What is a key message?
A key message is the point. It is the one idea that every piece of a campaign, interview, launch or presentation is built to land. If someone saw the work once and could repeat only one sentence, the key message is the sentence you want them to say. It is usually written in plain language for the team, not as ad copy, and then expressed in many different ways in the work itself.
Larger communications have a hierarchy: one key message at the top, a few supporting messages beneath it and the proof points that make each one believable. The key message stays fixed; the support adapts to each audience, channel and format. A launch film, a press release and a sales deck can all sound different and still land the same point.
Why it matters
Why a key message matters
Audiences do not remember much. Most people take away one idea from a piece of communication, if they take away anything at all. Choosing that idea in advance is the difference between a campaign that leaves a clear impression and one that leaves a vague feeling the brand was saying something. A key message also keeps large teams together. When a spokesperson, a film director, a social team and a PR firm are all working from the same sentence, the brand sounds like one voice instead of four.
It also makes measurement possible. If the team agreed in advance what people should come away believing, research after the campaign can ask whether they did. Without a key message, a campaign can only be judged on views and clicks, which say how many people saw it but not what they took away.
In practice
How a key message works in practice
- 01
It is written early, ideally in the creative brief, and tested by saying it out loud: if it takes more than one breath, it is two messages. Strong key messages are specific, true and about the audience rather than the company. A useful check is to ask whether a competitor could say the same sentence. If they could, it is not yet a key message.
- 02
Once agreed, it becomes a filter. Every script, headline, interview answer and cut of the film is checked against it, and anything that pulls focus from it is cut, however good it is on its own. In a film the key message is often never spoken at all; it is what the viewer concludes. In a long campaign it is worth revisiting the filter every few weeks, because drift creeps in one reasonable compromise at a time.
Watch out
What people get wrong about key messages
Having five. A brief that lists five key messages has none, because the work will try to say everything and the audience will hear nothing. The second mistake is confusing the key message with the tagline. The key message is the meaning; the tagline is one memorable way of expressing it, and a good campaign can land the message without ever using the line. The third is changing it halfway through a campaign, which resets everything the audience had started to learn.
