How our Build-A-Box workshop leads to better messaging
When we get hired for product marketing, website redesign, or repositioning projects, we love to run a particular workshop with our clients called Build-A-Box. We first learned about it at Intercom, but the idea originated in the book ‘Gamestorming’ by Dave Gray and Sunni Brown. We’ve adapted it slightly for our audience of B2B SaaS companies, but the bones of it remain the same.
What is Build-A-Box?
Build-A-Box is aptly named because you, well, “build a box” of core messaging for your product and company. On an actual box. By pretending that you’re doing marketing for a physical product with physical packaging (say, a Fitbit or an Apple computer), you are forced, due to space constraints, to distill your core messaging down to the essence. You don’t have the endless opportunity to scroll down as you do with a web landing page. You only have the real estate that is on the sides of your box. Additionally, the front, back, and sides of the box force prioritization for your message.
Inspiration in everyday things
A large part of this workshop takes place at home, but we like to make sure it doesn’t feel like homework. We first encourage participants to look around their house (usually the kitchen) and note some of their favorite products. You can usually find some great marketing examples that way. Here’s one that we found to be particularly inspiring: Sir Kensington’s Avocado Oil Mayonnaise (who knew!).
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Sir Kensington’s Mayonnaise
Made with 100% avocado oil (You hass to try it).
Free range eggs (The best for your nest).
A squeeze of lime juice (Zest to impress).
No artificial ingredients (It’s all good.)
Isn’t that messaging crisp and fresh? So little real estate and it doesn’t even matter. Sir Kensington has told you everything you need to know for buying this mayo and why it will be delicious. Sold!
Here is one more classic example we like to share:
Isn’t that descriptor — “Toasted Whole Oat Cereal” — just so…clear? We often muddle our message by trying to sound clever, but there is something to be said for describing what you do and how you do it without any extra jargon, complexity, or flowery language. It certainly is working for Cheerios. More than 70 years after its debut, General Mills still sells millions and millions of dollars worth of Cheerios each year.
Building your box
Armed with that inspiration, the other aspect of the take-home part of this assignment is to find a box around the house, some markers, and set aside an hour to get creative. We have our participants actually write on the box, so it’s often necessary to cover it up with paper on all sides.
Then it’s time to dig into the questions. On the front of the box, we want you to write down:
DESCRIPTOR: What does this product or company do?
HEADLINE: What’s a compelling headline that will make the buyer want this product?
IMAGE: What’s a compelling image to stop people in their tracks and say, hey, I need this product?
SUB-HEAD: This is a very brief problem statement followed by specifically how your product solves it.
BENEFITS: Key benefits and descriptions (aim for four)
At this point, if you think about it, you’ve essentially figured out the top part - the hero - of your landing page as well as the middle part of the page with benefit statements. I know we’re using a physical box to get your creative juices going, but ultimately, this will make up your messaging on your website. Isn’t it effective to get some new copy ideas? We think so.
From here, you’ll turn your box over by answering things like your key features, your ideal testimonial, and any key capabilities that might be different from features.
Presenting your box
By this point, you are so proud of your box, and you think it’s the best thing to be invented since Cheerios that you can’t wait to get to the workshop. We get it. We feel the same when we make our own boxes! That’s why we give our participants five minutes to pitch their box and share why it’s better than all the other boxes.
This is always a fun discussion because even though you’re proud of your own box, you get inspired by others’ boxes too, and it makes you realize that there are so many ways to handle messaging and copy for your product and company.
Once everyone has presented, we go back around and have a final conversation as a group about what we like and don’t like about all the boxes so we can get to some consensus and, ultimately, the “one build-a-box to rule them all.”
How Build-A-Box leads to great messaging
The beauty of this workshop is we get some alignment and consensus on key messaging themes before we ever present any website copy. Also, we can include more stakeholders in the conversation than might be on the project team managing the website or landing page, which we find helps with the review process down the road. And we’ve said it a few times now, but this forces brevity in a way that’s hard to replicate when you have a long landing page that you think you need to fill.
Interested in learning more or bringing the Build-A-Box workshop to your company? Talk to our product marketing experts.
