At Message House we spend a lot of time discussing, writing, and testing messages for our clients. It’s a core part of our work, but the past few months have seen us message testing even more than usual as organisations of all sectors and sizes grapple with how to respond to the current moment.

Messaging is essential for organisations of all sizes, it’s how you communicate who you are, and what you do – whether it’s a corporate narrative or positioning a new product. Getting the right message isn’t easy, but it doesn’t have to involve agonising over every syllable either, and while Coronavirus, of course, has provided a new challenge and context in which your messages will land – the key principles still apply, even when everything else seems to have changed.

In my view, there are three key principles when crafting a message: it must be clear, it must be concise, and it must be credible.

Clear: Clarity should be the foundation of any message – if your audience can’t understand what you’re trying to say, they’ll find it difficult to like it. The best (or worst?) example of this is a reliance on jargon - when writing messages it can be easy for terminology that is common place within the business and industry to be included, but this results in messages that only industry insiders can understand! Remember: no one wants to feel stupid, so keep the complex terminology to a minimum.

Concise: This principle can be neatly summarised as ‘get to the point’. Make sure you know from the start exactly what message you’re trying to communicate and do your best to communicate it in as few words as possible. There’s a time and a place for detail but more often than not it can come across as waffle and, the more waffle that is added, the more cynical audiences tend to become. With message highlighting we can identify exactly what words and phrases are resonating – and long messages typically lead to people losing interest.

Credible: This final principle is key to the success of any message. A common response we hear when testing messages for clients is ‘this would be great, if it’s true’. This doesn’t mean tell people what they want to hear – it means saying something they believe you’ll actually do, otherwise you risk it being quickly dismissed as ‘tokenism’ or ‘greenwashing’. Bold commitments are good, but what have you already done to show people this is something you truly believe, and will follow through on?

Writing the message of course is only the first part of the equation, the medium, the messenger and the moment matter a great deal too. But by making sure your messages follow the three principles of Clear, Concise and Credible, you can ensure that you’re setting your comms up for success.