A Simple Way To Focus Your Messaging
As a marketing leader, you want your messaging to resonate with your audience, be memorable, increase awareness, and build brand recognition. But you can’t approach your team with that abstract request. You also can’t simply share your 140-page corporate strategy and assume they’ll glean some magic out of it. Crafting effective messaging requires specificity.
It’s about finding some little, unique insight about your offerings and customers, and framing it in a way that stands out. We want to give our teams the creative freedom to come up with amazing ideas, but how do you balance focus and creativity? Enter the Get-Who-To-By brief model.
In 2004–2005 BBDO created a very unique form of a creative brief model called Get-Who-To-By. This model had only 4 elements and was to be written on only one page. They had found traditional philosophies around messaging were focused on where your customers are now and where you want them to be. But it was primarily focused on perception.
They determined to truly differentiate, a behavior change model was needed. This meant first identifying what customers were doing, trying to understand why they do it, and then being very specific about what you want the consumer to do when they see the advertising.
Let’s break down the four parts:
The GET part is about your audience. It should be two parts: 1) demographics of the target audience (for example, women aged 25 and over or men aged 18–25) and 2) psychographic information — insight that helps your creative team understand who the target is.
The WHO is the most important part of the brief model. Here you should clarify — what are people currently doing with the product? And why do they do it? So WHO — describes what people think, feel, and do now.
The TO is the thinking, feeling, and behavior that you want your audience to change and transform to. So there is a current (WHO) and a desired (TO) component between the two.
The BY is the core message — your big idea.
From the outside, this model looks very simple, but a lot of thought and research goes into it. It requires a lot of hard thinking. However, the intent is to help you focus on the most important elements of your messaging to instigate behavior change. This helps you be more deliberate and gives more teeth to the impact of your marketing and messaging efforts — which is the whole point, right?
About the Author
Andrea’s 25-year, field-tested background provides practical, behavioral science approaches to creating differentiated, human-focused organizations. A 4x ADDY award-winner, TEDx presenter, and 3x book author, she began her career at a tech start-up and led the strategic sales, marketing, and customer engagement efforts at two global industrial manufacturers. She now leads a change agency dedicated to helping companies address both the operational and the psychological components of strategic change.
In addition to writing and consulting, Andrea speaks to leaders and industry organizations around the world. Connect with Andrea to access information on her book, keynoting, research, or consulting. More information is also available at www.pragmadik.com or . www.andreabelkolson.com
Originally published at https://www.linkedin.com.
