To create the next branch of your messaging tree, you’ll “dissect” or translate the topline positioning into several primary message categories or support points. Essentially, this is where you lay out how you will accomplish what you’ve stated in your positioning statement.

For the Skoll Foundation, we note that the three support points are:
1. Investing In [social entrepreneurs]
2. Connecting [ “ “]
3. Celebrating [ “ “]

In the example of Social Venture Partners, the organization’s messaging tells us that if focuses its efforts in the following key areas:
1. Connecting Business with Community
2. [Providing] Innovative Solutions to Social & Environmental Issues
3. Catalyzing a New Generation of Social Investors

For the Forum for Women Entrepreneurs, the support points are based around (providing and enabling):
1. Access to resources
2. Education
3. Accelerated leadership

For Microsoft’s developer programs:
1. Listening and responding to customer needs
2. Relentless pursuit of best of class products
3. Fueling an industry of innovation

Adding another example and looking at McDonald’s current positioning, we find that their main messaging is focused around the following categories:
1. Great food
2. Fun to eat
3. Casual environment
4. Local & familiar
5. Always something new

###

Diana L. Reid, Conscious Communications

At the top of your message hierarchy is a positioning statement that outlines who you are, who your target audience is and what your global purpose is. The goal of this positioning statement is to cement a clear and differentiated position for your organization in your customer and/or stakeholders’ minds about your organization – one that no other organization can claim.

Your positioning statement should be very brief (no more than 2 sentences, ideally 1), compelling and include the most or all of the following information:
• the type of organization you are/what you stand for,
• what you ultimately hope to achieve or impact,
• and how your work benefits others.

This positioning statement should be believable, valuable, unique, and clearly differentiate you from other organizations. And yes, you have to be really rigorous and concise to fit this into two sentences!

Let’s take a look at some examples of topline positioning (some current, some developed a few years back):

• “The Skoll Foundation’s mission is to advance systemic change to benefit communities around the world by investing in, connecting and celebrating social entrepreneurs.”

• “Social Venture Partners seeks to develop philanthropy and volunteerism to achieve positive social change in the Puget Sound region. Using the venture capital approach as a model, SVP is committed to giving time, money and expertise to create partnerships with not-for-profit organizations.”

• “The Forum for Women Entrepreneurs is a catalyst for success for women building high-growth high technology and life sciences companies.”

• “Microsoft platforms, tools technologies and support services help developers quickly take advantage of a rapidly changing world.”

###

Diana L. Reid, Conscious Communications

Now that you’ve thought about your mission and brand, it’s time to take all that work and distill it down into bite-sized, compelling, easy to understand messages that clearly and concisely tell people what you do, what you have to offer, and ideally, why they should care and/or act. This is where development of your message strategy comes into play.

Great, more work. So why do it? Simply put, it comes down to simplicity, consistency and long-term time savings. A message strategy helps ensure you are consistent across all of your communications (consider the “multiple personality” warning I discussed in my posts on branding) and ensures that you are constantly bringing home the most important and salient points of your mission, product and/or service.

It also enables you and your staff to easily create new communications materials without needing to recreate the wheel each time.

By constantly adhering to a common messaging framework and consistent data and message points, your story doesn’t change, communications are straightforward, stakeholders are clear on what you do and how you do it, and you have that much more chance of attracting the resources you need for long-term success.

The end product of this entire exercise is to create a message strategy, also often called a “messaging tree”, a document that provides a message hierarchy for your organization and/or products and services.

While there is no one single model, your message strategy should generally include the following:
• A positioning statement
• Main supporting points
• Key messages and supporting data
• “Sound bites” (little pithy nuggets you’ll use for speaking to the media, for brief “elevator” conversations and the like)

Each one should build off of what comes before it in the hierarchy.

If your organization is very large or complex and you serve a variety of different audiences and/or offer multiple products and services, you may ultimately create a number of message sets, but we’ll save that discussion for later…

###

Diana L. Reid, Conscious Communications

In working towards an identity – which is still very much a work in progress – we sat down and reviewed the organization’s mission, discussed who we are currently serving and how we might expand this audience over time, where and how our services are now offered, how we will continue to support and engage others in our mission, what makes us unique, and what we want others to know and think about us.

We have tried to envision how we might grow and change in the future, while still holding on to our local and very personal commitment. We are also in the process of defining certain key words such as “education” or “opportunities” – and what they mean to us, our constituents and others who may come across the organization. We are learning that we don’t want to be stuck with a single, limited definition and instead want to be able to grow in a smart, strategic way to offer new programs in new areas that still remain cohesive with our mission and audience.

In assembling all of this information, we created a brief document that highlights who we are and what differentiates us, as well as identifies some key issues to take into account when developing our identity. Our initial deliverable resulting from this document will be a logo, then a slogan, then a positioning framework that helps us crisply tell our story, and finally, a website and brochure that get our messages out there.

The work we’ve done will inform our conversations with our graphic designers and others who will help us create these materials, as well as serve as our guide for future branding and communications activities.

Please click here to download and review this initial document in pdf format. It should be noted that there are many, many ways to create and present information such as this, so social entrepreneurs should not feel this is the only vehicle for brand development (there are certainly as many techniques as the day is long). I present this simply as food for thought, and ideally, a bit of inspiration.

As we progress I’ll share some of the results of the Fundación’s materials and initiatives. I hope you’ll do the same!

###

Diana L. Reid, Conscious Communications

During the course of our discussion on branding, several of you have posed questions and asked for further examples. To provide a comprehensive branding case study would require a lot more space and time than we have readily available – and each entrepreneur and organization is unique, making it hard to generalize any particular scenario – however a pro-bono project I’m currently working on might provide some food for thought for some of you.

The Fundación A. Jean Brugger is a non-profit organization based in San Juan del Sur, Nicaragua, and founded by two Americans (one now holds dual American-Nicaraguan citizenship) some six years ago. The founders initially envisioned a small, community-based organization that would provide educational opportunities sorely needed by the town’s young people. They would match promising young students with international donors to provide university scholarships to local universities, and they would seek to outfit as many local grade school students as possible with school uniforms and school supplies. The promise the students must make in return is to give back to their own community and to extend their learnings to others.

To ensure a long-term source of funds, and taking advantage of Nicaragua’s growing tourism industry, the founders decided to develop a small hotel and residential community in San Juan del Sur. Opened in 2003, Piedras y Olas Hotel & Resort has quickly become one of the leading hotels in the region and a model for socially and environmentally responsible business. Since its inception in 1999, the Fundación has grown slowly and modestly, but the recent and rapid success of its for-profit partner has now brought unexpected and exciting international support and increasing funds to the organization, as well as new program opportunities and areas of focus.

My current work with the Fundación has centered on helping the founders and staff hone and refine their mission, understand their long-term strategic plan and vision, and develop an identity and message platform that can be used to develop a new website, brochure and other communications materials.

###

Diana L. Reid, Conscious Communications

Now, take a look at a few of these brands below and see what springs to mind. Can you quickly and easily tell (this is a bit of a “cheat” since we’re just looking at once type of communication vehicle, a website) what they do or don’t do? Who is their key audience? What are their promises to their customers? Can you tell what the brand’s personality and tone is? If not, why? Consider these questions and impressions as you embark on the road to cementing your own organization’s identity.

• World Wildlife Fund
• Mercy Corps
• Progreso
• Hermes
• Seventh Generation
• Ben & Jerry’s

And finally, a few additional branding resources to help get you started:
• http://www.allaboutbranding.com/
• http://www.fastcompany.com/online/10/bedbury.html
• http://www.ssireview.com
• http://www.fastcompany.com/magazine/99/open_essay.html
• Brain Tattoos
• Branding for Non-Profits
• http://www.onphilanthropy.com/bestpract/bp2004-01-23a.html
• Uncommon Practice

Next Week: Message Strategy Development

###

Diana L. Reid, Conscious Communications