Elements of Brand Communication.

Successful marketing communications start with a clear understanding of an organization’s position and master message.

Appropriate variations of the master message drive the development of the individual promotional or advertising projects and campaigns. When appropriately executed, every project consistently reinforces how target audiences perceive the organization.

This paper briefly explains position and message, and their associated element, the tagline. Since these elements all contribute to establishing or reinforcing a brand, it’s helpful to understand what a brand is.

What is a Brand?

A brand is a dominant perception that people have of a company, organization, or even a person. You can think of it as “the personality” in all its aspects.

People’s experience of dealing with or hearing about the organization forms their opinions of it—the brand. The goal is to make a positive and consistent experience so people will think favorably, particularly in the target audiences.

An aspect of establishing and maintaining a brand is what’s called brand expression. Elements like; the logo, tagline, color scheme, typography, among others. All of these contribute to establishing and reinforcing the impression that the organization wants to project. It’s comparable to how each of us presents ourselves to the world; how we dress, how we speak, and how we behave all cumulatively contribute to how other people think of us.

What is a Position?

“Position” is the space that we want to occupy in the minds of our various audiences. Understanding and effectively supporting our position across all our marketing communications establishes and reinforces a consistent perception across those audiences.

Think of it in terms of them completing the sentence, “Oh, yes, I know [organization’s name]. They’re the [some clear, positive and personally expressed, close variation of the position we hold].”

What is a Message?

A message is a thought or impression that you want your target audience to internalize.

A master message defines the overarching impression that you want to establish and reinforce in your target markets. Variations of it will address specific audiences, specific industries, various marketing activities, among others.

The better messages are expressed as an “I” statement, “I” being someone on the receiving end. They reflect the target audience’s viewpoint: “I’ll be able to do more in less time,” “I can save tons of money,” “I want to support this organization”…

Important to note: Master messages rarely explicitly express a particular product, attribute, or company claim (though message variations for specific projects often do). Instead, we create them to convey a higher-level sense that you want the target audience(s) to conclude or realize for themselves.

Therefore, the better ones are “I” statements rather than headline-type thoughts.

What is the Purpose of a Message?

The message provides a guide for the development of marketing communications.

You won’t necessarily see it explicitly stated, but you should sense its intent in communications with a thought-through message.

Example: Apple’s overall message is “extremely talented people creating insanely great products for us.”

You have heard Steve Jobs say part of that, but you will never encounter the message in any marketing communications materials. You sense it from the individual expressions it drives and from the total of Apple’s communications, product design, packaging, user experience.

As in the Apple example, the main message is compelling only if it consistently applies and can deliver its promise.

Where Is It Applied? Generally, marketing communications should:

• Attract

• Engage

• Inform

• Convince

• Motivate

Attract and Engage are the “what” part of the argument: what’s in it for you, the target audience.

Inform and Convince are the “how” it gets done; the proof points reinforce the credibility of the “what.”

Motivate is the call-to-action to take the next step.

The main message provides the starting point of communicating with the target audience. Meaning, it sets the “story” that runs through the Attract and Engage steps that are subsequently supported by Inform, Convince and Motivate.

What is a Tagline?

The persistent element that supports the position and central message of an organization is the tagline that appears with the logo and the organization’s name.

Its wording sets the stage for its marketing communications (promotional material, advertising, fundraising, social presence). It reminds both the organization and its audiences why it exists, what it does, and for whom it does it.