El Problemo: The most effective branding exercise for messaging

Is your homepage, or all your content, feeling bland and generic? Yeah, so was mine up to a point. I mean, it’s still not that great, but just starting the branding process with the basics – WHY – was enough to straighten it out.

Here’s my homepage copy before this exercise.

And here’s my copy after:

What was the exercise?

Well, firstly, I looked more closely at the people I want to serve and pivoted from businesses to people, and from services to templates. This in itself felt fantastic.

Then, I narrowed it down to a single, ideal customer… me! (which made it both easier AND harder. Easier because I didn’t have to look too far, and harder because it’s hard to peel a banana from the inside.)

And when you look at your dreams to provide a certain value in the context of these problems, things become clearer.

This is one simple example from very early in my process of creating the MoNstA brand (I tend to create and iterate as I go – hey, I’m a tinkerer), but you can see the immediate impact.

Oh brandstrat, let me count the ways.

How to tell you’re focussing on the wrong market?

This actually highlights a limitation with brandstrat. You need to head into the process with a fair idea of what you do and who for. The strategy process can help you refine it, and might help you realise it needs updating, but it can’t tell you you’re focussing on the wrong market and offering the wrong product. These are things only you can decide.