How to Use my ‘6A’ methoD to write an opinion article.
Using my Six A copywriting method, you can ensure the content will meet the standard for PR (and…
Component 05 · Narrative
6A Customer Story
Audience. Action. Arc. Argument. Authority. Attention.
The core storytelling framework. Forces the right diagnostic questions before a word is written, so every piece has a defined audience, a credible voice, and a real editorial angle.
The 6A Method is the storytelling engine at the heart of Full Funnel PR. It is a diagnostic framework — six questions every piece of thought leadership must answer before it is ready for a journalist’s inbox.
It works because it forces you to think like an editor, not a marketer. Editors do not care about the product. They care about their readers, about what is changing in the world, and about whether your perspective is credible, timely and backed by evidence.
It is a diagnostic checklist, not a step-by-step script. In practice I usually start with the Arc — what is changing in the world — work backwards to the Audience, define the Action, then build out the Argument and Authority to support it. Attention is usually added last: it provides the topical hook to hang the story on.
If any of the six answers are missing or vague, the content is not ready. That is the discipline. Nothing goes to a journalist until it is genuinely strong enough to earn its place.
6A in detail
- Audience — who are we talking to?
- “The industry” is not an audience. Describe the ICP. The more precisely you define who you are writing for, the more likely they are to recognise themselves in the story, and the more likely an editor is to see a fit with their readership.
- Action — what should they change?
- Describe the behavioural or intellectual shift you want to create: a question the reader asks themselves, a problem they had not framed properly, a belief to challenge. Good thought leadership invites the reader to think, not to buy.
- Arc — what is the context?
- Every strong article lives inside a wider narrative: a shift in the market, a tension between the old way and the new way, a change that creates winners and losers. Without it, your content is static.
- Argument — what is the proof?
- Opinion without evidence is noise. Combine rational proof — the data that satisfies the sceptic — with human examples that make the reader feel it. Head and heart together is what makes an article land.
- Authority — why trust you?
- Why is this spokesperson qualified to make this argument? Authority comes from direct experience, a unique vantage point, proprietary data, or sheer volume of relevant work. It must be proportionate to the claim.
- Attention — why now?
- Connect the story to something happening in the world right now: a regulatory shift, a data release, a trend reaching a tipping point. It answers the question every journalist asks first.
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