Messaging Matters: A Strategy for Building your Brand Story

Dave Demerjian

Principal, 43,000 Feet

Messaging is a fundamental but oftentimes overlooked aspect of branding. A messaging platform defines the who, what, where, how, and why of your organization. It articulates your key services, value proposition, and culture. Externally, it builds brand awareness and drives new business. Internally, it supports recruitment and retention and fosters loyalty and pride. It is the anchor on which so many winning brands are built. Messaging Matters: A Strategy for Building your Brand Story, is an interactive workshop that empowers communication and marketing professionals to lead their organizations through the process of creating their own brand messaging framework. During the workshop, we will introduce the foundational elements of a messaging platform. Then, we’ll walk participants through some of the interactive exercises creative agencies use when developing brand messaging for firms in the AEC space. These include: - Benchmark bootcamp: How and why to conduct a brand audit of peer or competitors. - The 4C’s: Clearly articulating your company, culture, customers, and competition. - Creating personas: A roadmap for defining your target audiences. - Building a value prop : A framework for clearly articulating what makes you unique and why it matters. - ChatGPT cheat sheet: Using AI as a tool for refining your messaging and storytelling.

Audience Takeaways

  • Messaging Matters will enable attendees to:

  • Understand how messaging is used by organizations to drive content and brand strategy.

  • Plan and lead exercises for defining and articulating strengths and differentiators, company values, culture, and audiences

  • Write the core components of a messaging toolkit, including pillars, voice/tone guidelines, and audience personas.

  • Build organizational buy-in and excitement around the process of creating and socializing messaging.

Conference Session Tracks

  • Domain Track: Promotional Activity & Business Development

  • Career Track: Early Career

  • Position Track: Marketing/Communications & Sales/Business Development

43,000 Feet Principal Dave Demerjian has more than a decade of experience providing messaging, naming, and content strategy for a wide range of clients in the AEC, technology, and higher education spaces. He and his team have collaborated on organizational messaging engagements for Goody Clancy, Shepley Bulfinch, ARC, BR+A, and a range of other organizations. Other key clients include MIT, Harvard University and Harvard Business School, Northeastern, Tufts, Brandeis University, Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, and Mass General Hospital.

Dave has written and spoken about branding and content strategy at MIT, Harvard Business School, and several higher education conferences. He worked for eight years as a journalist, writing features profiles, and essays for The Boston Globe, Fast Company, Wired, and the Boston Business Journal. He received a BA of Mass Communication from the University of Massachusetts Amherst, and an MA in Professional Communication from Northeastern University.

Connect with Dave on LinkedIn.