skills/design-marketing-communications/SKILL.md

---
name: design-marketing-communications
description: "Design marketing communications from a defined customer-state transition, meaning, recall, trust, comparison, expectation, and action path rather than from channels. Use when a user asks for a communications strategy, brand message, awareness or recall plan, PESO or touchpoint roles, TV/PR/SNS/Web/store integration, a functional-versus-emotional message decision, expectation and UX alignment, word-of-mouth or buzz design, or a route from paid contact into owned assets, search, sales, store, product, or customer success."
---

# Design Marketing Communications

Design the customer-state transition before selecting media or producing messages. Communication is one intervention within marketing; do not use it to replace product value, availability, price, implementation, or experience.

Read [references/state-and-meaning.md](references/state-and-meaning.md) for every substantive design. Read [references/touchpoint-and-transmission.md](references/touchpoint-and-transmission.md) when assigning PESO, real/digital roles, or word-of-mouth. Read [references/output-contract.md](references/output-contract.md) before returning a complete strategy.

## Establish the decision

Identify:

- Who must decide what and by when
- The customer, buying situation, and demand state
- The current customer state
- The single next state communication should create
- The behavior or downstream path that state should enable
- Product, price, distribution, experience, sales, or operational constraints
- The acceptable cost, trust risk, and review horizon

If the primary bottleneck is product value, availability, adoption, or continuation, do not recommend communication as the primary solution. Ask at most three questions that can change the state transition, then proceed provisionally when possible.

## Define one state transition

Use the smallest relevant path:

```text
Latent or unrecognized need
  → recognition or category entry
  → awareness and memory
  → recall in the buying situation
  → understanding and meaning
  → trust, preference, or consideration
  → comparison and choice
  → intended action
  → expectation and experience
  → re-recall, re-selection, or advocacy
```

Name:

- Current state
- Desired next state
- Barrier to transition
- Customer evidence that the transition occurred
- Downstream owner after communication

Do not attempt to move every state in one execution. Recall and trust may support multiple stages, but still define the primary transition.

## Diagnose the buying condition

Classify only what changes the design:

- Convenience versus specialty purchase
- Low versus high involvement
- Impulse versus planned purchase
- Individual versus organizational decision
- Immediate demand versus future demand
- Search-led, shelf-led, relationship-led, or habit-led choice

Treat these as contextual dimensions, not fixed product categories. The same offer may require different communication by use case.

## Design the meaning

Use:

```text
Product → meaning → customer context → choice
```

Define:

- The customer as subject, not the brand
- The situation in which the message should be recalled
- One meaning the customer should reconstruct
- The choice reason that meaning supports
- Proof or experience that makes it credible
- What should not be remembered or overpromised

Measure success by what was reconstructed, not what was transmitted. Reduce information before adding more. Do not use brand jargon that requires the sender to explain it.

## Balance function, story, emotion, and logic

Assign roles rather than choosing a universal winner:

- Function creates understanding and practical credibility.
- Story creates context, empathy, and motivation.
- Emotion starts or accelerates attention and action.
- Logic removes uncertainty, perceived risk, and braking forces.

Match the mix to involvement, decision risk, prior knowledge, and channel context. Do not frame function versus story or emotion versus reason as a permanent binary.

## Design recall and selection

For recall work, specify:

- Category-entry or need moment
- Memory cue
- Distinctive meaning or association
- Reach and repetition logic
- Competitive and physical availability context
- Route from recall to access or comparison

Do not equate delivered awareness with recall in a buying situation. If the offer is recalled but not chosen, work on selection reason, proof, price, risk, or access rather than more awareness alone.

## Align expectation and experience

Map the promise across advertising, PR, social proof, site, sales, store, packaging, onboarding, product, and CS.

Check:

- What expectation communication creates
- What the customer actually experiences
- Time and effort to reach value
- Where overstatement creates disappointment
- Where under-explaining prevents value recognition
- Which downstream team owns the handoff

Do not maximize conversion by creating expectations the experience cannot satisfy.

## Assign touchpoint roles

Use PESO as a role map, not a checklist:

- **Paid:** controlled contact, reach, timing, and short-term acceleration.
- **Earned:** third-party credibility, public relevance, and interpretation.
- **Shared:** peer transmission, participation, conversation, and UGC.
- **Owned:** depth, evidence, comparison, action, relationship, and reusable memory.

Assign every touchpoint one primary state transition and a handoff. Connect paid contact to owned or operational assets when continued understanding, action, or relationship matters.

Combine digital breadth and observability with analog depth, embodiment, proximity, or trust where useful. Do not default to either channel family.

## Design transmission without promising buzz

For word-of-mouth or buzz, design:

- The reason one person would give it to another
- The narrow first subject who sees themselves in it
- The existing conversation, frustration, identity, or useful task it joins
- The emotion the sharing helps process
- The social cost or ambiguity that might stop transmission
- A path for meaning to remain accurate as it travels

Treat content, timing, platform, context, and emotion as an interacting chain. Do not promise virality, reach, who will be hit, or repeatability.

## Define measurement and guardrails

Select measures that match the transition:

- Delivery: reach, exposure, frequency, completion
- State change: recognition, recall, understanding, trust, preference, consideration
- Path behavior: search, direct visit, comparison, store action, inquiry, trial
- Experience: expectation gap, activation, satisfaction, complaint, return, continuation
- Transmission: share motive, message fidelity, relevant conversation, earned response

Use:

```text
Baseline
Desired Signal
Counter-signal
Guardrail
Review window
Action if crossed
```

Do not attribute sales directly without a defensible counterfactual and control of material non-communication variables.

## Return a communications design

Use the compact or full structure in [references/output-contract.md](references/output-contract.md). Include:

- Current and desired customer state
- Barrier and intervention mechanism
- Meaning to reconstruct and proof
- Function/story/emotion/logic roles
- PESO and touchpoint handoffs
- Expectation-experience alignment
- Signal, counter-signal, guardrail, and review point
- What not to communicate or optimize

## Guardrails

- Do not select channels before defining the state transition.
- Do not use communication to cover absent product value or availability.
- Do not call exposure, impressions, or views customer-state change.
- Do not optimize immediate conversion through false scarcity, misleading framing, or expectation inflation.
- Do not equate awareness with recall, preference, or choice.
- Do not present function and story, emotion and logic, or digital and analog as fixed opposites.
- Do not promise buzz, earned coverage, UGC, or precise virality.
- Do not attribute revenue to communication without a defensible counterfactual.
- Do not present Marketing Compass classifications as universal industry terminology.