Strategies for designing messages in marketing communications

Strategies for designing messages in marketing communications. After determining the desired response from the audience, the communicator then develops an effective message.

Ideally, the message should attract attention, maintain interest, generate desire, and move action. (AIDA model-see first column of Figure).

In practice, few messages are able to carry consumers from awareness to purchase, but the AIDA framework demonstrates the quality expected of each communication.

Formulating a message requires solving four problems: what to say (message body), how to say it logically (message structure), how to say it symbolically (message format), and who should say it (source) message).

1. Message Content The

communicator must pay attention to what he will say to the target audience in order to produce the expected response. In the era of mass marketing, it was thought that one message would work for everyone.

Now we know that different people seek different benefits from the same product. People pay less and less attention to mass advertising because of their lack of time and their belief that all brands are the same. They switch television and radio channels.

Therefore, the challenge is to create messages that will appeal to the attention of specific target groups. For example, Coca-Cola’s advertising agency, Creative Artists, has created different sets of ads for different market segments.

Local and global Coca-Cola managers will decide which advertising will be most effective for each target segment.

2. Good message

In determining good message content, management looks for unique appeal, themes, ideas, or sales proposals. This means formulating a benefit, motivation, identification, or reason why the audience should remember or research the product. There are three types of appeal, namely rational, emotional and moral.

Rational appeals awaken the audience’s self-interest. Rational appeal suggests that the product will produce the stated benefits. Examples are messages indicating the quality, economic value, benefits, or performance of a product.

It is widely believed that industrial buyers are most responsive to rational appeals. They have knowledge of the product class, are trained to recognize product value, and are accountable to others for their choices.

Consumers who buy an expensive product tend to gather information and compare various alternatives. Like business buyers, they are interested in product quality, price, value, and performance.

3. Message content

Emotional appeal tries to evoke positive or negative emotions that will motivate purchases. Marketers are looking for an emotional selling proposition (ESP).

The product may be the same as competing products, have associations that are unique to consumers (examples are Rolls Royce, Harley Davidson, and Rolex), communication must attract these associations.

In addition, communicators have used negative appeals such as fear, guilt, and shame to get people to do things they should be doing (eg brush their teeth, go for an annual health check) or to get people to stop doing things they should not be doing (eg smoking cigarettes). , drinking alcoholic beverages, overeating).

Fear is effective up to a point, but it’s very effective when it’s not too strong. The results show that fear that is too strong or too weak is not as effective as moderate in getting consumers to follow the advice. 

Also, fear works best when the level of trust in the source is high. Fear is also more effective when the communication promises to provide relief, in a reliable and efficient manner, from the fear it causes.

4. Positive emotional appeals

Strategies for designing messages in marketing communications. Communicators also use positive emotional appeals such as humor, love, pride, and happiness. However, there is no evidence that a humorous message is any more effective than a direct version of the same message.

Proponents of humorously conveyed messages claim that it attracts more attention and creates a sense of liking and trust in the sponsor.

Cliff Freeman, the man responsible for Little Caesar’s hilarious “Pizza, Pizza” commercials and Wendy’s famous “Where’s the meat?” campaign, states that “Humor is the best way to open doors.

If you make people laugh, and they feel happy after seeing the ad, they will like the product”. But others argue that humor interferes with understanding the product, quickly becomes dull, and can distract from the product.

5. Right and proper

Moral appeals Moral appeals are directed at the audience’s feelings about what is right and proper. Moral appeals are often used to encourage people to support social causes, such as a cleaner environment, better racial relations, equal rights for women, and assistance to people in need. Moral appeal is rarely associated with everyday products. 

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Some advertisers believe that a message is most persuasive when it is somewhat at odds with what the audience believes.

Messages that simply state what the audience already believes usually attract the least amount of attention and reinforce the audience’s beliefs at best.

However, if the message is too contrary to the beliefs of the audience, the message will be challenged in the minds of the audience and will not be believed. The challenge is to design a message that is somewhat incongruous and avoids both conditions.

Companies selling products in different countries must be prepared to differentiate their messages. For example, Helene Curtis, in advertising her hair care products in various countries, adapts her message.

For example, middle-class women in England frequently washed their hair, while the opposite was true among Spanish women. Japanese women also avoid washing too often to prevent loss of protective oil in the hair.