions will ensure that you get the best results, and will prepare you to present your needs to your marketing communications partner.

Build your case. You need demonstrable proof that there are gaps and inconsistencies in your current messaging. Download this Messaging Tune-Up Delta Tracker worksheet to map out what you need, what you have and its state of repair. This will also help you wrap your head - and marketing dollars - around what exactly needs to be done. Are you looking at minor tweaking, major re-writing or do you need to build some messaging from the ground up?

Solicit vested third-party input. When customers talk, management tends to listen. Informally speak with customers, partners and other stakeholders to solicit their feedback about your current messaging. What do they see when they look at your web site? How do they think about your company or offering, and is it in line with what you hope they are thinking?

Plant a seed. During your informal conversations with vested third parties, let them know that you are undertaking a regular review of your marketing communications. Ask if they would be willing to be interviewed by your marketing communications partner as part of that process. Let them know that their input is valued.

Draw a map. Before you engage a marketing communications partner to work with you on your messaging tune-up, sketch out a map or plan to illustrate where you hope to go with your messaging. Depending on your own creative processes, this might take the form of a table, a web site content architecture, lightly structured thoughts written down, a mind map or even a sketch. Prepare a rough map as a starting point to discuss with your stakeholders and to engage your marketing communications partner.

Leave no stone unturned. Apply this process across all business units, product lines and programs - because what you change in one area will likely affect others. A third-party marketing communications partner can help you look at the big picture and test changes for fit in all areas of the business. Making everything work together will ultimately present the best image and will save you time, effort and money in the long term.

Engage. A third-party marketing communications partner with expertise in messaging, positioning and writing (like Kaszas Communications) will bring a fresh eye to your messaging and a fresh ear to the feedback you are getting about it. Most importantly, the partner will bring a structured process to the analysis and update of your key messages. Ask for an explanation of their process, and then engage their help.

Service in Brief: Brand-Aid by Kaszas Communications

Communicating your brand is crucial in managing the identity and perception of your company and its products or services. Businesses often find they are struggling with some of these brand-inhibiting challenges:

Fluctuating or even competing messages produced by various forces within the business
Consumed by tactical implementation, with no time to review the big picture
Uncertain if they can be objective about their own brand activities
Strong personalities pulling the brand and communication in different directions
Changing competitive and/or product landscape demands an adjustment in positioning
Would like to take a fresh approach

To create and maintain and relevant and current brand and communication strategy, Kaszas Communications works with your business, marketing and product management staff to ensure that your messaging and positioning supports and leverages your company's strategy and direction. Our Brand-Aid service helps you take a step back and take a fresh look at your brand, communication strategies and their effectiveness.

Our Process

We begin by involving your management team in a key messaging session that is tailored to achieve consensus on your differentiation, goals, markets and product definition. Then, we get to work on:

Brand and communication audit - to establish relevant benchmarks for your current brand, positioning, key messages and communication approaches, Kaszas Communications conducts an analysis of what your competition is doing: what is their brand? What key messages are they using, and to what effect? Where are they strong and what are their weaknesses in terms of presentation and perception? What are the opportunities for your brand to be disruptive?

Our communication audits also assess the effectiveness of your current communication activities by conducting interviews with your customers, partners and stakeholders. This research provides the basis for a refined positioning and key message strategy that is relevant to your current needs and the market's present situation.

Positioning and key message strategy - to create a high-impact brand and communication tactics through the consistent repetition of effective messages, Kaszas Communications conducts a positioning and key message strategy. You get a storyboard that maps how your business will tell its story and provides the framework for communicating the value you offer. It is an effective tool for rallying an organization around a common goal and brand, and helps to keep all creative work on track.

Training and implementation - to ensure that your communication staff and agencies are trained in the positioning and communication of your brand, Kaszas Communications trains them in how to implement the positioning and key message strategy. We can also supplement your own staff with writing, editing, graphic design and web development services for the fulfillment of your communication plan.

Exceptional writing - based on the foundations built in steps one, two and three, Kaszas Communications offers exceptional writing services to ensure appropriate tactical implementation of your key messages, positioning and brand.

Don't Take Our Word For It

PointShot Wireless Tunes Up Messaging with Proof Points

A year ago, Kaszas Communications worked with a mobile wireless networking (Wi-Fi) start-up to develop its inaugural key messages and marketing collateral. PointShot Wireless provides train and transit operators with mobile wireless solutions to attract and retain ridership, generate new revenue streams, and increase operational efficiencies to reduce costs.

Ignition

Like many start-ups, PointShot Wireless was, during this early stage, testing its markets. Professional, well-conceived collateral and clear, concise messaging was important to approaching potential customers and investors within those markets. That's where Kaszas Communications entered the picture.

Test Drive

Over time and through conversations with various partners, prospects and investors, the company was able to understand its best markets and refine its product offering to suit two markets in particular: the original primary target market and one new, secondary market.

A key component of the company's primary market development effort was its successful beta trials with a number of key customers - two of whom were already willing to provide public testimonials. When the company approached Kaszas Communications again - eight months after its initial launch - it was armed with a wealth of information that it needed incorporated into updated messaging and collateral that included:

A revised product offering with a keener focus on one, primary market
Reference customer testimonials to be incorporated into marketing collateral
End-user data and feedback that could be used to demonstrate market demand from users for mobile wireless Internet access

Tune-Up

To tune the PointShot Wireless messaging to refocus on the primary market and to incorporate the now-available "proof points" from customers and end-users, Kaszas Communications worked with PointShot's marketing team to develop and hone the new messaging and content, including:

Understanding the primary audience's profile, needs and challenges regarding mobile Wi-Fi
Reviewing existing messages, collateral and the web site content map against the new product and market focus to identify gaps that needed attention
Proposing a new key messaging hierarchy and web site content architecture that would best convey the refined market position and value propositions
Editing existing content and crafting new content that would incorporate the new information and proof points now available
Writing two customer case-studies for use on the web and during the sales process
Proposing a "scrolling ticker" method of incorporating end-user feedback into the PointShot web site (www.pointshotwireless.com)

Back on the Road

The result of this tune-up effort was a tighter, leaner message stream that blends necessary proof-points to engage audiences to dig deeper. The tuned content ensures that the right messages are getting to the intended audiences, and validation/testimonial elements increase the chances of winning mindshare - the first and most critical step towards winning business.

Wendy Kennedy, virtual VP of Marketing at PointShot Wireless says, "Kaszas Communications was valuable in helping us craft our information into useful content that reflected our refined product and market positioning. Kaszas intuitively understands the value of a key message and how to craft marketing content that conveys those messages effectively to target audiences. We continue to use Kaszas Communications because that is where we get the greatest value for our marketing dollar."

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