Branding and Messaging

The essence of communicating a brand has been done through messaging. In the cluttered world of marketing communications, effective messaging requires that your brand messages be simple, clear, limited in number, and repeated early and often. Buyers see thousands of messages every day; they pay them little or no attention so simplicity, clarity, and repetition are important for getting your message through.  

But messaging is a one-way street. It’s a great tool when you only have one-way communications and you need to reinforce your value proposition. But the beauty of digital marketing is that it’s not one-way. We can invite customers to respond to our content, to engage with it actively.

Themes and Conversations.

So instead of employing messaging – “Buy Us” – “We’re the best” – we can engage customers in exchanges that develop a relationship with them. Messaging creates a “we know; you don’t” meta-message; engaging them in conversations creates a playing field of equals. Conversations let them get to know us; develop trust; build a common understanding between us and them. 

“Looking to post a greeting? Start a conversation instead.” 

– Meetup.com 

As with messaging, your themes must represent the core of what your brand is about. Themes must embody your value proposition and your brand’s core values. Your themes provide meaning for your brand and allow your brand to be in the conversation without necessarily being the conversation. 

The intention with themes isn’t to tell them something, it’s to get a response from them.  to have them actively engage with the content you put in front of them. Engage them emotionally, then evoke or provoke a response from them.

Engage; Evoke; Provoke

For a theme to be successful, your audience has to respond. So your content needs to be designed to engage them emotionally, and to evoke or even provoke a response. Consider what emotional response you want: surprise, hope, belonging, empathy, even anger; the list of possibilities goes on and on. If their emotional response is strong enough, they will want to respond (evoked response). You may even want to include a Call to Respond, a CTR if you will, the equivalent of the usual Call to Action (CTA).

As Always, Use Visual Content

Nothing engages, evokes and provokes like visual content. Show them pictures, brief videos. As they engage more deeply, they’ll consume longer videos. Include opportunities to respond – ask questions, give them places to click for more. 

As they engage more fully, they’ll be willing to provide some value back – liking, commenting, sharing, subscribing, and eventually purchasing. 

Creating strong relationships is hard to compete with.

Case Study: Carmel Naturals

Carmel Naturals Deodorant is a tiny, newly-launched brand of all-natural deodorant. Carmel Naturals Deodorant was developed by a breast-cancer survivor, Patricia Langrehr-Marsh. Patricia wanted to create an all-natural deodorant that would avoid using harsh ingredients found in most deodorants while being far more effective than other natural deodorants. Carmel Naturals had a small marketing budget and needed to build the brand from its own resources. See any themes that would engage potential customers? How about breast cancer; being choiceful about what we put in and on our bodies; product ingredients; personal hygiene and long-term health. Going a little farther afield, but still staying connected to the brand, would be nature, the environment, organic products.