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Remember that reMAMBA acronym for getting your marketing messages right?

M ? Mission

A ? Audience

M ? Media

B ? Benefits

A ? Articulation

In this article we look at marketing articulation and how to make it work for you.

Articulation ? or at least my interpretation of it here! ? is not really about writing the final words to express your message. It?s about creating a verbal framework to work within, so the final words emerge naturally and painlessly.

Is there a formula we can use?

Much as I would love to write down one magic formula that works for every marketing communication project, the sad truth is there isn?t one. Each project has to be assessed individually. MAMBA helps, and for the really mathematically-minded among you, how about this:

Mission + audience + medium x benefits x articulation = gist of successful message

If you start with your mission and its objectives, you then need to assess and get to know the intended audience. You also need to consider the medium you?re going to use, and this needs to be aligned with the way you?re going to articulate the message.

At the same time you need to work out what there could be ?in it? for the intended audience (the benefits) and how your mission will fulfill that. This then forms the articulation of your message. Please remember that it?s the gist of your message, not the final words. Those come later when you?re sure you?ve got the framework right.

Approach, style and words the audience will identify with

Now, how do you go about getting on your audience?s verbal wavelength? Well, when you research your audience, learning how to speak with them should be a useful by-product of the other things you learn about them. In many cases of course you will know them well anyway, so there is little need to do much research.

Whatever the case though, usually there will be reference material you can turn to which gives you some useful clues. Always check out your audience?s preferred reading material ? not just for business but if relevant what they read for pleasure as well, like hobby magazines or websites. That will also give you a feel for any terminology that?s relevant to your writing project, although jargon needs to be handled with caution (see below.)

Many media have their own etiquette and accepted rules. Even with the still rather formal format of the business letter, you can write in a ?human voice? that?s informal and direct. However it?s worth remembering that being overly familiar is not prudent. Familiarity and informality are two different things.

?Tone of voice? is something that needs to be judged individually as there are always several issues to take into consideration ? national, regional and local culture, nature of your business, current fashions and trends, etc. And of course, there is your own or your organization?s personality to consider, too.

Corporate personality (brand) and voice

To many marketing communication practitioners, a company?s character is expressed through a kind of anthropomorphized voice ? or the ?corporate voice,? as it?s known. It?s an attempt to make big organizations appear more real and touchy-feely to their customers and talk to them in a human way, which of course is a good thing.

I believe that much of this trend has emerged via the Internet, which despite connecting total strangers thousands of miles apart entirely by electronic means offers communication that?s surprisingly intimate. Whereas major corporations can sometimes get away with being pompous and condescending in their expensively produced glossy literature, somehow the ugly little electronic screen makes such posturing look silly.

People want to communicate online with companies just like they communicate with their friends and colleagues online ? in a way that?s both informal and approachable. As a result of this many successful businesses have developed a corporate personality that?s snappy and direct while at the same time being friendly, honest and cheerful. And that works well within its context.

Where we?re aiming to achieve more widespread marketing objectives, however, we?d better be sure that our corporate personality is capable of getting along very well with the entire customer base ? internal as well as external ? no matter what the circumstances. It?s great when things are going well. Not so great when you?re fire-fighting a failure in a product line or a health scare or price rises or any of the other less cheerful issues businesses sometimes have to deal with.

Simple English, please

No matter how small and localized an organization you run or work in, the moment you go online and launch a website, in theory at least, you are operating internationally. While the academics are musing anxiously over the linguistic dilemma, we in the business world need to get on and use English in a way that all English speakers (and those with English as a second language) can understand.

I feel that one of the greatest gifts given to the English language by the United States is simplicity, although there are some who would argue that simplified English is not a purely North American invention. Okay, I do appreciate that some popular ways of saying things in American English are actually the ways those things were said a few hundred years ago in England (a good example is ?I guess,? so I?m told) so maybe they haven?t introduced anything new after all.

But whatever conclusion you draw from all this, the bottom line is that I believe the US culture ? particularly the culture of American-style advertising, if you can call that a culture ? has helped make it okay to speak and write in more simple, more active words across all the English-speaking nations.

Technical content

Another important issue to think about when creating the right writing style for a given audience is how much they know about the subject matter. There are two key points to consider here:

1. It?s essential that whatever you write is no more complex than that which the LEAST technically literate of your audience can handle

2. (and this is the opposite side of the same coin) Never insult your audience by assuming they know LESS than they actually do.

What this means is that you need to position the technical literacy level of your main, central message very carefully, if you?re going to avoid upsetting some members of your audience.

For more information on how to articulate your business and marketing messages, check out my full article list on this site.

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So don?t forget ? reMAMBA!

For a digest of all five reMAMBA key sections, click here.