Prepare for launch

Launches and campaigns all require key messaging that touches on these questions and explains more about why people should care. To arrive at clean, simple messaging that makes your point loud and clear, you should rely on two acronyms:

SOCO: Single Overriding Communications Objective

Whether you’re developing a brand identity or campaign work or a video, you want to be able to articulate the one most important thing you want the work to communicate. Just one thing. Know it by heart.

Example: Dropbox

“It just works.” It relays all of the simplicity, security and user ease that the brand wants to project, and it's easy for people to repeat over and over again.

SOCA: Single Overriding Communications Avoidance

The complete opposite of your SOCO, this is the one thing that is the most important for you to avoid communicating. What is the one message, weakness, problem or liability that you absolutely don’t want users or the press to hear? Everyone who may be talking about your product or your company should have your SOCA firmly in mind.

Example: Mozilla VPN

The idea that you’re just like every other VPN solution that makes a tradeoff between security (e.g., hosted in China), reliability (e.g., unavailable in peak times), and speed (e.g., throttles connections).