Have you always wondered what a Brand Message actually is?
It’s not a term that people always come across, so as the very first episode of my podcast it is what I chose to cover. I go through:
- What a Brand Message actually is
- What your Brand Message is not
- Examples of Nike & Disney’s Brand Message
- How to make your Brand Message powerful
- My own Brand Message
- How to audit your own Brand Message
At the end of the 14 minutes and 4 seconds you’ll know exactly what Brand Messaging is, and begin to have a good idea of what yours is too.
PREFER TO READ? HERE’S THE PODCAST TRANSCRIPTION:
Welcome my friends to this very first episode of the Story by Design Show!
If we’ve not met before, then nice to virtually meet you and if we’re already acquainted then what’s up buddy.
My name is Becky Lloyd Pack and my mission is to ultimately help more women who are building a business around their passions, gifts, skills, experience or expertise express themselves better, so that they can reach more people, create a bigger impact with their work and ultimately make the world a better place for everyone!
With that in mind, you’re going to hear me talk all about almost exclusively about all things Messaging and how to build that confidence within yourself to get out there and share your brilliance in a way that feels good for you and is for easy for others to understand because ultimately, how successful you are in business hinges on how well people can understand the true value of what you do.
Storytelling, Messaging and communication in general is my true zone of genius and to be honest, is something I think is overlooked way too much in the business space in favour of the more sexy aspects of business like design, marketing strategy or making a boatload of social media content.
But developing your Message is such high leverage work and the impact of getting it right ripples out into every aspect of both your personal and your business development.
From the way you share information, the way you sell, the offers you create and to be honest the very way you see yourself – all of these things influence and are influenced by your whether or not you have a clear Message.
So let’s play a game, and just imagine for a moment how different it would be if you knew exactly how to introduce yourself in a way that grabs and holds the attention of the people who count.
If you knew exactly how to communicate the full value of what you do, so you never felt like you had to lower your prices or play small when it came to creating offers and generating income.
Imagine how it might feel to be so full of clarity about who you are, exactly what you stand for and for that confidence to be palpable every time you showed up online.
How much easier would your life be?
How much energy would you save by not having to second-guess yourself so much of the time?
If we’re being honest, working on your Brand Message is a bit of an underrated game-changer… anddd we’re all about honesty in this corner of the internet.
But before we go any further, let’s just clarify exactly what your Brand Message is:
Your Brand Message is what you communicate to other people to create a desired perception of you, your business, products and services.
For your Brand Message to be “successful” it must be rooted within some sort of broader strategy about how you want to be remembered because here’s the truth baby, in our audience’s minds we only get to be ONE thing.
The proof of this can be found in how you think of others too. For example when I talk about Disney for example, it might evoke a specific feeling for you. You might have certain things or words that come up straight away for you. For me, I think of the word ‘Magic’ and get a bit of a warm fuzzy feeling as it makes me think of watching movies growing up. I do then also think about Disneyworld and the theme parks, but this is definitely secondary for me.
Even so, despite both the theme park and the movies being two separate ‘outputs’ or ‘expressions’ of the Disney brand, I do have the same association of that ‘magical feeling’ with both.
This example also leads me perfectly onto my next point – despite what you might think, or what you’ve heard elsewhere – it’s my personal belief that your Message isn’t actually a perfectly edited paragraph, a single perfect Phrase or tagline.
We could look at Nike now for example, and their tagline ‘Just Do It’.
This is super memorable and something they are wellknown for, however their Message is actually bigger than that. It’s around never quitting, working hard to be the best and excelling at what you do.
In more recent years as well, it’s actually expanded to standing up for what you believe in with their endorsement of Colin Kaepernick, a now former NFL quarterback who knelt during the national anthem at the start of NFL games in protest of police brutality and racial inequality in the United States.
This move although potentially hugely risky at the time, paid off for Nike and led to a huge jump in their stock price. This once again leads me beautifully onto my next point:
For your Brand Message to be successful, it must be relevant to a very specific audience.
When Nike chose to endorse Colin Kaepernick and feature him in their ad campaign, they accepted the fact that the message they were sending was going to be divisive and indeed, it did draw a lot of backlash and negativity with some saying they would never buy from Nike again.
However, Nike had a deep understanding of who their core audience was. According to Edison Trends, a digital commerce research company Nike’s sales increased by 31 percent in the period that followed, nearly double that of the year before.
Hopefully now you’re beginning to understand that while it might not be easy to wrap your head around *exactly* what a Brand Message is – it has the potential to create serious impact in your business.
Now, one of the reasons Nike could pull of that stunt and expand their message into a more political arena is because is made sense with everything they were already known for.
And this demonstrates perfectly that your Brand Message is also not a series of isolated statements that are pulled together nor is it something that can be simply tactically created for profit.
It absolutely must be grounded in a cohesive bigger picture ESPECIALLY if the business you’re building is actually built around you.
This is why I am always preaching that your Brand Message is about sooooo much more than just the words you use.
It’s rooted in your beliefs, your personality, the way you and your audience see the world and that laser sharp focus on the change you’re actually trying to create.
Everything has to start from this grounded and authentic place for it to truly resonate and be effective.
Honestly, I could give you the PERFECT words to describe your product/service or whatever you do but if you as the owner of your Business, the person that’s going to go out there and actually use those words don’t believe in them, or on some level they don’t energetically or emotionally align with you then honestly, the results that you create will only ever scratch the surface of what you’re truly capable of.
This is why with every single service I offer, I take more of a coaching approach to draw out the truth of things from within you and simply then help you shape that into words, phrases and messaging prompts that make sense to your audience and is relevant to them.
Phew!
In summary for you there:
Your Brand Message is not a statement or a paragraph or a body of text that you edit to perfection, sign off and then plaster all over your website.
And I mean – thank god right! After all, if that was the case and you put it out there once… what do you do next? Just keep spamming people with the exact same thing? Good luck with that eh!
So whilst you will end up with key statements and paragraphs of text when working on your Message, it’s important to remember that really – these are simply sign-posts to the larger picture, the feelings and emotions that you want people to associate with your brand.
To give you an example, my own Message is ultimately this:
I work with women who are building businesses around what they do for people, whether it’s products or services and generally have some larger mission in their heart and I help them express what they do clearly to people in a way that feels good and makes them money.
And my role as a business owner, as a Brand and the deliverer of my Message is really to make people give a shit.
And we do this by adding in all of the beautiful layers which give it resonance, significance and specificity to my ideal audience.
This is the values that influence the way I work my audience share with me.
It’s my own personality and how that compliments the personality of my clients.
It’s my unique experience of working in the film industry on movies like The Avengers, Mission Impossible and Fantastic Beasts and Where To Find Them.
Each and every one of these things I just mentioned makes that original message more and more powerful, meaningful and valuable because here’s the truth my friends…
If you want people to invest in what you do, and pay the full and fair price for it – they absolutely MUST be able to see the value of that work clearly.
And when we’re working on our Message, we’re ultimately working on shaping that perception our audience has of us.
If you want to get paid what you feel you deserve, then the perceived value of your work must be clear as day.
Obviously, you have to put the time and energy in to getting your Message out there (which by the way, is ultimately what Marketing is)
but it’s about working on and clarifying your message is ultimately removing the guesswork of what to say when you have people’s attention.
Really, when we’re working on our Message, we’re playing in the realm of getting intentional about what we project out into the world so that we can create an accurate perception of who we are and what we do in the minds of the people who matter.
Phew! I’m hoping that’s given you a better idea of what your Message is and as an action step my friends, if you want to test out the quality of your ‘message’ so far go ask your audience, your mum or anyone that has witnessed your business what they think of when they think of your brand.
And even if you don’t think you have a ‘Messsage’ – if you’ve so much as put one piece of content out into the world then my friends, you’ve shared a message.
In the coming episodes, I’m going to be helping you unpick different aspects of your Message, help you work on clarifying it and offer you some reflections and shifts in thinking to build that confidence in sharing it.
If you’re already thinking ‘holy shit’ I need to work on this, then you can of course go and check out my services over at www.storybydesign.co and depending on when you’re listening to this, you might just be able to apply for my new 90-day transformational programme The Brand Chrysalis., just go check out the website to find out more.
Until next time my friends, go make some waves!
