“Design by Committee” Leads to Generic Messaging

One of the most common bottlenecks to alignment around messaging is conflicting input from multiple stakeholders. Each contributor may have a very different perspective about product messaging, company branding, and target customers.

You often see this with companies that have multiple business units and product lines—it can get very complicated, very easily. The more stakeholders you have, the more complex it gets, and the harder it will be to get everyone aligned. Even with a medium-sized company, what might seem like a simple, straightforward messaging exercise can quickly get messy.

You need to not only get everyone collaborating and finding common ground, but do it in a way that doesn’t become “design by committee” and lead to generic, unfocused messaging. If you have multiple stakeholders with different perspectives, the solution isn’t to just compromise and include a little bit from everybody.