BY MEL DUNN

“Knowing others is wisdom, knowing yourself is enlightenment.” - Lao Tzu, philosopher

It sounds so simple: knowing who you are and what you do. But I think most people, and businesses, are on a continuous journey of self-discovery. And I’m not sure if it ever really ends.

Certainly, as a brand, getting to know yourself—understanding how your product works, recognizing how to provide value to customers, and representing your own company values—is a dynamic, ever-evolving practice. The most challenging part? For marketers, it’s boiling all of this down into a succinct, clear message that resonates with your target audience.  

At the onset of client relationships, we like to ask the sales team to give us their pitch as if we were a prospective customer. Through this exercise, we can learn if the client is confident in telling their brand story. Sometimes it’s not quite there yet. When a brand is wishy-washy about what they do and who they sell to, it can be challenging, as their partner, to provide marketing and communication services that deliver results. But, hey, we love a challenge. For us, this type of work—like digging in deep to help a brand uncover its truth—is the most rewarding.  

Let’s look at a few ways an organization can go from brand confusion to brand confidence.   

Invest in Yourself

We’re usually all for flying the plane while we build it. But this method can get dicey when you rush into telling your brand story before drafting, editing, rewriting, editing, proofing, publishing … you get it. Before making a monetary investment in marketing activities, it’s important to invest time in crafting or polishing your schtick. Depending on the age—and stage—of your brand, maybe it hasn’t decided who it wants to be, or maybe it’s having a mid-life crisis. Either way, it’s worth considering an eat, pray, love-type journey. Or just do it our way: through a brand discovery exercise.

Keep Your Story Simple

If you ask three people at your company, “Who are we as a brand?”, you’ll likely get three variations of a (hopefully) similar answer. But maybe that’s the wrong question. A lot of brands explain who they are by telling us what they make, create, or sell. Instead of telling your audience what you do, try telling them why and how you do it for them. Even if your product or service is sophisticated, you should be able to explain the value of your brand in a few words. Like in one of their first iPod ads, Apple tells the reader—very briefly—about the benefit of the product, instead of focusing on its hundreds of features. Our brand story advice? Less is more. Minimalists rejoice!

Don’t Be Afraid of Change

An individual’s clothes are not an indication of who they are at their core (please don’t judge me by my millennial skinny jeans), and a company’s visual brand doesn’t tell us the full story about their beliefs, values, or personality—the pieces that make a brand unique in the mind of its customer. If your current logo doesn’t fit where your brand’s headed, or you’ve added a product line that changes your story, or you just never quite nailed the “About Us” section—you’re not alone, and we’ll get you there.

A brand is a living thing that has growing pains, changes course, and matures over time. Isn’t it okay to be a different person today than who you were in college? Asking for a friend. It’s okay for your brand to evolve and learn about themselves, too. Just make sure you’re confident in who you are before you start shouting it from the rooftops.