🗂️ A Brand to Remember
🔎 Simple Clarity
🧠 Secret to Memorable Copy
Happy New Year! I am excited for this year. A theme I am honing in on at the start of the year is “clarity.” Clarity makes your brand pop! That’s the theme for today’s issue with a very special offer. | Warner Bros.
🗂️ A Brand to Remember
A brand is like a file folder in your customers’ minds.
If your business is easy to understand and has a clear value proposition, your brand gets a file folder at the front of your customer’s mind.
It’s well labeled, easy to find, and easy to retrieve. When they have a need for your products and services, your file folder is pulled out first. Your brand is the first to come to mind.
On the other hand, when a company is hard to understand or is poorly differentiated, it’s hard to remember. The brand may be misfiled or filed under “Miscellaneous.” Worse yet, they may just get filed in the trash bin and forgotten.
The point of branding is to make your brand unforgettable. You can achieve this by making it incredibly easy to understand, know, and categorize. That’s Simple Clarity.
🔎 Simple Clarity
Simple Clarity is the foundation of your brand. It’s the ability to describe your value proposition and what makes your business unique in 10 words or less.
Simple Clarity is so important that it is the first principle of my book, Sticky Branding.
Using the metaphor of a file folder, think of Simple Clarity like the label on the file folder. It’s a short, simple way to understand, categorize, and remember your brand.
It should have three elements:
- Short: Ideally 10 words or less.
- Descriptive: Clear explanation of what the brand offers.
- Memorable: Easy to find and easy to refer.
🐝 New Course!
Join me for a 2 week course on Simple Clarity. You will learn how to create super clear and effective branding for your business. Use promo code: CLARITY25 for 60% off! Act soon because this offer expires on January 15. Click here for more details.
🧠 Secret to Memorable Copy
A group of researchers at Cornell University conducted a study on memorability. They wanted to know what makes phrases and quotes stick in your mind.
The researchers studied over 1,000 movie quotes in IMDB dating back to 1967. Quotes like,
- “May the Force be with you.”
- “Here’s looking at you, kid.”
- “I’m going to make him an offer he can’t refuse.”
The study cracked the code of memorable quotes, and the lessons apply equally to branding. Memorable phrases possess three traits:
- A pearl of wisdom. There’s a concrete message or idea to be conveyed.
- Unique combination of words. The idea sticks because it’s expressed in a unique way.
- Ordinary sentence structure. There’s no magic to the copywriting. Memorable phrases tend to use very ordinary grammatical structures.
The takeaway I pulled from the research is to focus on the core service. In Simple Clarity we answer three questions:
- You are…
- You do…
- You serve…
The clearer you can answer those questions, the more memorable your brand.
The challenge is too much time gets invested in puffing up and inflating a brand’s features and benefits, versus simply stating what your brand delivers.
For instance, “Big Ass Fans” makes really big fans. In three words you know exactly what the brand delivers. Does your brand have this level of clarity?
🎉 Happy New Year!
Wishing you a very successful 2025!
🤔 Thoughts on Today’s Issue?
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