“Brand messaging” is a term that can be very easily misunderstood. Because surely an organisation’s messaging is just everything it says about itself? And therefore, if you’re talking about a brand’s messaging, you’re simply using a fancy term to describe what it says about itself on its website? Well, not quite.
Brand messaging is best thought of as the quick associations you want people to make when they think about your brand. So for example, if you think of a brand like Ryanair, what’s the first word that pops into your head?
It’s probably “cheap”.
And this word didn’t latch itself on to “Ryanair” in your brain by accident. It came about because Ryan Air has consistently – in all of its brand storytelling – from its colour palette, through to everything it says about itself, has reinforced a message of “cheap”. So if you were asked to think of a cheap airline, you’d automatically think of Ryanair.
It’s similar if you think of a brand like Apple. If you’re in Apple’s target audience, the words that pop into your head are likely to include: Cool, design and intuitive. Again, these words didn’t get there by accident. Apple has systematically reinforced messages about leading design and creating intuitive products.
Think of brand messaging as the themes you want to be known for
So if you’re just starting out with brand messaging, a great way to think about it is articulating the themes you want to be known for.
We’re not talking about crafting copy here. Instead, we’re talking about creating a framework that will inform copy and design so that it consistently conveys a top-level theme.
If we go back to Ryanair as an example, it did not accidentally opt for a colour palette of yellow and blue. It actively chose the palette because yellow and blue is the colour language of DIY and cheap (which is why the Lidls, Aldis, IKEAs, Walmarts and Best Buys are yellow and blue… and why luxury brands will never be yellow and blue). It’s also why its language is short, sharp and brash. In other words, its message of “cheap” is communicated consistently in every single thing it designs, says and does.
And if we look at Apple, its colour palettes are premium – white, black, silver. And its language is sparse. It consistently conveys premium, design messaging.
Why have a messaging framework?
A messaging framework does two things:
- It acts as a consistent reminder to people creating your content that they need to frame it in a way that allows your key themes to be communicated – which leads to consistent expression and your customers knowing you for the things you want to be known for
- It makes it easier for your teams to create content that consistently positions you in the right way
Let’s imagine you have a wearable tech offer. You could position it in any way that you think makes sense for your market. It could be luxury. Or it could be easy. Or it could be fun. (And a million other things besides.)
You decide that the right positioning for your market is: Fun health, easy, indestructible. These are the three concepts you want people to associate with your brand:
- Fun health
- Ease of use
- Durability
This helps your design team to create products and a visual identity that is fun, easy and feels tough and durable.
It also gives you a framework for how you frame all your communications – both internally and externally. A job ad, for example, should be framed as:
Come and have fun at XYZ corp… help us make great health easy for millions of people across the world… We want to hear from people who are in it for the long haul, who are tough enough to share new ideas and who work relentlessly to make the best possible products…
Meanwhile, the homepage of the wearable tech brand’s website might say something like:
More fun than Zumba
Find out how easy it is to be healthy
Will never let you down
The words fun, easy and durable don’t necessarily need to be there, literally – but the things you describe should evoke their spirit every single time. If “fun health”, “easy” and “durable” work as top-level themes for the company, they can be used to frame all communications.
So how do you get started with brand messaging?
Start with your brand platform. It should define everything you are to your customers and to the sector you operate within. It’s highly likely that your messaging themes are already expressed within your brand platform and can be pulled out to develop further.
Your brand messages are unlikely to be granular details of “what” you do. They’re more likely to be the benefits of what you do – or the reasons why your company operates.
At this very top level, the themes represent what you will say to an audience of everyone – for example, on the homepage of your website.
Then you need to think about your different audiences and how your messages work for them. So let’s imagine our wearable tech company always talks about “fun health” first when it’s talking to everyone. But it also has a B2B audience – which maybe includes the NHS. For this audience, its first message won’t be fun. It’s more likely to be “durability” or “ease of use” first – with “fun health” coming in third.
For B2B healthcare provider partnerships…
And if it’s talking to investors, the messaging is likely to be:
The specific content changes, but the themes remain the same.
Why does this approach to brand messaging work?
Business people can sometimes be wary about claims made by marketing and brand specialists. They have been trained to value logic – and to question everything. Which can make a concept like brand messaging seem like hocus pocus… or only effective on people who are mindless in their consumption of the latest and coolest gadgets.
But this is a view that overlooks the way human beings have to process information. Fundamentally, we are all exposed to far too much information to be able to think analytically and dispassionately about every single last thing we see, hear or read. So what we do instead is look for shortcuts. In behavioural economics, these shortcuts are called “heuristics”. And we can’t navigate life without them.
So when you make a decision to own your organisation’s story and deploy it strategically, what you are doing is providing mental shortcuts for your clients and customers to know you by. Your messages need to become a set of simple heuristics – or shortcuts to understanding your brand.
So if the wearable tech brand tells its audiences consistently that it is about “fun health” they are likely to accept that it is. They will then factor this story into their decision making: Do I want the fun brand, the cool brand or the serious, complicated-looking brand?
(Of course, the offer has to live up to the promise. The wearable tech company wouldn’t survive the social media backlash that would follow any un-fun experiences using its products.)
What happens if you don’t have a systematic approach to brand messaging?
If you don’t tell your customers what the story of your brand is, then your customers will make up their own versions of it. For the wearable tech company, this could mean that to some customers, they’re an “exercise watch”. To others, maybe they’re a “health accessory”. To others still they might be, “a diet app”.
This doesn’t help the wearable tech company to associate brand-aligned concepts with its products. Which means that a competitor coming up in the wings potentially has free reign to dominate the landscape in any way it wants.
The bottom line is, if you own your messaging, you can take an unshakable position in your marketplace.