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Key Communications Messaging: Turn Your District into a Brand Name
- 1. Key Communications Messaging Joe Donovan
- 2. What are messages? In marketing and public relations, messages are key pieces of information that provide critical information to audiences.
- 3. It’s noisy out there. On average, we are exposed thousands of advertising messages every day. Standing out is critically important.
- 4. Great messages are simple.
- 5. Great messages capture imaginations.
- 6. Great messages are intriguing.
- 7. Great messages are sticky.
- 8. Great messages play to audiences.
- 9. Messages are important. Messages are the foundation of your communications efforts. If you don’t know what your messages are, it is likely that someone else is controlling them.
- 10. Messages are important. In this era of increased competition, it’s becoming more important than ever for school districts to own their messaging.
- 11. Message creation is not difficult. Creating great messages for your district is not hard. In fact, it can be fun and serve to bring your district community together.
- 12. How to create messages Create a brainstorming committee of staff, board members, parents, and other community members. Ask yourselves: How do we want to be known?
- 13. How to create messages If you could have all of your stakeholders understand one thing about your district, what would it be?
- 14. How to create messages Spend some time reviewing websites for well known universities and exclusive prep schools. What are their messages?
- 15. How to create messages Consider your district. What makes yours different from others? Be bold. Avoid “commodity messaging.”
- 16. How to create messages Ask yourselves: Are you able to live up to your messages?
- 17. Use your messages. Incorporate your messages in all of your marketing materials.
- 18. Use your messages. Be a brand ambassador: Push your messages constantly.
- 19. Use your messages. Remember: Consistency, consistency, consistency.
- 20. Tip Make your message creation process inclusive.
- 21. Tip Think big. Be bold.
- 23. Tip You and I read education whitepapers. Our stakeholders don’t. Keep it simple.
- 24. Tip Focus on benefits, not features.
- 25. Finally… If you are not reinforcing your district’s message, no one will.
Editor's Notes
- Increasingly in communications, we speak of something being sticky. For a website, it mean that you are likely to return to it. For messaging, it means that the message sticks. That we can’t get it out of our mind. This is a very old Volkswagen add that asks viewers to rethink the large cars the had driven to that point, and consider a smaller alternative. It’s a message that sticks: we’re used to be asked to think big, after all. Great messages in education are aspirational. They often stay with, “what if”?
- Great messages play to audiences. I’m in my 40s. I have graying hair, a growing belly and however cool I felt like many years ago, I don’t anymore. But I have hope! I still have time to be the most interesting man in the world. My wife saw this slide and said, “why are you including that ad, its means nothing.” What she meant to say is that it means nothing to her. She is, I venture, not the intended audience. This of course, begs the question for schol district leaders. Who are your stakeholders and will your messages connect with them?
- As I work with schools, the most critical question as it relates to communication is not what tool we should use – a news release, social media, or a letter home to parents – its, what are the messages that we can send.
- I certainly can’t predict the future, but it is my sense that competition by school districts for students will become increasingly important. So even if you don’t feel that you need to compete for students, you may need to compete for new hires. You may need to compete for grant money. So spend some time and determine your messages.
- I mean this. Think of it… So much of what you do as an educational leader is dealing with what you are facing right now. What if you could look ahead? What if you could plan your future? That S what message creation is.
- Go quickly.
- If you are doing a survey, I always recommend asking questions like this. The questions are often, to parents and staff, “how would you describe the school district to someone who is not familiar with it. The second question is, how would you LIKE to describr the district to someone who is not familiar with it.
- This is something I like to do in my free time– getting into the minds of the folks who create messages in other schools, districts or companies. You can learn a lot.
- Now, I want to challenge you for a moment… It is my strong sense that as you work with your staff and parents and other stakeholders that the messages you create will be similar to what might be created in other districts. And if that is true, I would ask you to continue pushing.
- Now folks, you can’t fake any of this. Consider skipping the Carter bit.
- Does anyone remember former UW-Milwaukee Chanceloor Nancy Zimpher? Chancellor Zimpher was at UWM for four or so years in the late 1990s and early 2000s. … Milwaukee Promise. Never missed an opportunity to talk about the effort.
- Great messages are those that can be embraced by the entire organization.
- Messages often take on a life of their own. And messages are not created in isolation..