Brand Messaging Today

At the beginning of my brand strategy consulting career, I talked a lot about relevant differentiated benefits. The benefits could be functional, emotional, experiential or self-expressive. This evolved to focusing on the non-tangible benefits (emotional, experiential or self-expressive) with the product functions or features serving as support or proof points. Now, I mostly focus on a brand's shared values. The most successful contemporary brands focus on shared values and even go as far as creating communities around those shared values. And, increasingly, these values-driven brands become the vehicles through which people communicate their shared values.

The first step in creating brand messaging is understanding the values that the brand wants to share with its customers. These values can come from the organization's founder and his or her strongly held values or they can be determined through deep qualitative research that uncovers customers' attitudes, beliefs, values, hopes, fears, anxieties and aspirations. The shared values will emerge from this customer insight process.

Next, those values need to be incorporated into the organization's mission, vision and values. Then the brand story needs to be created from these values. Further, the brand's tagline and elevator speech is created from these values. These values should also guide hiring criteria and the organization's policies and standards. The brand should be aware of the words and phrases used by people who hold these values and they should be worked into all of the brand's communications.

Once the brand begins to stand for these values, customer community-building mechanisms can be created around these values. Further, once the brand begins to stand for these values, the brand can create insignia merchandise that features the brand's identity. People will wear, use and display this merchandise to communicate their values to others.

It is important to realize that a brand needs to be authentic in sharing these values in everything it does including its messaging. It is difficult to fake values. And if the values are sincerely held, it is difficult not to demonstrate them as a matter of course in everything the brand does.

La Posada Hotel

"Well, I'm a standin' on a corner in Winslow, Arizona
Such a fine sight to see
It's a girl, my Lord, in a flat-bed Ford
Slowin' down to take a look at me"

Take it Easy by the Eagles

My wife an I are on on two-week Grand Circle tour of the National Parks in Arizona and Utah. We started in the Grand Canyon and will proceed to Petrified Forest, Canyonlands, Arches, Bryce and Zion. We have passed through the Painted Desert and will pass through Monument Valley. Other points of interest include Flagstaff, Sedona and Jerome, AZ, Moab, UT and Las Vegas, NV. But today, we are in Winslow, AZ and I just can't seem to get that Eagles song out of my head. 

But this blog post is about history and storytelling and brand differentiation. You see, I am writing this from my room at the La Posada Hotel in Winslow, AZ. I am staying in one of the last great railroad hotels in America. Built in 1930, it is a Fred Harvey Hotel built by the Santa Fe Railroad. Upon arriving at the hotel, we were handed a 28-page hotel guide that tells the story of the hotel's history and its restoration. The hotel features a film that does the same. The hotel's restaurant is award-winning with unique and retro menu items and rivals top restaurants in big cities. The hotel's current owner, Tina Mion, is an accomplished artist. Her artwork can be edgy and includes political commentary, parody and the topic of death and dying. A lot of it is quite funny. The hotel features a gallery of her work and giclees of that work can be purchased in an expansive hotel gift store.  

This hotel is adjacent to active Amtrak train tracks and is elaborately but tastefully decorated in a Southwestern style. The rooms are large and feature heavy wooden doors with unusual hardware, hand painted furniture, shelves full of books, Navaho rugs, huge Mexican tin framed mirrors and many other unique touches. 

One hallway in the hotel features photographs of many of the famous people who have stayed at the hotel including movie stars, US presidents and foreign dignitaries. Each room is named after a celebrity who has stayed in the hotel. We are staying in the Gene Autry room. 

The hotel is filled with artifacts, curiosities, historical plaques, edifying filmstrips and other items of interest that could consume hours of one's time. Of all the hotels at which I have stayed so far in my life (and I have stayed at thousands of them), this is the most unusual. It transports me back to a different place and a different time. 

My point is not to promote this hotel, but to highlight a brand that is substantially different within its category. This is based on many factors, but hotel design, history and storytelling are chief among them. If you need to stay or eat somewhere within 100 miles of this hotel, this is the hotel you should choose. The experience it delivers is that different. Every brand should aspire to this level of differentiation.

Brand Storytelling

I just returned from “The Un-Conference: 360 degrees of Brand Strategy for a Changing World” at which I spoke about brand differentiation and brand equity measurement among other topics. Clay Hausmann, a brand storytelling strategist, presented one of the most clear and practical approaches to brand storytelling that I have seen. Brand storytelling is the bridge between brand strategy/positioning and brand marketing communication.

In his approach to brand storytelling, he works with clients to help them identify four things:

• The Inciting incident } motivation
• The controlling idea } clarity
• The genre } context
• The characteristics } differentiation

The inciting incident is the pivotal event or decision that sets the story and its drama in motion. The controlling idea is the underlying idea that the story expresses. The genre is the type of story (love story, comedy, action thriller, etc.) and the characteristics are what makes the brand and its story different from other brands and their stories.

Today, I want to focus on the controlling idea. The controlling idea for Colombo is a seemingly bumbling detective who is smarter than the criminal and therefore solves the case and arrests the criminal.  Every episode of Colombo expresses this controlling idea.

Clay indicated that the controlling idea for a business might be how one’s life changes in a positive and meaningful way after using that business’ product(s).  This is also the approach that some ads take.

I think this expression of a business’ controlling idea is something every brand manager should think about whether he or she crafts his or her brand’s story or not. How does your brand change people’s lives in positive and meaningful ways? If you cannot answer this question off the top of your mind, you have some work to do.

I highly recommend Clay and his work. If you want an introduction to him, I am happy to do so.

Here is a previous brand storytelling blog post. And here is another one.

I wish you great success in determining how your brand changes people’s lives in positive and meaningful ways and I wish you great success in crafting and telling your brand’s story.

What is Your Brand Delivering?

Storytelling

Brands tell stories. They create myths. They engage people. They entertain people.  What story does your brand tell? Is it engaging? Does it create an emotional connection to the brand?

Experience

What experience does your brand deliver? Does in connect with people through one or more of the five senses – touch, smell, sight, sound and taste? What feelings does it evoke? Does it calm people? Does it exhilarate them? Does it make them laugh?

Values

Brands often stand for something. They embrace a set of values.  What does your brand stand for? What values does it embrace? Does your brand express the values of its intended customers? Can they wear the brand as a badge of their values? Can they use the brand as a self-expression vehicle?

Personality

Brands have specific personalities. What personality does you brand have? Is it trustworthy? Is it reliable? Is it friendly? Is it smart? Is it innovative? Is it entertaining? Is it compassionate? Is it rugged? Is it stylish? Is it quirky? What personality should your brand have?

Service

How does your brand serve its customers? Does it have a service ethic? Does it strive to anticipate customer needs and exceed customer expectations?  Does it try to surprise and delight its customers?

Archetype

What is your brand’s archetype? What drives it to behave as it does? What is its primary motivation? Does it like to guide others? Is it trying to save the world? Does it like to achieve? Is it a nurturer? Is its motivation to create the next big thing? What drives it to be the brand what it is?

Personification

In what ways does your brand take on human qualities? As listed above, does it have a specific personality and does it hold certain values? Is it trustworthy? Does it make promises to its customers? Does it connect emotionally with its customers?

Promise

Finally, what is your brand’s promise? What does it promise to its customers? Does it promise unique and compelling benefits or shared values? Does it consistently deliver on those promises? If it fails to deliver on one of its promises, does it recover from that failure and even turn the failure into a victory?

Summary

This then is what a brand does.  It tells stories. It creates experiences. It holds a specific set of values and it shares those values with its customers. It makes promises. It delivers on those promises.  It provides services to its customers. It has an archetype and a personality.  And it can do all of this because it is the personification of an organization and its products and services.

Great Brand Stories

People talk about creating great brand stories so I thought I would provide you with examples of some brands that I believe tell their stories well:

• Kletterwerks
• Burt's Bees
• Trader Joe's
• Patagonia
• Ben & Jerry's
• Newman's Own
• Life is Good
• Bully Hill Vineyards

Brand Storytelling

In his book The Dream Society, Rolf Jensen makes the case for a shift from an information society to a dream society in which imagination and storytelling become the primary drivers of value. He identifies six emerging emotion-based markets:

1. Adventure
2. Community (togetherness, friendship, and love)
3. Providing and receiving care
4. Self-expression (“Who am I?”)
5. Peace of mind
6. Standing for something (convictions)

Many brands like to tell stories that demonstrate their values or their legendary service. Every brand story requires the following elements:

• Core values that underpin the story
• Moral of the story (central premise)
• Hero (protagonist)
• Villain (antagonist)
• Plot (tension/conflict/resolution)
• “Aha” moment
• Transformation

Here are two other storytelling frameworks that you might find useful.

Mark Lightowler uses a storytelling map that includes the following nine elements:

1. Story setup (the background information the audience needs to know)
2. Protagonist (the hero)
3. Conflict (what stands in the way of the journey’s completion)
4. Outer motivation (protagonist’s motivation)
5. Deep issues (the deeper issues addressed by the story)
6. Opportunity (the protagonist’s inward reward for overcoming the conflict)
7. Arc (how the protagonist grows or changes inwardly over the course of the story)
8. Empathy (what causes the audience to empathize with the protagonist)
9. Tension (the unspoken feeling feeding the conflict)

According to Chris Vogler, the hero’s journey consists of the following steps:

1. The ordinary world
2. The call to adventure
3. Refusal of the call
4. Meeting with the mentor
5. Crossing the first threshold
6. Tests, allies, enemies
7. Approach to the inmost cave
8. The ordeal
9. Reward
10. The road back
11. The resurrection
12. Return with the elixir

Reprinted from Brand Aid, second edition, available here.