When I first used this with Microsoft, we leaned very much on customer research, which meant that the process around positioning and messaging took about five months. If you’re working in a big, complex organization, it might take up to eight months. But I’ve also used the same approach in a more streamlined version with startups where the whole process only took a month, because what was most important was to get a stake in the ground and start iterating.

While there's eventually going to be a time when the messaging is locked in, up until that point, this is a living document. If anyone is working asynchronously—they might be providing feedback or adding new inputs—they should change this date.


I started using this framework when we were launching the Microsoft Dynamics brand. This was a new brand, with a new set of products for Microsoft, that we were looking at launching internationally across many different subsidiaries. We needed to develop the positioning and messaging, but it was just as important that we were able to clearly communicate that positioning and messaging to a very broad set of stakeholders in a way that made sure we had consistency around our messaging as we moved into many different markets. Even if individual marketers are just using the outputs here, they need to be able to understand the entire storyline of why we’re using this messaging, and how we got to this point.

It’s important that PMs and PMMs are aligned on one messaging framework so that they can make the decisions that need to be made and clearly articulate to the organization as a whole what the narrative is, how it’s going to be told, and how it’s going to be executed. Without that alignment, things can become very theoretical, when this really should be a very tactical body of work.

Ideally, you want to start this process as far out from launch as possible. My perspective on this was shaped during my time at Amazon, and I’ve carried it through my career. There are three big stages. The first is strategy, which is really early: this is where you know that you’re building a product or major feature, along with the elements that will bring it to life. The next is where you’re creating messaging in parallel with your PM. You want to have enough time to embed as much customer insight as you can, and you want to have good review loops because you want your whole organization to embrace this messaging. And finally, you’re rolling it out to your marketing managers who are actually creating all the assets, which also takes time. At a big company like Amazon, that might mean months of work before launch; at a small startup, it might only be two weeks. Either way, you need to truly understand the size and complexity of the project and then work backwards from the launch date to be sure that you have enough time to go through all these milestones and launch with consistent messaging across all your different channels.

At Amazon, for example, the PM and PMM roles are so well understood and embedded in the culture that there isn’t a lot of potential for disconnect. If they’re defining messaging as part of a GTM process, there’s a clear process where a PM has a product review and then that’s followed by a PMM review. At startups, in my experience, it’s a little bit more agile and less defined: people are wearing a lot of hats, and it’s likely that either the CEO or Head of Product are actually taking on a PMM role as part of their PM role. As these orgs grow and evolve, it’s important to understand that you can have two complementary roles that allow you to do more. Deciding when exactly you need a PMM is challenging, but I think it’s just a function of asking: When do you need to be launching products better to accelerate your growth. If the answer is “now,” then that’s when you need a PMM.

Positioning should be your long-term view. Who do you want to be in the marketplace? What is that space that you want to own? Messaging is: How do we tell that story today? So as your product starts to evolve and change, your messaging should start to evolve and change. You're rolling out new features, you have a broader story to tell. How do you adapt that to your story? So you start iterating as the product evolves. And you want to bring that back to an updated messaging framework that anybody in the company can go look up and understand what the messaging is.


Depending on the size of your organization, you should be looking at refreshing your messaging every six to 12 months based on what's coming in from both the marketplace and your customers.


Tania Francis

Consistent messaging is key to any successful product launch. This comprehensive framework will ensure alignment between PMMs and PMs, as well as across your org.

A messaging framework helps to create the foundation of all communications for [Product Name], and it should be used as a reference and a guide for developing marketing assets.  This framework is comprehensive and it guides you through the inputs that will ultimately inform your messaging. While 

should feel comfortable sharing the messaging framework broadly with their cross functional teams, it is important to highlight the areas that are strategic inputs to be used only within the organization and the outputs, which are copy ready messages that can be used as plug and play or to inform iterations of the same ideas in customer facing communications.

Review the content areas to understand all the different inputs that you will need to inform messaging.

. This artifact provides a rich and comprehensive framework but consider the size and complexity of your organization, and size the effort appropriately.

Partner with your cross functional team members and lean on research and behavioral data to fill in the various sections.

  Work through various drafts, get input from your cross functional partners, and test messaging. Define your reviews and approvers.  

Messaging is dynamic; as such it should change as your product changes and evolves.

Single product companies should see this as their Brand messaging, however multi-product companies should develop a separate framework for each of their core products. Product messaging should ladder up to the brand framework by mapping product messaging themes to the brand positioning and brand pillars, ensuring you are supporting the Brand story in every communication. Example: Create a messaging framework for Kindle Oasis that ladders up to the Kindle brand.

General background: anyone in your organization should understand your product and how it fits into the vision of the company and the brand architecture.

Positioning is the ‘place’ you want to own in the hearts and minds of customers, to compete and win. This table serves as a guide to help you draft a statement that captures how your product uniquely solves a problem, for a specific audience, and how this is meaningfully different for your target audience and from how the competition solves a similar problem. You’ll want to draw on customer insights to draft this statement and you’ll want to iterate on your intended positioning until it represents your Product. Think of it as a mirror, when you read it, it should reflect place you want to carve for the Product. And it demonstrates why your Product solves the JTD. 

This section maps the relationships between the various messaging frameworks that you may encounter as you develop marketing communications.

Final customer facing messaging themes and copy that all marketing teams can use to create content that is consistent in tone, voice, and message.

This section provides you with a quick “snapshot” of our key messages and the character those messages should embody to achieve our goals. Note, the character description is to be used as a litmus test for ALL communications for [Product Name] describing the tone of voice and manner in which we need to communicate to connect and convey the benefits to our target.

 The snapshots below articulate three important benefits: definitional; functional; and aspirational benefits. Deep customer research showed that customers found statements to be more compelling and believable when the benefits were presented in this order.  These statements should not be modified, they are the foundation for communicating a consistent product story and for driving clarity across the product line.

This section outlines general messaging dos and don’ts as well as specific dos and don’ts we’ve learned through customer research for [Redacted]. Please use these as guardrails for setting parameters for brand communications.

Product Messaging Framework from Tania Francis

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