Inside the Brand Clarity Framework™
Brand
Echoes
What do you want people to say when you're not in the room?
Your Brand Echoes are the terms, the feelings, the emotions and the ideas you want people to associate with you, especially when you're not in the room. They can be words, colors, scents or sounds. What they have in common is that they are simple, repeatable, and you are consistent with them.
Wondering how to use this in your business? See how we can work together.
The sale happens in living rooms.
I go over to a friend's home, see a car in the driveway and ask, what do you think of this car? In that moment, the language that person uses often looks very different from the language on a brochure or a company's website.
It might be, my children love this car because of this feature. Or, I really like it because it makes me feel like this. That simple, basic language is the stuff we want to capitalize on. It's language I can take from you and immediately begin to share with others.
Your entire business, everything you've worked so hard to build, gets reduced to a few words when someone turns to a friend and tells them about you. Those words are going to get said. Should you not be intentional about what they're going to be?
Your brand is the association. Your marketing is the reminder.
Your brand is the terms, the feelings, the emotions and the ideas that people associate with you. Your marketing is finding unique, fun and interesting ways to bubble that up for the audience and remind them.
The idea is repetition, repetition, repetition, but simplicity. These should be pieces of language I can bring up in a conversation. I make it easy for the person who has to remember me, and easy for them to tell someone else.
What language can your customer actually repeat?
Sit down with your team and ask, someone is talking about us to a friend in their living room. What are the words I hope will come up naturally in that conversation? Keep them simple. If you're relying on someone to repeat your whole brochure, you're giving them a lot of work to do.
For some people, the echoes will be words. I want our brand to be seen as fun, innovative and exciting. For some, they'll be colors. For some, they'll be scents or sounds. They can come in different forms, but they need to show up consistently across your touchpoints.
Try this with one conversation.
Ask a customer or a teammate to explain your business as if they were talking to a friend. What language do they naturally use? Compare that with the associations you want to build. Choose one real place in your customer experience where you can reinforce an echo.
Now give those words a story.
Simply having the echoes does not do the work for you. You have to actively send your stories out into the world. I can't come up to you and yell a bunch of words at you. That would be weird. So instead, I have to tell you stories.
That's the next step in my Brand Clarity Framework. Brand Echoes help you get clear about what you want people to associate with you. The 8 Resonance Story Types help you find stories that can carry those associations.
Next, turn your echoes into stories
Explore the 8 Resonance Story Types Back to The whole frameworkPut it to work with me
What would help you take the next step?
Wondering how to apply this to your business?
Bring a question about your brand, your message or the stories you're telling. In a private session, we'll work through your challenge and identify practical next steps.
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About this teaching
Adapted from my recorded teaching on Brand Echoes and my talk for the American Home Furnishings Alliance. The Tiffany example links to the company's own account; applying it to Brand Echoes is my interpretation.
These concepts form part of the Brand Clarity Framework I teach through Good Brands Don’t Whisper.
