Should messaging/positioning change from release to release? Or should it be broad enough to carry you through at least a year?

It really depends on your release cycles and the nature of how your product will evolve.

Ideally you'll want to know enough about your product vision so that positioning and messaging scales with new feature development. Think of them both as a scaffolding in that sense, so that when you're ready to add another feature/product element, it will feel like a natural progression and extension, vs a radical change in product direction. 

When Apple announced the iPhone back in 2007, they very quickly hinted at the SDK/APIs to build applications. Within the next year, they announced the App Store with even greater fanfare. Now I doubt they had all the elements worked out regarding the look and feel of the App Store back when they announced the iPhone, but they certainly paved the way for it so that it didn't come as a surprise.

My rule of thumb: be deliberate but incremental. 

Yes, messaging and positioning should be revisited for every single release. It is something you are constantly battle testing and iterating on. The best messaging is not something you research, create once and then go back to on an annual basis. The magic is in the iteration of messaging and positioning. 

Test it with your team, your co-workers, your sales teams, your executives, your partners, analysts, and subject matter experts. Test it on prospects, customers, your friends and family. Have your sales team and executives test it out on the field. Test it in your digital marketing campaigns and webinars. Humans and people are the consumers of our messaging and they have to understand it and connect with it. Look at what you compete against and keep testing it against that (because your competitors are also releasing new products, services and messaging too).

Every piece of feedback and data point will inform the next iteration of your messaging. If it doesn’t resonate with someone, get the feedback and iterate. If you’ve nailed your ideal customer profile and they don’t want to buy from you? It’s not them, it’s your messaging then that’s off. And you keep iterating. That's how we look at things here at Zuora.

We have our brand messaging "The Subscription Economy" and that hasn't changed in many years (but was tested and iterated on for 3 years). We have our corporate messaging and positioning that only changes once a year max as that should be very high level and broad enough to carry us through the next year. Then we have our messaging and positioning for our individual products, our portfolio of products and our releases. There’s also messaging/positioning for our verticals, competitive intel and campaigns. These messages will change with each major product release or shift in the market and will have a faster iteration of them either on a monthly, quarterly or annual basis. All of this ties and maps together. All of this messaging is constantly in a different state of iteration and development, pending the feedback we get.

Tip for product level or lower level messaging: the second you publish your messaging, consider it already old and you should start working on your next iteration. Especially, if you have a lot of competitors, because they now know what your message/position is and may soon very well be copying you or positioning against you -- and you should already be working on your next version behind the scenes.

IMO I am a firm believe that positioning should not change, it should simply be enhanced. 

Define your foundational messaging for your product or service first. Once you have that, from release to release you'll continue to build on that message and show how this release is driving additional value for customers

You dont want to confuse your customers too much either, so changing too often may not be the best idea. 

I will say that there are some MAJOR releases your product may go through that may even impact some of your foundational message. The way to rectify that though is to always thinnk about "Is this adding a new solution that customers value?" is this a unique differentiator from competition??

I think it's essential to have some sort of lasting and broader messaging house for everybody internally to rely on. It's the only way to scale and maintain messaging across an organization. Internally for us, this looks like Confluence documentation https://www.atlassian.com/software/confluence/templates/message-house that is updated regularly. It's a one-stop-shop though for the marketing team to be able to send to any team internally to reference how we message and market our product and features. When you are small and scrappy it's possible for one person or a few people to do this without a proper document but as your team grows and as more and more people work in a distributed way a messaging house becomes a necessity - in fact, it's something I recommend prioritizing early because once it's too late it becomes a big cleanup job, with a messaging house you can set your team up for success long-term by providing the guardrails and guidelines early and often.

When it comes to new features and releases it can be really helpful to create essentially mini-messaging houses that help the group rally around how you will be bringing said feature to market. It not only builds alignment but it again becomes a document that you can look back on and point people towards in the future.  

As a general best practice, I think messaging should live 6-12 months with minor updates and no major overhauls. The 6 month window is for macro changes that no one expected. This is for all of us who created messaging 6 months before ChatGPT launched. We all had to pivot to bring AI in and no one saw that massive shift happening. The 12 month window is to force us to make big changes every year to drive excitement from customers and our sales teams. We can't wait too long to update.