On any given day, the average person is taking in hundreds of messages from many different sources. Your job is to make sure that your message can break through the clutter of all those other messages. A message that's too complex will be tuned out, and you'll have lost an opportunity to reach your intended audience. Use only a few pertinent words (e.g., "Just Do It"), and think "elegant simplicity."

Guiding Principle: The Message Triangle
Messages are most effective if they contain at most three points. For example, a general message might succinctly answer these three questions:

1. Problem Statement: What's the problem that your program addresses?
2. Program Strategy: How is your program addressing the problem?
3. Program Results/Call to Action: What outcomes do you expect from your program? OR: What evidence do you have that your program is succeeding? OR: What more needs to be accomplished , and what action can your audience take to help you?

Your message should be simple:

• Can it break through clutter?

It should strike a chord with the audience:

• Does it have immediate personal use?

It should be repeated frequently:

• Repeat it seven times to be heard!

Build in Meaning
Messages should resonate, be memorable, and draw a picture in the minds of your audience. The idea is to create a mental image that fits with your audience's motivations, beliefs, and attitudes.

Here are some tips for making your message accessible:

Use specific examples culled from your own or your clients' experience in order to "draw a picture" for your audience that reinforces your key points.

• Instead of relying on statistics, percentages, graphs, and charts to get across your message, break down the data into something easier for your audience to capture. Use colorful words, one-liners, and "social math" to illustrate your points and make the intangible more tangible. For example, "One out of four women will eventually be diagnosed with breast cancer" is a better example than "Twenty-five percent of women, all things being equal, are at risk of breast cancer." An example of social math: "College students spend more money on beer than on books."
• Start communicating from a point of consensus-begin with what the audience knows and believes. If you're trying to change behavior, look for the win-win (what's in it for them?). Work with what the audience knows, and show how a shift or a change in behavior creates a win-win situation for everyone.
• Avoid jargon. Using the jargon of social science, psychology, and education is a sure-fire way to lose your audience's attention. Test your message on your neighbor. If your neighbor doesn't understand the point you're making, chances are, neither will your target audience.

SW²C = So What? Who Cares?
A message will have "traction" if you can answer those two key questions. And your audience will respond if your message is immediate and relevant. Think about the following:

• What difference does your program make?
• Who should care?
• Why should they care?

Communicating Evaluation Results
Some of the best source material for your message comes from the evaluation activities you conduct along with your program implementation. Evaluation results in the form of process, outcome, impact, or cost-effectiveness/-benefit data may be the most persuasive information you have to relay to your audience. Your data can add muscle to your message and help answer the question, "So what?"

Below is an example of how to incorporate evaluation results into your Message Triangle:

• Problem Statement
  Very briefly explain the problem your program is addressing, using demographics and data collected from your formative research. In other words, paint the picture to answer your two key questions: So what? Who cares?
• Program Strategy and Results
  Briefly explain one or two things your program is doing to solve this problem. Describe the program's components, goals, and process. Briefly explain what your program has accomplished so far. Describe your outcome, impact, and/or cost-effectiveness/-benefit data. Enhance your quantitative data with qualitative data whenever possible. If you don't have complete data yet, you can always use interim results and back up their promise with anecdotal data and proxy measures.
• Call to Action
  What do you need from your audience? What do you want your message to ultimately do? What actions do you want your audience to take? Be explicit; don't assume that your audience knows what you want from them. For example you may ask for volunteers, funding, or policy change.