skills/design-marketing-communications/references/touchpoint-and-transmission.md

# Touchpoint and Transmission Design

## Contents

1. PESO roles
2. Handoff design
3. Function, story, emotion, and logic
4. Word-of-mouth and buzz
5. Ethical selection environment

## 1. PESO roles

| Type | Primary strength | Typical limitation |
|---|---|---|
| Paid | Controlled reach, frequency, timing, acceleration | Borrowed attention and cost stops with spend |
| Earned | Third-party interpretation and credibility | Low control and uncertain timing |
| Shared | Peer transmission, participation, conversation | Meaning can mutate; platform dynamics matter |
| Owned | Depth, evidence, comparison, action, relationship | Requires discovery, trust, and ongoing maintenance |

PESO is a role allocation, not a requirement to use all four.

## 2. Handoff design

For each touchpoint, define:

- Entry context
- Primary customer-state transition
- Message or experience unit
- Evidence or proof
- Next destination
- Handoff owner
- Failure and recovery path

Examples:

- Paid → Owned for evidence, comparison, or action.
- Earned → Search/Owned for verification.
- Shared → Owned for accurate meaning and durable access.
- Offline experience → digital relationship or service follow-up.

## 3. Function, story, emotion, and logic

- Function: what it does and how it works.
- Story: why the situation matters and how the customer locates themselves in it.
- Emotion: attention, motivation, identity, relief, or urgency.
- Logic: proof, comparison, predictability, and risk reduction.

Use the mix required by the barrier and buying condition. Avoid ideological preference for one mode.

## 4. Word-of-mouth and buzz

Sharing normally performs a task for the sender:

- Explain something
- Help someone
- Signal identity or position
- Process emotion
- Join an existing conversation
- Be early or useful

Design the transfer reason, first narrow subject, conversation context, emotional function, and message fidelity. Remove social cost, ambiguity, or sender irrelevance where possible.

Buzz is an emergent chain across content, timing, platform, context, and emotion. It cannot be guaranteed or mechanically reproduced.

## 5. Ethical selection environment

Use behavioral insights to diagnose attention, framing, choice overload, social proof, inertia, and perceived loss. Do not create false scarcity, deceptive anchors, hidden choices, or closed information environments. Evaluate short-term conversion and long-term trust together.