Before I can begin to describe how to gain more of a Jedi Voice in your marketing, I have to start at the beginning (a long time ago in a galaxy far far away) by defining what messaging actually is.

Messaging is all about Words Crafted to Convince.

A message can take the form of an ad headline, campaign tagline, or an umbrella message for a brand that sets the stage for all its marketing. Great messages that may come to mind are Apple’s famous “Think Different.” Or Nike’s “Just do it.” Or the ad theme that launched Federal Express on its path to global domination in shipping, “When it absolutely, positively has to be there overnight.”

There are also less obvious messages from marketers that perhaps are all the more powerful because they don’t take the form of ads. If something is part of an ad, our defenses may go up; it’s another thing to block out. But Amazon’s subversive, brilliant message of “people who bought this book also bought these other related titles” has done more to drain my bank account than any ad campaign.

All of these messages came about because teams of people thought very deeply about how to craft them in ways to quickly convince their audience of their unique value. Once you know the secrets, of course, you can not only create your own great messages, but easily decode messages you see on a daily basis. A popular brand’s tagline is “no soap gets you cleaner.” Translation: every other soap gets you just as clean.

The need to craft words that convince is vast. In fact, if you added up every industry where convincing was central to success, it would be the largest industry ever. Here’s a short list of the top industries that rely on messaging to convince people:

• Advertising
• PR
• Law
• Politics
• Sales
• Consumer product retail (online and brick and mortar stores)
• Lobbying
• Telemarketing
• Religion
• Dating sites

In my next post, I’ll share the first of my messaging tips, brought to you complete with a brown cardigan sweater. None other than Mr. Rogers, one of the greatest TV personalities of all time and a master storyteller. If it works with King Friday, it will work to sell your global brand.

This is the second post in a series. You can read the first post—Messaging can give you the jedi voice, also by Ted Page.

“These aren’t the droids you’re looking for.”

One of my favorite things about Star Wars has nothing to do with light sabers or death stars. It’s the Jedi voice. How the fully trained Jedi can use The Force to get others to do anything they want. It seemed so cool and powerful. The Jedi didn’t need to pull out his light saber, at least not so frequently. He just had to speak, a sci-fi special ops technique if there ever was one. Wouldn’t it be great if we could do that in real life?

This amazing power has nothing to do with science fiction and everything to do with the words and images we choose when crafting our messaging. In other words, how we tell a story about a particular product, service or cause will mean the difference between success and being obliterated by the Death Star. And make no mistake, the Jedi voice has been perfected by the Dark Side, making it all the more vital that we use it for good. As just one example, Frank Luntz, author of Words That Work and other tomes on messaging, advised George W. Bush to stop talking about “Global Warming” – which sounded threatening, and instead call it “Climate Change.” What, me worry?

Messaging from the Heath Brothers

The great news is that there has been a tremendous amount of research done that shines a light on why some messages work and others do not. The Heath brothers, Dan and Chip, have done us communicators a great service by unlocking the DNA of great messages. Their books, including “Switch” and “Made to Stick” provide actionable learning on the power of messaging.

But the Heath brothers are not the only ones who hold the secrets to effective storytelling. In my twenty years of helping companies create messaging, I’ve discovered these secrets in sometimes unexpected places, and from remarkable people – like Mr. Rogers, T. E. Lawrence (“Lawrence of Arabia”), and John Cleese.

The Messaging Tips Series

This series of blog posts is all about sharing these secrets with you in ways that will help you grow your business, champion a cause, or even convince your spouse to buy a particular car (“Honey, this is the car we’ve been looking for”).

It’s all up to you. But I do hope you do something good with it; the world could sure use your help right about now.

In order to make this knowledge easy to use, I’ve structured the posts in two parts. The first series of posts will highlight some of the key insights into the science and art of messaging. This will be followed by a real world example of how this knowledge was put to use effectively ­­– an umbrella message platform that successfully rallied over 1,400 corporations, including Apple, Nike, GM, Intel, and Starbucks, to urge Washington to finally tackle climate change. What if you could put your words in the mouth of the President of the United States? Is knowing how we did that worth your time?

Stay tuned.