Four Steps to Crafting a Sticky Brand Message

Owning one thing in the minds of your customers is the case I make in my blog "The Secret to a Strong Branding Message? Focus." The harder question is what actually makes a brand message effective.

A brand message only works when it delivers a single idea that lands rationally and emotionally at the same time, because that combination is what drives behavior.

So how do you land on that one clear message?

Triangulate. Your promise lives where three perspectives intersect: the customer perspective, the internal perspective, and the marketplace perspective.

Triangulation rests on a simple premise: know your distance from three distinct points and you can pinpoint a location. It is how ship captains stay clear of the Bermuda Triangle.

Consider the pro bono work Traction did for Cat Town, an Oakland, California non-profit that finds homes for troubled cats and where my wife was a founding volunteer. The positioning work shaped a vision that led to the first "cat cafe" in the United States, and euthanasia rates in Oakland falling by over 70%.

Maybe your business is advanced AI technology. Maybe it is vacation cruises, or kumquats. You may be wondering what saving cats has to do with any of that. The category doesn't matter, because the same fundamental marketing principles apply.

The challenge for Cat Town was messaging that set it apart from every other place a person could get a cat, shelters most of all.

Four essentials went into building that brand message:

Step 1: Start with the customer perspective.

Get inside your customer's head first. What do they actually care about? Don't presume. Interview them, survey them, watch what they say on social media, follow them around the mall. Track the words you hear over and over, and pay attention to what they value most.

That kind of observation showed Cat Town it wasn't serving just anyone who wanted a pet. Its cats are often sick, older, or shy. Its adopters, it turned out, care more about getting animals out of cages than about bringing home a cute kitten.

Step 2: Build your value proposition from the internal perspective.

A brand promise is only effective if it is true. So where do you create value, and what makes your product or service unlike any other? Ask the people inside your company. Founder, what is your vision? What does your best salesperson do to close a deal? What is unusual about the way you manufacture?

Cat Town wanted adopters to understand that its process was as distinctive as its cats. Instead of an on-site pickup, the way most shelters work, cats are delivered right to people's homes, with access to a range of at-home services.

Step 3: Set yourself apart with the marketplace perspective.

A position can be owned by only one brand. Study how your competitors claim theirs. Read their tag lines. Read the "about us" copy on their websites. Palmolive owns the one dish soap that softens hands while you do dishes. Your value proposition has to be just as distinct.

Shelters were competitors and partners at once for Cat Town, and keeping those relationships healthy mattered to the business. It had to stand apart without disparaging the competition.

Step 4: Find your brand message in a Venn diagram.

Once your insights are written down, sort them into three overlapping circles and study where the perspectives intersect, and how.

In the end, Cat Town settled on "Open the Cage." The line connects emotionally with people who want to help animals in trouble, points to the unusual practice of bringing cats right to people's homes, and separates the organization from its competitors without a word of criticism. That message became the catalyst for a cat cafe that doubled as an adoption center. In 2011, 42% of cats that entered Oakland shelters had to be put down. A decade after Cat Town started working with Oakland Animal Shelter, that number was under 10%.

One more thing your messaging has to account for: where you are headed and how you intend to grow. For Cat Town, that meant a message that described more than an organization. It had to be able to spark a movement.

Whether your work is as plainly humane as finding homes for cats or you sell software or motor oil, that is the ethos your own branding message has to carry.

Donate to Cat Town here.

FAQ

What makes a brand message effective? An effective brand message communicates a single idea that connects on both a rational and an emotional level, because that is what motivates behavior. It is one clear promise rather than a list of features, and it has to be true to the organization, meaningful to customers, and distinct from what competitors already claim.

What does it mean to triangulate a brand message? Triangulating means looking for the intersection of three perspectives to identify your promise: the customer perspective, the internal perspective, and the marketplace perspective. The idea borrows from navigation, where you can figure out a location if you know its distance relative to three distinct points. The place where the three views overlap is where a credible, differentiated brand message sits.

How do you define a brand message from the customer perspective? Get into your customer's head instead of presuming what matters to them. Interview customers, survey them, pay attention to them on social media, and follow them around the mall. Keep track of the keywords you hear repeatedly and what customers most value. That kind of observation revealed to Cat Town that its adopters value getting animals out of cages more than bringing a cute kitten home.

What is the internal perspective in defining a value proposition? The internal perspective asks what is genuinely true and unique about your product, service, or process, because a brand promise only works if it is true. Talk to people inside the organization about the founder's vision, what the top salesperson does to close sales, and what is unusual about manufacturing. Cat Town found its difference in delivering cats straight to people's homes rather than having them picked up on-site.

Why does the marketplace perspective matter when positioning a brand? Only one brand can own a position, so you need to know how competitors position themselves before claiming yours. Look at their tag lines and read the about us copy on their websites. Palmolive, for example, positions itself as the only dish soap that softens hands while you do dishes. Cat Town had to distinguish itself from shelters, which were both competitors and partners, without disparaging them.

What brand message did Cat Town choose, and what did it lead to? Cat Town settled on "Open the Cage," a line meant to connect emotionally with people who want to help troubled animals while pointing to its unique practice of bringing cats right to people's homes. That message became the catalyst for a cat cafe that doubled as an adoption center, the first in the United States. In 2011, 42% of cats entering Oakland shelters had to be put down, and a decade later that figure was under 10%.

An earlier version of this article by Adam Kleinberg was originally published in Entrepreneur as "3 Steps to Creating Your Branding Message" on June 19, 2013. This version has been expanded and updated.