When it comes to branding, one of the big stumbling blocks is this question:
What would they say about me?
It is a fundamentally difficult question to answer and, to be frank, it’s a rhetorical one. We don’t know who these people are, and we can only guess what they might, or might not, say.
But the fact that the question has arisen in your mind gives us a pretty good clue about what you guess people would say. And it ain’t going to be positive, is it?
A way to get around this issue is to think in terms of what the question does. What is the effect of a question such as this? It stops us from taking action.
Instead, I urge you to rethink and try to define who ‘they’ are in the context of your branding.
What I’m suggesting is moving away from the land of vague and moving into the specific.
When you think about ‘they’, who are those people? If we were to really define who they are, the question of ‘What would they say about me’ can now become a powerful motivator to specify who you really want to attract.
I’m talking here about the audience for your brand. As I often say, branding is done for other people, and those people are your audience.
We brand for a specific audience because we can’t do branding for everyone – the vague they. Instead, we have to pick some people. Now ask yourself this. What would you like those people to say about your brand?
That is NOT a rhetorical question and it is a question worthy of more careful thinking and planning. This is very different from getting stalled in your branding processes or, worse, dismissing your branding, simply because you fear what the vague ‘they’ might-would-could say about you.
That’s why I say “choose your audience”.
There’s another statement or question that blocks us. I’ll talk about that in my next email.
Until next time
