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These days, you can ask 100 people what “brand” is, and you’ll get 100 different answers. To some, it’s an Instagram account. To others, a cool logo. It’s often even used as a synonym for “product” or “company.” (E.g. “Kim Kardashian launched a new brand today.”)
Because branding and brand marketing isn’t as tangible as, say, hard data in growth marketing, it can feel intangible and unclear what the deliverables are — what are we actually investing in by investing in “brand”?
It’s a lot simpler than it seems: A great brand is a brand that achieves resonance with its target customers.
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When we talk about brand personality, verbal identity, messaging, and copywriting, these are essentially all tools to reach one goal. The customer resonates with the product and says, "Yes, this is for me."
How to use brand to achieve resonance with customers:
Establish an emotional connection
Emotions play a huge role in buyer decision making. We can establish an emotional connection not only through the visual identity (colors, art direction, etc.) but also through the verbal identity, by creating a singular brand personality that works in tandem with the visual identity. Think of Oatly’s wordy, outspoken personality.
By truly understanding the customer and what problem the product is solving, and then communicating that in the right messaging, we help the customer see themselves reflected back, so they think “This really gets me.”
Stand out among a sea of simultaneous noise and sameness
I recently evaluated 10 popular home meal kit services, and beyond minor differences, they all looked kind of the same. If I were choosing which one to purchase, I wouldn’t know where to start, beyond asking for friend recommendations or trying to find the cheapest introductory offer.
With brand resonance, your customer sees what makes you different from the others and why they should try yours instead of the others. Without it, they have less reason to pick you out from the crowd.
Clearly communicate differentiated value
A common mistake in marketing copy is listing features or values that other competitive alternatives also have. In the meal kit example above, it’d be “Delivers to your doorstep!” Most competitive alternatives, from grocery delivery to the other meal kit services, offer this.
Resonance is achieved by communicating what makes you different from all competitive alternatives, not just basic features. A meal kit service could say 90% of their recipes are plant-based, making it easier to stick to a varied meat-free diet. Someone who’s vegetarian or trying to eat less meat would resonate with that and have more reason to pick that service over the others.
Use attention to detail and singularity that surprises and delights
A lot of marketers I know now prefer the growth flywheel model over the traditional marketing funnel. The traditional funnel implies that once a purchase is made, the customer relationship finishes. With the growth flywheel, there’s an emphasis on delighting and engaging the customer once the purchase is complete, so they come back for repeat purchases and refer others.
Quality customer interactions create resonance. This could show up through generous customer service, a personalized welcome email, or a thoughtful piece of copy in an unexpected place. By asking how we can surprise and delight our customers through every stage in the flywheel, we can spur customer referrals and word of mouth.
Stay consistent to build trust over time
We’ve all heard those classic definitions of “brand” that say a brand is essentially a promise. This is one of the reasons brand marketing has become lower priority in a get-results-faster world. Too many companies are aiming for quick growth and easy hacks.
But if we’re aiming to create sustainable, long lasting companies and products, resonance is something we achieve over time through consistency.
In our area, this is brand personality that shows up in all the little places — we’ve all talked to customer service that doesn’t sound anything like the brand’s Instagram captions. The brand really needs to know itself, which usually takes some strategic work, frameworks and playbooks that the whole team can access and use.
Think of the brand like a person — aspects of our personality may be dialed up or down depending if we’re at work or at drinks with friends, but we’d still be recognizable as the same person. Is your brand recognizable across all channels?
Use terms and language that your customer understands
Do you ever visit a landing page and think, “What is this? I don’t get it.” You immediately close the window or move on, because it takes too much effort to know if it’s for you.
We can achieve resonance by speaking the same language as our customer. Take ChatGPT’s brand for example — it’s done this a lot better than most AI companies’ branding. Because ChatGPT was targeting customers who may be interacting with an AI tool for the first time, it provided customers with clear prompts and ways to use it, without using too much jargon people non-versed in AI wouldn’t know.
This doesn’t necessarily mean speaking down — for example, if you’re a high-tech company and you know your target audience likes to feel intellectually challenged, you may intentionally use more complex language. Car commercials often list horsepower and other technical specifications; the average driver doesn’t really know what these numbers mean for them, but they get the intended meaning that these cars are high performance.
–
So next time you see “brand,” just think, “resonance.” Resonance helps make all other aspects of marketing and selling much easier. That’s something we should all be striving for, isn’t it?
Written by Brandy Cerne. Brandy spent most of her career in house at high growth, community-oriented startups — Shake Shack, Sofar Sounds, and Groove — and now helps early stage startups achieve resonance at her own brand strategy studio Brand by Brandy.
These days, you can ask 100 people what “brand” is, and you’ll get 100 different answers. To some, it’s an Instagram account. To others, a cool logo. It’s often even used as a synonym for “product” or “company.” (E.g. “Kim Kardashian launched a new brand today.”)
Because branding and brand marketing isn’t as tangible as, say, hard data in growth marketing, it can feel intangible and unclear what the deliverables are — what are we actually investing in by investing in “brand”?
It’s a lot simpler than it seems: A great brand is a brand that achieves resonance with its target customers.
When we talk about brand personality, verbal identity, messaging, and copywriting, these are essentially all tools to reach one goal. The customer resonates with the product and says, "Yes, this is for me."
How to use brand to achieve resonance with customers:
Establish an emotional connection
Emotions play a huge role in buyer decision making. We can establish an emotional connection not only through the visual identity (colors, art direction, etc.) but also through the verbal identity, by creating a singular brand personality that works in tandem with the visual identity. Think of Oatly’s wordy, outspoken personality.
By truly understanding the customer and what problem the product is solving, and then communicating that in the right messaging, we help the customer see themselves reflected back, so they think “This really gets me.”
Stand out among a sea of simultaneous noise and sameness
I recently evaluated 10 popular home meal kit services, and beyond minor differences, they all looked kind of the same. If I were choosing which one to purchase, I wouldn’t know where to start, beyond asking for friend recommendations or trying to find the cheapest introductory offer.
With brand resonance, your customer sees what makes you different from the others and why they should try yours instead of the others. Without it, they have less reason to pick you out from the crowd.
Clearly communicate differentiated value
A common mistake in marketing copy is listing features or values that other competitive alternatives also have. In the meal kit example above, it’d be “Delivers to your doorstep!” Most competitive alternatives, from grocery delivery to the other meal kit services, offer this.
Resonance is achieved by communicating what makes you different from all competitive alternatives, not just basic features. A meal kit service could say 90% of their recipes are plant-based, making it easier to stick to a varied meat-free diet. Someone who’s vegetarian or trying to eat less meat would resonate with that and have more reason to pick that service over the others.
Use attention to detail and singularity that surprises and delights
A lot of marketers I know now prefer the growth flywheel model over the traditional marketing funnel. The traditional funnel implies that once a purchase is made, the customer relationship finishes. With the growth flywheel, there’s an emphasis on delighting and engaging the customer once the purchase is complete, so they come back for repeat purchases and refer others.
Quality customer interactions create resonance. This could show up through generous customer service, a personalized welcome email, or a thoughtful piece of copy in an unexpected place. By asking how we can surprise and delight our customers through every stage in the flywheel, we can spur customer referrals and word of mouth.
Stay consistent to build trust over time
We’ve all heard those classic definitions of “brand” that say a brand is essentially a promise. This is one of the reasons brand marketing has become lower priority in a get-results-faster world. Too many companies are aiming for quick growth and easy hacks.
But if we’re aiming to create sustainable, long lasting companies and products, resonance is something we achieve over time through consistency.
In our area, this is brand personality that shows up in all the little places — we’ve all talked to customer service that doesn’t sound anything like the brand’s Instagram captions. The brand really needs to know itself, which usually takes some strategic work, frameworks and playbooks that the whole team can access and use.
Think of the brand like a person — aspects of our personality may be dialed up or down depending if we’re at work or at drinks with friends, but we’d still be recognizable as the same person. Is your brand recognizable across all channels?
Use terms and language that your customer understands
Do you ever visit a landing page and think, “What is this? I don’t get it.” You immediately close the window or move on, because it takes too much effort to know if it’s for you.
We can achieve resonance by speaking the same language as our customer. Take ChatGPT’s brand for example — it’s done this a lot better than most AI companies’ branding. Because ChatGPT was targeting customers who may be interacting with an AI tool for the first time, it provided customers with clear prompts and ways to use it, without using too much jargon people non-versed in AI wouldn’t know.
This doesn’t necessarily mean speaking down — for example, if you’re a high-tech company and you know your target audience likes to feel intellectually challenged, you may intentionally use more complex language. Car commercials often list horsepower and other technical specifications; the average driver doesn’t really know what these numbers mean for them, but they get the intended meaning that these cars are high performance.
–
So next time you see “brand,” just think, “resonance.” Resonance helps make all other aspects of marketing and selling much easier. That’s something we should all be striving for, isn’t it?
Written by Brandy Cerne. Brandy spent most of her career in house at high growth, community-oriented startups — Shake Shack, Sofar Sounds, and Groove — and now helps early stage startups achieve resonance at her own brand strategy studio Brand by Brandy.
Further Reading
