A few years back, James Carville told a group of communicators during a conference keynote that Bill Clinton’s victory in the 1992 presidential campaign rested largely on staying on message. The Democratic party strategist noted that candidate Clinton always returned the focus of conversations to the fact that “it’s the economy, stupid.”

In 2000, Democratic candidate Al Gore had no such focus, and few voters could tell you what the Gore campaign was all about. In 2008, on the other hand, Barack Obama embraced Carville’s approach; if you lived in the U.S. during the campaign, you had to be working hard at ignoring politics to not know that Obama promoted “Change you can believe in.”

Clearly, Obama had a message. Equally clearly, there was a market for that message. And the Obama team employed messaging techniques to make sure that message got across and resonated.

All of which flies in the face of conventional wisdom that asserts “there is no market for your message,” that messages and messaging are dead. In fact, if your message is irrelevant, self-serving, disingenuous or insulting, then there was never a market for your message. On the other hand, if your message is relevant, meaningful, helpful, accurate and/or interesting, then the market for that message is as vibrant today as it ever was. Getting that message into the heads of the people who make up that market requires messaging strategies.

I’ve long been troubled by the enthusiastic agreement to the notion that “there is no market for your message.” But the always-interesting Phil Gomes returned the issue to top of mind with a blog post titled, “Having a ‘message’ is fine, it’s the ‘messaging’ that sucks.” In his post, Phil draws a distinction between messages (it’s important to have them) and messaging, which Phil defines thusly:

The development and cloying repetition of corporatespeak statements devoid of meaning, rendered in a language that no one uses, delivered without the benefit of listening first, and presented in venues and contexts where they are clearly inappropriate.

Phil’s absolutely right if, indeed, that were the definition of messaging. It’s not, though. It’s the definition of bad messaging. It logically follows, then, the only bad messaging is bad. Good messaging is simply the strategic use of appropriate channels to make sure the right people—the market for your message—is able to find it and hear it.

“Messaging,” by the way, is a word. A recent podcast discussion suggested it was the inappropriate verbing of a noun, but the word appears in the Random House dictionary, among others, defined as “a system or process of transmitting messages, especially electronically.” There is nothing in this definition that requires corporatespeak, lack of listening, or inappropriate venues and contexts.

Executives and politicians who dodge media or customer questions, opting instead to parrot carefully rehearsed statements, engage in bad messaging. Good messaging is based primarily on an alignment between what you have to offer and the interests and concerns of the market. That is, good messaging begins with listening. You then develop the fundamental concepts you want your market to know.

A good current example of effective messaging is Microsoft’s pitch on Windows 7. At every opportunity, through every appropriate channel (that is, the channels that reach the influencers in the technology marketplace), Microsoft execs tout the fact that Windows 7 is easier to use, less intrusive, runs on older hardware and is compatible with just about everything. In fact, by offering an early beta of the OS to millions of people for free download, Microsoft has effectively boiled the message down to this: “It’s everything Vista should have been; try it yourself and you’ll see.”

So far, it has been an effective message, and one for which there is a well-defined market, evident in the volumes of content that has been created by bloggers, journalists, and others. The channels through which these messages were delivered include live conferences, interviews, briefings, and outreach to influencers. The result has been near-unanimous praise for Windows 7.

So don’t succumb to the popular notion that messaging is dead or that there is no market for your message. There’s no market for your bad message and bad messaging is dead. Good messages are based on…

• Knowing how your message will attract the attention of each appropriate market
• Ensuring the message is relevant to that market (that is, it has something to do with the lives and interests of the marketplace and it offers a way to make life better or easier)
• Clarifying your call to action (what do you want those who have heard your message to do?)

Getting that message into the heads of the intended recipients (i.e., “messaging”) requires the organization to consider all of its various communication opportunities and identify where the message fits—and ensuring anyone who speaks on behalf of the organization knows what the message is so they can adapt it for all appropriate conversations and communications.

It’s amusing when the same people who declare messages and messaging dead ask to hear your elevator pitch. If an elevator pitch isn’t a perfect example of messaging, what is?