Five Keys to Creating Motivating Messages

Resource
Message Matters: Succeeding at the Crossroads of Mission and Market

Contents
Motivating Messages are Strategic
Five Core Principles of Motivating Messages
    1. Action drives message
    2. Self-interest drives action
    3. Desire trumps need
    4. No common desire means no message
    5. Less is more
Summary

From Becky Andrews, Marketing Manager, Fieldstone Alliance:

IT'S A COMMON COMPLAINT among nonprofit leaders, “When we’re dealing with such important issues…why aren’t more people listening?”

This issue of Tools and the next are adapted from our new book, Message Matters: Succeeding at the Crossroads of Mission and Market, by management and marketing expert Rebecca Leet.

Message Matters gives nonprofit leaders a simple framework for developing strategic messages that prompt people to fund them, vote their way, participate in their program, buy their service, volunteer for their organization, quote them, adopt a best practice, or take other specific actions.

In this issue, we're going to look under the hood to see what exactly makes for a motivating message.

Motivating Messages are Strategic
When we talk about creating motivating messages, what we're really talking about is developing strategic messages.

A strategic message breaks through information overload, catching and holding the audience through the first fateful minute of contact.

Basically, a strategic message is a set of statements that prompts one or more targeted audiences to take a desired action. Here are other characteristics:

A strategic message consists of a core statement that is heard by all audiences and subset statements that are specific to each individual target audience.

A strategic message does three things: it captures the attention of a target audience, it focuses the subsequent conversation on attaining mutual desires, and it results in action you and your listener both want.

There are three common reasons why strategic messages are developed: to prompt an action, to create an institutional identity, and to describe a complex idea or program.

A strategic message is different from a brand, a frame, a slogan, and an elevator speech, although it shares some attributes of each.

Strategic messages are created through a structured process (like strategic planning, although strategic messages are developed over weeks, not months). They are tied to the larger mission and goals of the organization. They are aimed at specific groups and designed to appeal to the desires of those groups.

Five Core Principles of Motivating Messages

Action drives message—know why you speak.
Self-interest drives action—to move people, speak to their self-interest, not yours.
Desire trumps need—people have needs; people seek wants.
No common desire means no message—without overlap between your organization’s desire and your audience’s desire, an effective strategic message is impossible.
Less is more—fewer words, fewer audiences, fewer points equals more success.

Let's look at each in more depth.

1. Action drives message
Begin with the end in mind—the action you want your audience to take. This concept is almost absurdly obvious, but it's often overlooked.

Many, if not most, strategic message development groups start with the assumption that everyone in the group knows what action they're seeking. This assumption is almost always wrong.

Groups often resist specifying the action focus. They’ll digress into a conversation about the web site or the need for more news media attention. Most people are more comfortable discussing smaller tactical issues than larger strategic ones.

Identifying the action is a significant strategic issue and often the hardest part of the message development process. Being precise about what their organization wants to accomplish is not, unfortunately, a strength of some nonprofits. However, it is an essential ingredient in strategic message development.

2. Self-interest drives action
The second concept is as obvious as the first: people act because they want something.

This reality is difficult to acknowledge for many in the nonprofit sector. But, a successful strategic message is almost impossible to develop without accepting the fact that target audiences will respond based on their interests, not yours. Without this orientation, nonprofits inevitably end up telling people what to do or think, which is rarely a recipe for success.

The self-interest may be tangible or intangible. It may be a feeling: "I feel generous when I donate to the United Way." It may be a material benefit: "Maintaining my association membership will give me access to the latest developments in my profession." It may be an anticipated benefit: "I’ll volunteer to work on Saturday to finish the report because it will show my dedication and increase my chances of getting the director’s job." Or the action may actually be inaction: "We’ve got to stop requiring older volunteers to work nights if we want to keep them working with us."

Self-interest is not inherently a character flaw. It is, by nature, simply natural. We pay attention to what is more interesting to us. However, being unwilling to accept its importance as a motivator will fatally flaw message development.

3. Desire trumps need
When identifying an audience’s self-interest, it's important to focus more on what the audience wants than on what it needs. Even when human conditions appear to be situations of obvious need, action may be driven equally—or more—by desire.

Most associations, nonprofits, and foundations are focused on need. This focus contributes to the tendency of nonprofits to tell their stakeholders what they should do rather than ask them what they want. The “I know what you need” culture is pervasive—if not predominant. And it is a major impediment to successful message development.

The Illinois Department of Transportation proved the power of desire in 2000 when it began replacing the didactic “Give ’Em a Brake” signs at highway construction sites with evocative signs that said “My Daddy/Mommy Works Here—Slow Down Please.” In the first year, the state had a 30 percent reduction in work zone fatalities.¹

4. No common desire means no message
Mutual satisfaction is the key to successful messaging. The very simple diagram shown below captures both the concept and process that’s at the heart of strategic message development. This "Action Connection" shows where the desire of the organization overlaps with the desire of its target audience.

If the circles overlap, there is there is shared desire, which is the foundation for continued communication. It is from this shared desire that action originates.

If no overlap can be created, then no effective message can be designed because the essential ingredient for sustained communication—shared desire—is absent.

The Action Connection

Action Connection Diagram shows where the desire of the organization overlaps with the desire of its target audience.

There comes a point in strategic message development when the Action Connection is either recognizable or obviously absent. If no overlap can be created, then no effective message can be designed. A sound bite may be created—but it will not capture the audience’s attention and hold it so that more information can be conveyed, which is what an effective message does.

5. Less is more
The problem with nonprofit messaging is that too many organizations “want to have four goals, ten audiences, and twenty messages,” notes Dana Shelley, director of strategic communications for the Annie E. Casey Foundation.² This is a sure recipe for failure.

Here are two key tips to remember:

The most successful strategic messages (core and subset) contain no more than three major points. Fewer than three is fine, more than three is not. The speaker usually cannot remember more than three, and the listener cannot successfully process more than three.

When speaking, you may have fifteen to twenty seconds to catch someone’s ear, which is why a good core message is rarely longer than twenty-five to thirty words. If you're initially successful, you may have upwards of a minute to capture a listener’s attention.

Think of messaging like fishing. A message is bait: If the bait is too big, the fish may nibble but swim away. If the bait is the right size, the fish takes it in and you have greatly increased your chance of hooking the fish. Once hooked, you have time to speak at some length about your concern.

Summary
Moving people to action is essential to achieving the mission of most nonprofit organizations. In an age of information overload and nanosecond transmission, your message determines whether you are heard and people respond. Developing strategic messages will help you speak to your audiences' desires and be more likely to get them to act.

In the next issue of Tools, we'll look at two assessment tools which will help you determine how much your organization already knows about its goals, its approach to communication, and its constituents’ desires.

Additional Resources

Rebecca Leet & Associates
www.LeetAssociates.com
This link takes you to short examples of situations in which Rebecca Leet & Associates has helped clients develop messages.

Cause Communications
www.causecommunications.org
They have some very good hands-on publications such as "Communications Toolkit: A guide to navigating communications for the nonprofit world" and "Why Bad Presentations Happen to Good Causes." And, nonprofits can order or download them for no charge!

The Communications Network
www.comnetwork.org
This is an association of foundations that provides training and resources in public relations and strategic communications.

Community Media Workshop
www.newstips.org
The Workshop trains people working on community problems to tell their stories to the media, tips sensitive journalists to the importance of these stories, and tries to create better relationships between the media and the diverse communities which make up Chicago and the Midwest. The focus is on Chicago, but the resources can be used by any nonprofit.

Fieldstone Alliance
Article: Stakeholder Analysis Tool (Tools You Can Use e-newsletter, March 15, 2006)
This tool was developed for public policy work, but it can be used by any group wishing to understand, influence, and mobilize its constituents.

Service: Strategy Planning
Fieldstone Alliance’s consulting team has extensive experience helping foundations, nonprofits, and networks develop clear vision and strategy and create strategic and business plans to inform their messages and guide their work. We know how to infuse organizations with strategic thinking and capacity for nimble action. For more information, contact Gordon Goodwin at 651.556.4502 or ggoodwin@FieldstoneAlliance.org.

The Jargon Files
www.emcf.org
The Edna McConnell Clark Foundation has a series of free booklets about the troubling use of jargon in the foundation world. The booklets are fun to read and make good points about how jargon muddles messages.

All the Best,

Becky Andrews
Fieldstone Alliance

September 19, 2007

Footnotes
¹John Kelly, “It’s the Message That Counts, Answer Man Says,” The Washington Post, August 13, 2006.
²Dana Shelley, phone interview by author, November 21, 2005.
Photo courtesy of the U.S. National Archives. Photographer, Charles O’Rear. Date: 1973.

Five Keys to Creating Motivating Messages

Resource Message Matters: Succeeding at the Crossroads of Mission and Market

Contents Motivating Messages are Strategic Five Core Principles of Motivating Messages 1. Action drives message 2. Self-interest drives action 3. Desire trumps need 4. No common desire means no message 5. Less is more Summary

Motivating Messages are Strategic When we talk about creating motivating messages, what we're really talking about is developing strategic messages.

Five Core Principles of Motivating Messages

1. Action drives message Begin with the end in mind—the action you want your audience to take. This concept is almost absurdly obvious, but it's often overlooked.

2. Self-interest drives action The second concept is as obvious as the first: people act because they want something.

3. Desire trumps need When identifying an audience’s self-interest, it's important to focus more on what the audience wants than on what it needs. Even when human conditions appear to be situations of obvious need, action may be driven equally—or more—by desire.