Strategic narrative workshops help organisations and brands align corporate communications with business plans.

The goal of these sessions is to create and build messaging within a narrative that is consistent with your organisations’ values and vision.

It is important to identify these messages at the start of a campaign, new reporting period or when launching a new brand, product or service.

Effective key messages and a clear narrative provide a strong foundation for the development of concise, credible and compelling content for media releases, media interviews, direct communications and internal company websites and social media channels.

Key messages:

• Add strategic direction to all communications
• Position brand or organisation in the market and make it stand out from the crowd
• Reflect the brand or organisation’s target audiences
• Help spokespeople/s control content in media interviews
• Prevent competitors or stakeholders ‘hijacking’ media coverage

The structure of a key message can be expressed in this simple formula:
Claim = fact + example

• A claim is what you want stakeholders to believe. A cheeky example would be: ‘IMPACT is Australia’s best PR agency’
• A fact is the proof to support the claim. For example: “IMPACT is award-winning, both in Australian and international markets”
• An example is a demonstration of the claim; providing context. For example: “IMPACT’s work with Saxa [hyperlink to Saxa case study] positioned the brand as market leaders and helped gain nine market share points”.

Key messages should always be:

• Believable and demonstrated
• Relevant to your target audiences
• Specific
• Provide a simple call to action
• Clear, simple and without jargon

When brainstorming, you should always consider your competitors’ key messages, as well as the market and media environment. This way you can identify which messages are simply ‘hygiene factors’ versus what truly sets your organisation, brand, products, services or values apart from the crowd. These points of difference should be the lead focus when developing messaging and informing strategic narrative.

To discuss how a strategic narrative workshop could help your business, please contact IMPACT Communications for more information.