When you think of a brand like Coca Cola or Mountain Dew, what feeling do you have? Notice, both are sweetened carbonated drinks. However, we associate the first with fun or nostalgia and the second with adventure or sport. When you think of people like Oprah or Deepak Chopra; Howard Stern or Chelsea Handler, what is the single emotion that you react with? They are all celebrities and brands in themselves, but they evoke very different reactions. Why is this and how is this relevant to you as an entrepreneur and to your brand? I explain in the video above.
Why we buy what we do.
What did you buy this week and why did you buy it? For instance I bought some yoga pants and a new convertible roof for my car. The yoga pants are attractive, they motivate me to keep going to my yoga class and they save me the hassle of doing frequent loads of laundry. The new roof, of course, has obvious benefits of offering protection from the elements. So, each of those purchases promised to somewhat improve my life vis-à-vis a scenario where I hadn’t made those purchases.
Every purchase we make is like this – there is a promise of a greater future. And this is what your brand needs to do for your ideal audience: it has to be able to communicate – effectively and consistently – how it will make their lives better, improve their tomorrow. The brands we mentioned earlier do this so effectively: Coca Cola gives us that sense of community and togetherness, and Deepak Chopra promises wisdom and life lessons, and Oprah is like the queen of caring and giving. Any beloved brand you can think of right now does this. Does your brand do this? What is your brand saying to your ideal audience? What emotion does it evoke? What do you want it to say?
The Four R’s of creating refreshing content.
To create a brand that is truly relevant and refreshing, you need these four R’s of branding: Resonance, Relevance, Relationships and the Real Story – these are four ways to make your brand content refreshing. So firstly, your brand has to resonate with your people – the way Coca Cola and Deepak Chopra resonate with their ideal audiences. They do what they do consistently. If Deepak Chopra started to speak like Howard Stern, this would be very disconcerting now, wouldn’t it?
Secondly your brand has to be relevant to the people it is targeted at. There are technological aids you can use to make your brand more relevant, such as MOZ, KISSmetrics, Buffer and so on as I talk about in the episode above. You can even bring your own experiences, your hobbies and your quirks to contribute to the personality of your brand and how people relate to it.I speak about the four R’s of branding in detail in this episode– watch to learn how you too can make your brand stand out in a sea of sameness. Create a unique, fresh brand that becomes an inspiration to millions.