What is messaging?
Any company, brand or even celebrity wants the world to believe specific things about how they do business, and why. Messages are created to help control this process.
The messages themselves relate directly back to the company in some way. They can be as broad or as granular as necessary. They can be one word or a short sentence. The important thing is that they have enough impact to have the desired effect. They must stir opinion, emotion or action. They must have the stickiness-factor. And they must be delivered authentically.
How does messaging fit into my communications strategy?
At Mantis, we can’t stress to our clients enough that without defined messaging, it’s very difficult to get the results you want from a Public Relations campaign.
Messages are what drive the creation of PR tactical plans, the tone of any written communications such as press releases, blog posts or even Tweets and what your company spokespeople say in interviews, at conferences, or even in the tender process.
It’s not the case that saying the same thing repeatedly will ensure it sinks in – it’s the opposite. Once the base messages are available, it’s our job as your PR consultants to find creative ways of getting those messages across and getting them to stick in the minds of your stakeholders. Weak communications campaigns are built on weak messages.
The Mantis Messaging Workshop
To introduce messaging successfully, our clients use us to lead the process and manage the creation of the messages and proof points.
First, we spend time understanding your business. Ideally, we’ll spend time researching your market, talking to your stakeholders and building a comprehensive picture of the sentiments and drivers behind your business using the Mantis Perception Audit.
Then, Mantis will organise a simple, pain-free workshop to create the messages.
It can’t be done without detailed input from your team, and our consultancy direction guarantees a polished, finished and market-ready result. We know what style and tone of messages you need – to capture the attention of the public sector market – and we will produce fast, measurable results.
What outputs can I expect?
From the workshop, you’ll be provided with a set of sentiments and messages. They may not be worded exactly as they will be in final form. There may be too many (we will never end a workshop with too few).
Mantis will take the outputs from the workshop and finalise them for presentation back to your core team. We can present them in your choice of format, or create a messaging document similar to a brand guidelines book if required.
Once approved, they can be distributed and the possible next phase of the communications strategy can begin – ensuring your team can communicate them successfully.
Why use Mantis?
Our team has over 40 years of combined experience in technology public relations and is the only agency in the UK dedicated to IT companies that target the public sector. Our experience of creating corporate messaging for companies including IBM, Novell, salesforce.com, Sapient, Amdocs Xerox and Lenovo has helped us develop a detailed and successful methodology which we can adapt to suit our clients. The Mantis Messaging Workshop can be used as a one-off project or deployed multiple times across product or brand lines, or be undertaken at the start of an ongoing PR campaign.
Pricing
The Mantis Messaging Workshop is priced at £3,500.00 (exc. VAT) including all pre-work, the workshop, post-workshop finalising and presentation. Larger, more complex corporate projects may require additional resource.
To discuss your requirements with the team, please contact a member of the Mantis Public Relations team – either Gavin Loader, Eleanor Willock or Toby Gavin on 0845 299 0684 or email info at mantispr.co.uk