Journal · Essay
Message houses are not scripts
The message house is the most useful document we write and the most misunderstood. It is a plan of what is true and what matters, not a set of sentences to recite.
I wrote the firm’s first guidance on message houses in 2004, and I have revised it this month for the fifth time. The core of it has not changed: a message house is a plan of an argument, not a script.
It has three parts. The roof is the one thing an organisation most needs people to understand: not the thing it most wants to say, which is usually different. The pillars, three or four of them, are the things that hold the roof up. The footing is the evidence: facts, figures, actions and documents that anyone can check. If something cannot be supported by the footing, it does not belong in the house.
RoofThe one thing we most need people to understand
- Pillar 1What happened, as far as we know it
- Pillar 2What we are doing about it
- Pillar 3What it means for the people affected
- Pillar 4What we will do next, and when
The most common mistake is to treat the house as a set of lines. Spokespeople who have been handed one tend to recite it, and recited lines sound exactly like recited lines. The house should be learned, not memorised. A good spokesperson can be asked any question and find their way back to the roof in their own words, because they understand why the roof is there.
The second most common mistake is to build the roof first. The roof should come last. Start with the footing, because the footing is what you can prove; build the pillars from what the footing will bear; and only then decide what the roof can honestly say. A house built from the roof down tends to have a roof that the footing cannot support, and people notice.
The third mistake, which I have made myself, is to write a house that would embarrass its author if it were published. Every message house should be written on the assumption that it will one day be read by the people it was written about.