Message Development
A strategic message is a set of statements that prompts a targeted audience to take an action the organization desires.  Such messages are usually created to prompt a specific action -- such as having a legislator vote a certain way or having a parent get a child vaccinated -- or to advance corporate identify.  Less frequently, a strategic message is created to describe a complex idea.

These are short examples of situations in which Rebecca Leet & Associates has helped clients develop messages.

The Ford Foundation
When The Ford Foundation wanted to determine whether three of its journalism reform projects were similar enough to be presented collectively, it turned to Rebecca Leet & Associates to develop a way of doing that. As part of the message development process, Ford and the three projects discovered not only that they could be jointly described in a brief message but that they shared the same basic mission, goals, and target audiences. Ford subsequently awarded Rebecca Leet & Associates a substantial grant to provide marketing support services to the projects jointly.

The Center for the Study of Social Policy

The Center for the Study of Social Policy (CSSP) was launching a radical new approach to preventing child abuse and neglect in the United States.  It faced three major obstacles: the new approach was a drastic change, it was complex to explain, and CSSP had no means of implementing it.  To succeed, CSSP needed to persuade early childhood professionals, state agencies, and child abuse prevention activists to adopt its approach.  Rebecca Leet & Associates worked with CSSP to develop a series of strategic messages to support its 12-month launch of the new strategy, and the messaging helped it be more successful, quickly, than it had even dreamed.  When it sought pilot states to implement the approach, it feared that not even three would volunteer.  In fact, within two years, the approach was being adopted in 21 states, supported by the federal government, and integrated into national accreditation standards for early childhood centers.

Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation International
Juvenile Diabetes Foundation (its name then) had radically restructured its research program in a highly innovative way in order to accelerate the rate of breakthroughs on Type 1 diabetes. Unfortunately, no one except a few scientists understood the change well enough to explain it to Board members, funders, the news media, and others. Rebecca Leet & Associates was engaged to do message development so that all staff would have consistent and persuasive language with which to "sell" the dramatic new approach. In a series of three meetings with a Board-staff task force, we helped the organization identify the most important target markets for its message and create a 30-word message that explained what it had done, and why, and how its action would result in faster research progress. We then helped them develop messages for each audience and a tool to train affiliates in the use of the core and subset messages. Subsequently, we were engaged to work with their scientists to create brief, understandable, descriptive messages of the key discoveries being sought for use with non-scientific audiences.