A digital media company (Nielsen Top 35 market) asked me to assess their branding and marketing; here are excerpts from my report:
This piece of content has a sharp, modern look that is unfortunately undermined by its generic copy and point of view. It feels like an unbranded approach; the content in essence says that we have a program and that it features five people. Any competitor can say this—and most do. What we want to do is convey that which our competitors cannot—so that we build a sense of distinction, identity, and power. The question becomes: what does content like this gain us? Sampling? Most likely not. If I’m a loyalist for your competitor, I already know that they offer a program similar to this, featuring people I've already decided I prefer. This content doesn't offer me any advantage, value, or reason to switch. The danger with this approach is that we may be suggesting to customers that we are more or less the same as our competitors—without a big enough difference. With proper branding, we can avoid that. Properly branded, we will appear rich and distinct in a way that couldn't possibly be confused with our competitors.
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The messaging pushes for more specificity here, but it still feels cliché. If I'm a loyalist for your competitor—and if I feel that they are meeting my needs—I'm not likely to switch to you simply because you are claiming the ability to meet my needs too. As with the previous piece of content, we settle here for merely saying what we do—and in doing so, we are making common claims that our competitors can also make. This isn't enough. Instead, if we bypass what we do and zero in on who we are talking to—our target customer—and articulate to them why we do what we do, we have a significantly greater chance of connecting with them and influencing them. This is the essence of strong branding.
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There's an opportunity in a piece of content like this to free ourselves from traditional advertising clichés and instead tap into the real emotion that our customer is experiencing. Our subject matter here is the stress of returning to school; if we can make busy parents feel that we truly know what they are going through, we stand a much better chance of connecting with them. Everyone wants to be understood, and if customers believes that we understand them better than our competitors do, they will be much more likely to choose us.
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The music could have helped structure this piece of content—which would have heightened our chance for impact—but the editing is mainly detached from it. And as with the previous piece of content, the script is far too wordy. We go with a full 23 seconds of narration before we break for natural sound, and that 23 seconds is larded with copy we don’t particularly need. We are trying to sell the story by summarizing it, which is ineffective. Our job isn't to summarize; it's to influence, intrigue, persuade, and make the viewer feel something. I'd rather create a hook at the start with a surprising or unusual moment that would serve to disrupt the viewer's normal sense of expectation—and then compliment and fulfill that hook with spare copy that is precise to the value of this particular story. Also, in a broader sense, I think this piece of content could’ve been leveraged as a branding opportunity; in other words, is there a larger reason we have for telling this story? Do the attributes of this particular story help to exemplify our brand promise? Did we deliberately choose this story for a specific reason, because it fits our mission? Let’s create an experience beyond what our competitors are doing. Rather than seeming overly familiar or predictable, we can use production, motivation, and intent to distinguish ourselves.
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As always, all roads lead back to brand—are we telling this story as an isolated effort to drive hits on a particular day, or are we telling this story as part of our broader mission? If it's the latter, we can use a moment like this to precisely communicate who we are, why we're choosing this story, and why we're telling it in the way that we are. This creates an opportunity not just for hits but for relationship-building.
The final piece of content is a good example; is this coming from any company that just happens to be producing a story about saving money? Or is it coming from a company that is committed to saving its consumers money because it truly understands that wages are down, unemployment is up, and its customers are likely struggling? Therein we have an opportunity for a more sophisticated, progressive marketing approach—one that establishes beyond any doubt that we are a powerful, distinct entity that is offering content to you for relevant, thoughtful, and intentional reasons.