On Message: Keep it Simple
Posted on Jul. 21, 2015 / Subscribe 0
By Kevin Sullivan, PRSA Tampa Bay Member and author
In the 1970s, PepsiCo had a mission statement that was simple, direct, and powerful: Beat Coke.
The three most important factors in message development are simplicity, simplicity, and simplicity. And it doesn’t get much simpler than, “Beat Coke.”
Packed into those two words are aspiration and inspiration, clarity of purpose, and a sense of “us against them” team unity. Not bad for eight letters.
By contrast, the mission statement for one of America’s most prominent universities consumes 523 words. Over dinner one night in Washington, the president of that institution confirmed what I already suspected: It had been written by committee.
When developing messaging for a political campaign, a product rollout, or a crisis response, don’t take chances – keep it simple. And always remember, “If you’re explaining, you’re losing.”
That old political adage hit me hard in the fall of 2007 during my time as President Bush’s White House Communications Director.
The State Children’s Health Insurance Program (SCHIP) was up for reauthorization. SCHIP is a program administered by the U.S. Department of Health & Human Services that provides matching funds to States to provide health insurance for children in uninsured families whose income was modest, but exceeded the eligibility requirements for Medicaid.
President Bush was calling for a 20 percent ($4.8 billion) increase in funding, which would have been used to help enroll an additional 500,000 children in the program. This should have been a slam dunk.
Democrats wanted to expand the program by $50 billion and add coverage for some adults. Their plan would have put 48 percent of American children on government health insurance.
President Bush said that he would veto any bill that used SCHIP to launch a major expansion of government-run health care.
So the message battle broke down this way:
- Democrats supported health insurance for poor, sick children.
- President Bush was for health insurance for children from poor families, but was against the Democrats’ plan to use SCHIP to expand taxpayer-funded health care to include adults and families who could afford – or already had – private coverage.
They had a bumper sticker, and we had a three-page fact sheet. We were talking about supporting the bill, but then threatening to veto it in the same paragraph. We were definitely explaining.
Our team in the White House Communications Office issued a steady stream of fact sheets and other documents designed to defend the President’s position and clarify our message. “Five Key Myths About President Bush's Support for SCHIP Reauthorization” presented a fact-based debunking of misconceptions about the President’s proposal. It came in at 936 words – way too long for a bumper sticker.
Things got interesting when the Democratic Party response to President Bush’s weekly radio address – usually delivered by a member of Congress – was delivered by Graeme Frost, a 12-year-old from Baltimore who had recovered from a brain stem injury and whose health insurance coverage came through SCHIP.
“If it weren’t for (S)CHIP, I might not be here today,” he said. “I just hope the President will listen to my story and help other kids to be as lucky as me.” Through young Graeme, Democrats had succeeded in putting a sympathetic human face on their policy position – they made it personal.
In the end, President Bush vetoed two SCHIP bills – he may have won, but it didn’t feel like it. We had lost in the court of public opinion. They had a bumper sticker, and we had a fact sheet.
So keep a 3”x 3” Post-It Note on your desk. If your messages don’t fit on there, they’re not crisp enough, bold enough, or simple enough to break through. To summarize, the keys for sharp messaging and a few other tips for getting quoted amid the clutter:
- Extremes are good. If your message can be honestly described in terms of first/last, biggest/smallest, oldest/youngest, or most/least expensive, that’s newsy and a good place to start.
- Use metaphors and analogies to make your point: Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer offered a memorable description of Google during her days as a product manager there: “Google should be like a Swiss Army knife: clean, simple, the tool you want to take everywhere.”
- Put numbers in context. “There are more mobile phones on Earth than toothbrushes,” said 3Cinteractive founder John Duffy. That’s much more effective and memorable than if he would have given the actual number of mobile phones.
- Be colorful, paint a picture. In a Wall Street Journal article about iCloud-related upgrades to Apple products, Tulane University professor Thomas Beller scored two memorable quotes.: “I don’t go to church. I don't go to synagogue. I buy Apple products.” Then, to characterize his frustration, he said, “By forcing all these changes, Apple is driving me into the arms of Google.”
- Build your message around what you are for, not what you’re against. The affirmative almost always works best. Talk about what you have, not what you don’t have. Define your idea or product around what it is, not what it’s not.
- When developing your message, make it about people and their stories, not numbers or dollars. Emotions beat facts every time.
But above all, keep it simple. For years when I was asked about media bias I used to say, “Yeah, they’re biased. They’re biased in favor of conflict.” New York Times reporter Peter Baker adds an interesting twist to that theory, telling Politico, "The bigger bias is the bias toward conflict, the bias toward sensation, the bias toward the quick and easy and the simplistic.” Baker is right to add “the quick and easy and the simplistic” to the list.
Today’s reality is that the attention of the media – and consumers, too – is pulled in so many directions that if your message is complex, your audience will move on to the next email, tweet, post, or pitch. If you’re explaining, you’re losing.
About:
PRSA Tampa Bay member Kevin Sullivan, the founder of Kevin Sullivan Communications, Inc., is the author of the new eBook, “Breaking Through: Communications Lessons from the Locker Room, the Board Room and the Oval Office.” The book, which details his experiences with the NBA’s Dallas Mavericks, NBC Universal and The White House, is excerpted here.
“Breaking Through” is available at amazon.com and iBooks. Sullivan can be reached at [email protected].
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