More than skin deep

All corporate marketing departments recognise the importance of establishing design guidelines. But why, asks Paul Ayling, isn't the same amount of effort lavished on documenting the message guidelines?

You don't need to have been financially burnt by lastminute.com-itis to know that perception matters. It's why people spend so much time, money and effort establishing a strong above the line brand identity. And it's why every organisation that takes marketing seriously establishes a corporate look and feel which infuses everything from business cards, letterheads, to collateral, web sites and ads.

But the visual look and feel of an organisation is only half the story. What about the content?

It seems only common sense that companies that recognise the importance of corporate fonts and logos should also recognise the importance of establishing consistent marketing messages. After all, when marketing any company, it is crucially important that the organisation should stand for something.

On the whole, however, companies just don't do this.

I have known global blue chip companies to refer us to their marketing 'hymn sheet' - and give us a list of 40 or 50 factual bullet points on two sides of a piece of paper. I've known other companies who have extremely well crafted and intelligent positioning statements for each of their products, but absolutely no corporate context. (In design terms, that's rather like having the world's most impressive business cards - and nothing else.)

As a rule, companies don't have a properly systemised, top-down, entirely consistent, detailed documentation of the message that completely defines a company in its market places.

They don't have a hierarchy of messages which start with, perhaps, a single corporate mission statement at the top, works down through a suite of supporting, evangelical marketing messages, right down to product specific supporting messages. And for each of these messages in this hierarchy, they don't have a couple of paragraphs of well crafted, fact-filled supporting copy to truly empower marketing professionals both within the organisation and without.

When you think about it, such message guidelines are every bit as crucial to successful corporate marketing as design guidelines. So why don't they exist?

Perhaps it is a question of what people are used to. Every organisation, after all, creates corporate design guidelines. And (just as importantly), they can go to practically any design agency in the land to get them to do this work for them.

But message guidelines are not an accepted notion. It may make perfect common sense to those who think about it, but even then there is a problem. Who do you turn to in order to tackle what is, after all, a specialised, text centric activity?

Assuming these issues can be addressed, what are the practical benefits of such a document?

Well, if the corporate will exists, message guidelines can (and should) become the foundation - and discipline - for every relevant below-the-line marketing activity. Multiple agencies, for example, can be given the message guidelines and instructed to ensure that everything they do communicates these messages to the target audiences. Similarly, internal marketing professionals, even internationally, can be directed to 'sing from the same hymn sheet' - precisely because the hymn sheet now exists.

At a tactical level, all proposed marketing activities and deliverables can be forced to undergo a messaging 'so-what?' test. Does the proposed event, or deliverable, reflect and reinforce one of the marketing messages? If not, can it be adapted so that it does? And if the answer is still 'no', then the question must be asked whether the project in question is a good use of marketing budget in the first place.

The whole point of creating message guidelines, then, is to ensure that strong, consistent visual brand identities are matched by equally powerful, consistent marketing messages. As early investors in lastminute.com will be more than aware, perception needs to be more than skin deep.

Paul Ayling: paul@writingmachine.com is MD of Writing Machine.