How Does a Messaging Platform Get Implemented?

The following is the first in a series of articles focused on messaging implementation.

Food for Thought
Spoonfuls is the largest food recovery operation of its kind in New England. The organization saves healthy, fresh food that would otherwise be discarded and distributes it to community organizations.

In 2023, Spoonfuls engaged Libretto to assist with the enhancement of its messaging platform as part of an effort that included implementing both a new strategic plan and an organizational rebrand. According to Joni Kusminsky, senior director of communications and public affairs at Spoonfuls, “Our engagement with Libretto was largely driven by the fact we were making the transition fro a scrappy startup to a midsize organization of about 40 staff doing more expansive work across Massachusetts. We knew our messaging was going to be a core component of both the strategic plan implementation and the rebrand—it would inform everything from our website content and new collateral to stakeholder conversations.”

Key Ingredients
Joni believes that the process of undertaking a messaging initiative can be of tremendous benefit to a mission-driven organization. “It’s really helpful to go through a deep exploration of who you are and your identity as a business, so that what you say about yourself, your work, and your impact is authentic.” To that end, Libretto worked with Spoonfuls to build on a platform that Joni and her team had developed internally, which involved incorporating language around the organization’s growth initiatives and the evolving priorities articulated in its strategic plan. Notes Joni, “We were so close to the internal messaging work we had done—it was useful for us to have the perspective of someone from the outside who would look at what we were doing, compare it against their sense of us, and tell us what was landing and what wasn’t.”

At the core of the document is the overarching idea of “Delivering Food with Purpose,” supported by key messages focused on Spoonfuls’ “triple bottom line” (People, Planet, Economy); its organizational differentiators; its work around education, advocacy, and justice; and its philanthropic priorities. Libretto also collaborated with the Spoonfuls team to explore alternatives to Lovin’ Spoonfuls, the organization’s previous name; modifying the name to “Spoonfuls” eventually emerged as a solution that would preserve the best aspects of the existing brand while conveying the sense of gravitas and deep purpose characteristic of its work.

A Recipe for Success
Under Joni’s leadership, the implementation of Spoonfuls’ messaging platform has been highly successful. “It makes our lives so much easier to have a robust repository of blessed content,” she explains. “All of our people feel confident pulling from that content when they’re speaking publicly about Spoonfuls—whether they’re reaching out to a donor, or out on the road as part of our food recovery team. It’s also made the work of our communications and public affairs team more effective and efficient, since we’re all speaking with a unified voice and drawing from the same source.”

Implementing ongoing enhancements to the platform has been another ingredient of Spoonfuls’ success. Joni and her team update elements of the messaging toolkit periodically to reflect emerging initiatives and detailed program information while continuing to rely on “evergreen” language related to Spoonfuls’ mission and core beliefs. “As soon as we had the messaging in hand, I started hearing from folks throughout Spoonfuls—such as our program and development teams—who were looking for new and expanded talking points,” she recalls. “We met with each team to illustrate how to utilize the messaging in their work, and then crafted specific language for them that we worked into the platform.”

All Aboard
Spoonfuls has also incorporated the messaging into its onboarding process. New staff members are quizzed on the messaging after several months; identifying gaps in their knowledge gives them an opportunity to gain a deeper connection to parts of the organization that are less familiar to them. Joni and her team have also asked community members and other external stakeholders to weigh in on relevant parts of the messaging. For example, they recently reached out to an individual connected with Spoonfuls’ advocacy work to share the revised messaging around that area. “Soliciting outside input helps ensure that our work around communications and public affairs stays on track,” she notes.

Several years in, Joni’s team—and the Spoonfuls organization as a whole—continues to derive value from the platform. “I like to say that our messaging needs to be as fresh as the food we recover,” she explains. “All of us at Spoonfuls are encouraged to lean into the platform. Everyone on our team brings their own experiences, lens, and expertise to food recovery; having core talking points that we all share makes a tremendous contribution to both our consistency and our brand credibility.”

Keeping it Fresh
Tips from Joni for organizations contemplating the role that messaging can play in their strategic communications:

• Integrate messaging with strategic planning. “Our messaging helped us articulate our vision for where we were headed as we geared up for expansion. The language in the platform also helped lay the foundation for our philanthropic case for support.”
• Use it as scaffolding for storytelling. “Our brand works because there’s strong messaging behind it. That scaffolding allows our team members to use language from the platform as a launchpad for telling compelling stories about Spoonfuls.”
• Don’t let it sit on a shelf. “At Spoonfuls, our dedicated communications and public affairs team is always tracking the performance of the messaging platform across the organization, including when it’s modified, how it’s used, and how to best evolve it based on input from our internal and external stakeholders.”