EE and the Media Gazette

EE and The Media Gazette,

Developing Your Message

Messages are the means by which we convey information, emotion and calls for action. Messengers and the media outlet used to “broadcast” the messages, are interrelated components necessary to effectively and efficiently communicate with general and target audiences. Therefore, it is imperative to spend adequate time and resources to craft messages, select messengers and choose the right media outlet that will connect with the intended audiences.

When contemplating the message for a target audience, it is essential to understand that audience. Numerous methods, including polling and focus groups, can be useful to understand the audience, learn what their values are and discover what motivates that particular audience to take action. Some of the more prevalent of these methods are discussed in the Know Your Audience section. However, it is important to consider how to best approach the process of crafting the message.

The goal of this process is to tell a conceptually complete and compelling story (or whole idea) through your message. The purpose of communication is to convey an experience, which will engage an audience as thoroughly as possible, whether it is an audience of one or one thousand. The old adage that “a picture is worth a thousand words” is accurate because indeed a picture can convey a tremendous amount of information. However, your favorite book is a reminder that words alone create mental and emotional “pictures” that often touch a reader or listener on an experiential and emotional level.

As an experiment, use your own experiences to guide you in remembering those messages that affected your thoughts and feelings about a given issue and moved you to take action. In all likelihood, the messages that had the most impact were those that, in essence, painted a picture in your mind’s eye.

Storytelling is a natural, “user-friendly” and primary method of communication and has been one of the most predominant tools that we, as a species, have used to relate to ourselves, others and our place in the cosmos. In fact, the anthropological roots of communication are grounded in storytelling. As our ancestors sat around the communal fire, storytelling enabled them to pass on to the clan its rituals, values, history, cultural mores and current events. Culture evolved through storytelling by using oral communications, gestures and crude drawings. The evolution of the written word and, more recently, the inventions of still photography and motion pictures have opened up vast opportunities for detailed, complex and lengthy storytelling.

It is the job of the message sender, the storyteller, to craft messages that create visual images, to paint pictures, in the minds of the intended audience. The storyteller must also select the appropriate messenger and media outlet to reach the target audience.

For example, to reach a farm community audience, a farmer or someone known and liked by the targeted rural audience would be an appropriate choice to serve as the messenger. Because farmers spend significant time out-of-doors (e.g., on tractors, in barns, in cars) using radio to reach this audience may be the most effective, if not the cheapest, medium.