You’ve Heard of Design Thinking. Welcome to Reporter Thinking.
I see it every day. CEOs fumbling through meandering, confusing, meaningless descriptions of their value prop. PR reps tripping over jargon as they struggle to craft a clear, compelling pitch. Marketing teams getting stuck on strategy-lacking glue traps, such as hosting stakeholder brainstorming sessions to come up with a new tagline for the home page.
What’s the problem? Most companies approach messaging from the outside in. It’s like asking a group of people to design a weekly religious ritual and prayer, along with a bunch of songs filled with minor falls and major lifts — but you haven’t yet thought about what god(s) you believe in.
Too many marketing teams are focused on channeling Don Draper in search of the ultimate slogan, when what they really need to do is think like a reporter.
Why? Because the best messaging is always rooted in truth and authenticity. Your customers, investors and employees know when something smells “off.” At the root of that stench is a lack of true understanding of your vision and a misunderstanding of your common mission.
So what is reporter thinking? It’s similar to the idea of design thinking, which is that helps you understand the humans who will use your product in order to solve their problems. Reporter thinking is a process that requires you to understand yourself in order to help your audience understand you.
Reporter thinking is a means of asking questions that will inform your creative process and guide you toward a narrative that is truly meaningful and will resonate with your audience.
Reporter thinking is the core of how I work. It was forged in my formative years when I was a writer and editor at Forbes. I’ve used it as an in-house marketing lead, and I use it every day as a brand and messaging consultant to help companies get unstuck.
Here’s how you do it:
Step one: Put someone in charge who isn’t afraid to tell you the truth.
Consider bringing in an outsider to lead this project. This person should have nothing to lose if the conclusion isn’t very flattering. It should be someone who will tell truth to power because that is what you are paying them to do. When I was a journalist, I would occasionally publish a story that a source didn’t like. They’d call me on the phone and yell at me, sometimes threatening to call my editor. I’d tell them, “Please do call my editor. If you complain about my piece being too critical and objective, I’ll get a raise!” This is the attitude you want for this job. What you don’t want: People who complain privately about a lack of direction but who are afraid to speak up to leadership.
Step two: Search for the facts.
Report the hell out of your own company as if you were a journalist writing a cover story about your business. Keep in mind, at some point in your future, you will have a journalist on your trail sniffing for truth, so you may as well prepare for it now. Interview every stakeholder who has an opinion. Interview your investors and customers. Consider anonymizing all the feedback. People will be more honest if they know their comments won’t be used against them. Tune your bullshit detector to “high.” Search for jargon as if each canned phrase was a cancerous tumor.
Step three: Ask questions that cut to the core of who you are.
Don’t waste time talking about features. Go deeper. This should feel like therapy. What does the founder and/or CEO believe? Why did they risk everything to start this business? What are the biggest problems you are solving? Problems. Not solutions. What does no one else know? What valuable insight do you have that no one else has figured out? What is the lens through which you see the world?
Step four: Ask Why Now.
Why is now the time to do this? Literally, you should ask yourself why six months ago wasn’t the right time to do this, or 6 months from now. You should know the Why Now of the supply side as well as the demand side. What has changed about regulations, politics, culture, technology or science to make this possible? Why are people clamoring for this?
Step five: Tell me why should I care.
Put yourself in the shoes of your audience. Who are they? What do they want? What are they afraid of? What do they need? Why should they care about what you are doing?
Step six. Be original.
You will never win if you copy the competition. You already know this is true when it comes to product. The same is true of your identity and your story. If your audience has heard it before, it has lost all meaning. Any time you come across something in your messaging that your competition has already said, delete it.
“Toms can be Dicks and Dicks can be Harrys, but none of them can ever be you.” — e.e.cummings
Step seven. When all else fails, just tell the truth.
Even if you aren’t a good writer, just tell your story as it really happened. Describe your product as it really is, and what it actually does. Use words an eighth grader can understand. Your message will always resonate if it’s authentic to who you are.
“Write one true sentence. Write the truest sentence that you know.”
— Ernest Hemingway, A Moveable Feast
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