Words can paint a thousand pictures
By Matt Mason
If I had a pound for every time I’ve sat in a brand workshop with a client who wanted to build their messaging around everything they do, I’d be enjoying a few more holidays rather than posting on LinkedIn.
At Chocolate Ltd, we run dozens of brand workshops every year. Increasingly, these feel more like business mentoring than branding exercises. After nearly 30 years in business, perhaps that’s no bad thing.
Recently, we worked with a successful company that wanted consistency in its messaging. Clients used them for different services, described them in different ways and sometimes misunderstood what they did. Was their messaging affecting sales?
The problem was that they were selling themselves as a ‘Jack of all trades’. They feared losing smaller, bread-and-butter jobs if they stopped promoting them.
Quite a few of my closest friends work in the building trade. Electricians, carpenters, tilers and plumbers, plus a few ‘general builders’. They’re all practical people who can turn their hands to almost anything, often exceptionally well. But the general builder will usually charge a lower day rate than the specialist, even when they’re equally capable.
When someone asks me to recommend an electrician, I know who to call. It won’t be the general builder, even if he’s equally capable.
That’s why positioning is so important.
We encourage clients to identify the one thing they do exceptionally well, or the thing that makes them the most money, and make it the focus of their messaging. Not because they should stop doing everything else, but because one clear message, repeated consistently, is more likely to be remembered than a long list of capabilities. People pay more for specialists because they expect a better service.
Our client had traded successfully for years, but experience tells us specialists are often better placed to command a premium.
So do we practise what we preach? At Chocolate, we thrive on variety. It’s one reason I chose this career. We have an exceptionally versatile team, but we don’t describe ourselves as an agency that does a bit of everything.
We’re a branding and advertising agency. We create brands that turn heads, then bold ideas that make you famous. Unlike many branding agencies, we don’t stop when the brand guidelines are delivered. We take those brands into the marketplace and create campaigns that make people notice them.
Does that stop clients asking us to design merchandise, 3D spaces or investment decks? Not in the slightest.
You don’t have to stop doing everything else. You just have to stop telling everyone you do everything.
Find the thing you want to be known for, make it your message and repeat it consistently.
Become the specialist. The rest will follow.