Market Core · Content · Module
Formats
What the organisation actually produces, and what job each format is doing — which audience, which stage, and what it is meant to change.
The idea
How it works
Format is a strategic choice rather than a production detail. It determines who will consume the piece, in what state of attention, and how long it stays useful — and those three decide most of its value before a word is written.
The common failure is producing formats because they are conventional. An organisation making the same four things every month rarely chose them, and rarely knows what any of them are for.
Working with it
In practice
- 01
Inventory before deciding
List what is actually produced and in what quantity. Most format decisions are made against an imagined library rather than the real one.
- 02
Give every format a job
Which audience, which stage, what it is meant to change. A format that cannot be given one is being produced out of habit.
- 03
Separate chosen from inherited
Ask when each format was last decided. The ones nobody can date are the candidates for removal.
- 04
Remove one before adding one
Format lists only grow. Making an addition cost a removal is the only discipline that reliably holds.
One level in
The components of formats
A component is something that exists afterwards which did not exist before — a deliverable or a mechanism, not an intention.
The inventory
What is actually produced, in what quantity, and which of it was chosen rather than inherited.
Learn
A format with no job is being produced because it always has been. That is the whole finding of most content audits.
The other modules in content
Pillars
The few subjects the organisation keeps returning to and wants to be known for — chosen so that a body of work accumulates into a position rather than into a stream of unrelated pieces.
LearnProduction
What each piece costs to make, including the research, review and approval that dominate the total — and how much the organisation can actually get out of the door.
LearnThe calendar
The publishing rhythm, what is scheduled against it, and the fixed points in the year worth planning around — set at what can be held through a difficult quarter.
LearnReuse and lifespan
How long each piece stays useful, and how much of it can become something else — because the cheapest content is almost always something that already exists.
Learn