Basic Messages

“Your message is your organizing theme. And no media advocacy campaign can succeed without a powerful, coherent organizing theme, a theme that is at the same time logically persuasive, morally authoritative, and capable of evoking passion. A campaign message must speak at one and the same time to the brain and to the heart.” - Ethel Kline, political scientist and media strategist

A well-formulated message can be the basis for a successful advocacy campaign. Messages bring clarity and focus to specific issues and campaigns and allow advocacy practitioners to frame public debate on their terms.

Advocacy practitioners use their messages to raise attention around social justice issues and ensure that public discourse is focused and well-informed. A thoughtful and succinct message also enables an organization and its constituents to speak with a unified voice about specific social justice issues and campaigns.

What is a Message?

A message is a brief, straightforward statement based on an analysis of what will persuade a particular audience.

A good message is:

• Simple
• To the point
• Easy to remember
• Repeated frequently

People need to hear a message again and again to retain it. Simple repetition also builds comfort and familiarity with ideas and issues over time, making the repetition of a well-formed message an important tool in persuading a target audience. Using the same message repeatedly promotes retention more effectively than using multiple messages.

Here are some examples of messages that successfully took root in the Tobacco Control movement:

• Passive smoking is a serious health hazard.
• Smoking kills more people than heroin, cocaine, alcohol, AIDS, fires, homicide, suicide, and automobile accidents combined.
• Women are just as much at risk as men are for diseases caused by tobacco. Women who smoke like men, die like men.

Most advocacy campaigns contain core messages and tailored messages (See below), both of which are guided by basic principles of message development.

Advocates often develop a media campaign around a core message, which typically includes:

• Their analysis of a problem
• The problem's cause
• Whom they hold responsible for solving the problem
• The proposed solution (if they have one)
• The action they ask others to take in support of the solution

Some messages may appeal more strongly to specific audiences than others. A message developed with a specific audience in mind is called a tailored message. Tailored messages can be developed for voters in specific districts, for politicians, or for other constituent demographics.

We offer some examples of core messages and tailored messages , as well as a basic tool for creating tailored messages in an advocacy campaign.

The Tobacco Control movement provides some good examples of core messages and the tailored messages that were developed from them:

Core message:

• Most smokers become addicted to tobacco when they are too young to make “informed choices” that will affect their health and life.

Tailored messages:

• For a conservative or religious audience: We should have the moral strength to preserve a heritage of smoke-free air for our children.
• For an audience of middle-aged voters (parents!) or a teachers' association: Advertising restrictions and bans have proven effective in keeping fewer young people from starting to smoke.

Core message:

• Reducing smoking-related illness makes health care more affordable for everyone.

Tailored message:

• For an audience of doctors: Passive smoking is an expensive public health hazard that requires responsive public health laws and regulations.
• For an audience of policy makers: Smoking bans in public places achieve clear health benefits at reasonable or low costs and are politically popular.

Core message:

• The health of all workers is equally important. All workers deserve a safe, healthy, smoke-free work environment. Clean indoor air is a basic right to which all workers should be entitled.

• For an audience of union members: No worker should have to breathe something that causes cancer to hold a job, or give up a job just to prevent getting sick. Clean indoor air is a basic right to which all workers should be entitled.
• For an audience of business leaders or fiscal conservatives: Less time lost by workers who get sick from tobacco smoke and cannot work brings economic benefits to employers.