Why is getting aligned around messaging so hard?
Think about your typical situation with a rebrand or product launch. Ideally, you’re able to get everybody on the same page, aligned around the sweet spot between your product or company, and the customer and their needs.
But where the breakdown often happens is in the execution. The strategy can default to something similar to building the plane as you’re flying off a cliff. The crushing pace of marketing output, the pace of expectations of workflows, the general push toward the next thing on the agenda, all can pressure marketers to rush through this critical initial process.
Instead of starting at the beginning, building a solid framework, and then using that framework to build out campaigns, the process gets flipped. The messaging is developed on the fly as the campaigns are being built.
Stakeholders end up contributing ideas in a vacuum, because there’s no point at the beginning where everybody gets aligned on specific foundational principles, directions, and a high-level strategy. There might not even be a clear vision of the target audience or ideal customer.
And with no true alignment on the bigger picture, the messaging framework tends to collapse.
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