👀 Embrace Quirks
🏆 Simple Brands Win
📚 Choose Your Story
The Simple Clarity course starts on Monday, February 3 at 11am EST. We’ve got a phenomenal cohort with incredibly interesting and talented people working on their brand messaging. You don’t want to miss out. Use promo code CLARITY30 for 30% off.
👀 Embrace Quirks
Brilliant brands aren’t perfect. They have flaws and quirks, but those are what make them interesting and memorable.
We’re naturally drawn to quirks. Dr. Sheldon Cooper, one of the lead characters in The Big Bang Theory, is a brilliant physicist with a laundry list of character flaws.
For example, Sheldon’s OCD (obsessive-compulsive disorder) drives him to knock on a person’s door in a distinct pattern of threes, and then call out their name:
Knock, knock, knock, “Penny…”
Knock, knock, knock, “Penny…”
Knock, knock, knock, “Penny…”
The behavior is odd, but it’s memorable. It’s hard to forget Sheldon.
A quirk can create a competitive advantage. Big Ass Fans, for instance, would not exist if the company didn’t embrace the quirk. Very few companies have the guts to put “Ass” in their official company name.
The beauty of this name is it has Simple Clarity in 3 words, and you will never forget it.
A hero without character flaws is one-dimensional, and a brand without quirks is boring.
Don’t shy away from making your brand quirky, even in your brand messaging. It gives you an opportunity to stand out.
Use promo code CLARITY30 for 30% off. The course is fun, interactive, fast, and it’s inexpensive! You will learn how to describe your brand and what makes it unique in 10 words or less. Sign up this week.
🏆 Simple Brands Win
Margaret Molloy, chief marketing officer at Siegel + Gale, says, “The greatest brands make life simple. Think Google, Amazon, or even Dunkin’ Donuts. They cut through the clutter by delivering what consumers want, when they want it, without hassle.”
Since 2009, Siegel + Gale has published the Global Brand Simplicity Index. It’s a research study that demonstrates the impact of simplicity on a brand’s overall business performance.
According to Molloy, simplicity strengthens a brand in measurable ways:
- 63% of consumers are willing to pay more for a simpler experience.
- 69% are more likely to refer a brand that provides a simpler experience.
- Astonishingly, the top ten brands of the Index have beaten the average global stock index by 214% between 2009 to 2014.
In a noisy world, simple brands win.
Marketing researcher Adam Alter explains, “People generally prefer not to think more than necessary, and they tend to prefer objects, people, products, and words that are simple to pronounce and understand.”
When developing your brand messaging, gravitate toward simple, easy-to-pronounce, and easy-to-visualize words. Choose simple words that paint a picture in your customers’ minds.
📚 Choose Your Story
By choosing your brand messaging carefully, you are choosing the story you want to share.
Your brand messaging is the foundation of your brand and it set expectations. It shapes your brand’s personality and the relationship it will form with customers, staff, partners, and whomever it touches.
From a branding context, this is positioning.
In the book Positioning: The Battle for Your Mind, Al Ries and Jack Trout define the concept as “an organized system for finding a window in the mind” that distinguishes it from competitors.
This gets us part of the way there, but I find their definition a bit too cerebral.
I think of positioning as a set of strategic choices:
- Where will you play?
- How will you win?
- How will you be known?
By clearly answering each question, you are making decisions that profoundly shape your brand messaging. You are deciding what your brand will be and what it won’t be. You are determining whom it serves, and you are capturing what you want it to become. This is positioning.
When you achieve Simple Clarity it will be a signal you have clear brand positioning.
PS. Don’t forget to sign up for the Simple Clarity course!
I feel like a broken record promoting our course, but like I wrote in Sticky Branding (the book), “If you don’t blow your own horn, nobody will.”
🤔 Thoughts on Today’s Issue?
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