Develop Your Campaign Message With This Quick-Start Framework

My 12-year-old is a world builder.

When he was 3, he made up a Transformers character. Within a few years, this character had a backstory, a villain, and a handful of adventures. A year or two after that and there was deep lore.

That was his most detailed world, but it was far from his last.

Almost every day, D and I take a walk. On these walks, he likes to rattle off the characters and storylines in his head to get my opinion on them.

Often, he has an idea for a story and wants me to help him plot it out. He thinks I’m good at this because I’m a writer.

I don’t think he’s realized yet that my contribution to these stories is minimal.

He already has all the elements in his head. All I do is ask the right questions to help him articulate them into a coherent framework.

For example, yesterday he said he wanted to create a fight sequence for two of his characters.

All I did was ask questions:

• What is the conflict?
• Why did that happen?
• What does each character want?
• Why?
• Why does each think this action will get him there?
• Then what happens?

Some of these questions got asked multiple times. Especially that last one.

What’s interesting is I ask very similar questions when I’m helping a marketer articulate messaging for their company.

• What is the conflict that you solve for your customers?
• Why does that happen?
• What do your customers want?
• Why?
• How does your product/service get them there?
• Then what happens?

Like D, most marketers intuitively have this information in their heads.

But until they can articulate it coherently, they can’t use it to drive their messaging.

Whether you’re developing the message behind a campaign or a product or a brand, remember to address these three things:

• Problem
• Motivation
• Results

When you clearly understand all three, you’ll find it’s almost obvious how to say what you need to say.