Less complexity for more impact: Fixing your brand messaging

Despite what C-level might believe, brand communication shouldn’t be an afterthought as organisations and companies grow &  scale. For your communication to be effective and really bring through the impact you are making, it needs to be woven through each aspect of an organisation’s work and ensure that content, campaigns and strategy are ever-present in each touch point with all your audiences.

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That is where many organisations go wrong: they invest into crafting impressive brand messaging with grand visions and inspiring mission statements, and then forget to actively keep these consistent across audience touchpoints. 

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The result? Social channels telling a different story to the website, emails sounding like announcement boards and a fragmented, confused audience who’s interested in the brand, but has no clue where and how to interact with it.

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But there is a fix.

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When we take on any new brand messaging, positioning or content project at Dante, here are 4 steps we always start with:

1. Create structure

The first step is to organise everything you want to talk about into a key messaging framework. Outline the three most important things about your organisation, why they matter, and how you want to talk about them. This includes specific phrasing and formulations, the (one) key value proposition of each area, and clear examples of how this framework works in practice. 

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If you already have a key messaging framework, that’s great news! Check when it was last updated, if it still mirrors the wider organisational mission, and, most importantly, check your latest comms activity against it and be honest: is the framework really being followed? 

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2. Consider your audience

Do you know who you’re speaking to? More importantly, are you speaking with accessible, human language?

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Communication teams may often forget that their audience isn’t as clued in on the topic as they are, nor do they really care as much about it as they do. So, it is important to consider who your audience is, how they speak, and what they care about. From there, it’ll be easier to figure out how to speak to them.

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3. Break it down

Whenever you have a topic or message to communicate, think about the smallest possible component of it - the simplest possible way to explain it. This means: swapping industry jargon for simpler phrasing, breaking down complex theories into smaller elements and focusing on the most important element that you want to speak about. 

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It’s always easier to add context than it is to subtract complexity. 

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4. Stress test 

Try to talk to relevant stakeholders within your organisation - or just grab a friend or family member to run some of your content by them. Ask them what their main takeaways are, how the content sounds to them and most importantly, if they understand it at first glance without technical or contextual knowledge into the topic. Make sure you are letting them lead the conversation, without explaining what you were aiming to communicate.

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Speaking to those not as familiar with a topic can really help you understand what translates well, and what gets lost, in your messaging. If your content is difficult to understand for those not already immersed in it, you may need to rethink your approach.

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Content resonates best when it’s crafted with the audience in mind: with a clear purpose and clear takeaways. It’s easy to get caught up in the excitement of big announcements and ambitious missions, but you need to remember that most people won’t care about it as much as you do. To really grab their attention, focus on being clear and human. The rest will follow. 

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If in doubt, say hello@dante.media, and we’ll help!

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