Red Flags in Brand Messaging

🚩Red Flag #1 - It's all about you.

The danger of a brand message that's all about you is it can easily come across as self-serving. Your product should be serving the customers, not the other way around. Successful brands will tell stories demonstrating how their product benefits customers — not how great they are or what they think about themselves. There is always a little ego-stroking in advertising; just don't make it the main focus of your messaging. Don't get me wrong, a company with an extensive history and reputation does have something worth mentioning (and celebrating). Still, there's no need to bring up these facts unless they're directly relevant to the story you want to tell your audience.

The movie Elf uses this pitfall for a bit of humor. While looking for his long-lost father in New York City, Buddy the Elf stumbles across a diner with a sign, "World’s best cup of coffee,". He then screams, “You did it! Congratulations! World’s best cup of coffee! Great job, everybody. It’s great to be here!”

All jokes aside, we all strive for our product to be the best in town (or the world if you’re ambitious). Keep your brand messaging about the audience you serve.



🚩Red Flag #2 - Using too much insider language.

There sure are a lot of big words on this website, but I'm not feeling motivated to learn more or explore their services.

🚩Red Flag #3 - It's too vague.

If you can't explain your brand's value proposition in a sentence or two, then it's too ambiguous. You also need to be able to explain your brand's value proposition in a way that makes sense to people who aren't familiar with your industry.



One example of this is New Coke. With the rise of diet drinks, the top dogs at Coca-Cola wanted to develop new sodas to increase market share. In 1985 they almost simultaneously released New Coke and Cherry Coke. New Coke was described as "The Great NEW Taste" and "Better than ever!".

Despite having overwhelming positive blind taste tests and focus groups, New Coke only alienated its current consumer base. It created confusion. Was "Old Coke" going away? Is New Coke a diet drink? What does New Coke taste like? After only 79 days, the production of New Coke was suspended. Cherry Coke, in comparison, was evident in what made it different from Coca-Cola and went on to help grow the company's market share, and it is still in production today. Needless to say, new is not always better!



🚩Red Flag #4 - Differentiators aren't different.

Differentiators set you apart from the competition, and they're important because they help define your brand. But are you sure that the differentiators you've chosen really set you apart in a meaningful way?

Here's how to tell if your differentiator is effective:

• Is it unique to your business? Differentiating yourself by offering something more expensive or better than the rest isn't enough. The key here is to find something that no one else does and own it—this will let people know exactly where you stand out.
• Does it matter to customers? If not, no one will care about what sets you apart from other brands, so why bother? It needs to be relevant—not just essential for business success or growth goals (which is often confused with relevance), but also important as far as customers are concerned.

Here are some companies that differentiate themselves well: