Brand Core · Brand Narrative · Module
Message architecture
What is said beneath the story: the one thing that must land, the supporting messages, and what changes by audience without contradicting anything.
The idea
How it works
Without a hierarchy, every message is equally important, which means the organisation says five things and lands none. Naming the one that must survive is the whole exercise.
Audience variants are legitimate and dangerous. Saying different things to investors, customers and candidates is normal; saying incompatible things is discovered, usually by a journalist.
Working with it
In practice
- 01
Name the one message
If the audience remembered a single sentence, which one? Everything else is subordinate to it by definition.
- 02
Limit supporting messages to three
More than three and the hierarchy is flat again, which was the problem.
- 03
Write the audience variants side by side
Contradictions are only visible when the versions are read next to each other.
- 04
Check what is actually being said
Collect a quarter of real material and see which messages appear. It is rarely the intended set.
One level in
The components of message architecture
A component is something that exists afterwards which did not exist before — a deliverable or a mechanism, not an intention.
Write the audience variants next to each other. Contradictions are invisible until the versions are read together.
The other modules in brand narrative
The story
The narrative itself: where it starts, what the difficulty was, and what it is actually about — short enough to be retold and honest enough to be believed.
LearnThe tellers
Who actually carries the narrative — employees, customers, partners, media — and whether they have been given a version they can use.
LearnEvolution
How the narrative changes as the organisation does, without breaking continuity — which parts are fixed, which may move, and what a change costs in recognition.
Learn