The simpler you make your brand strategy, the easier to remember and share and live. The rub is that creating a powerfully simple brand strategy can be amazingly difficult. You’ll likely spend hours debating, brainstorming, defending, thinking and tweaking it before it’s right. It’s easy to fill pages with line after line of complex jargon. Jargon that everyone else uses. Like seamless integration, leading solutions and next generation.
Do any of those words give you goosebumps? Didn’t think so. Yet so often companies choose complex words as if to prove how smart they are. Or that they had a productive offsite strategy session to create their new strategy that will realize a merger of equals or whatever the impetus for a new strategy might be. Many fear they’ll be laughed at if it looks to easy. Or fear they can’t defend simple, but hard is easy to justify with the 30-slide PowerPoint crammed with supporting bullet points. Yawn.
Smart, confident people don’t speak in jargon. They communicate their big idea using the shortest possible words. Simple language with oomph and emotion. They don’t hide behind big, stuffy words. They speak with color and texture. Emotion. They tug at you because that’s what makes you pay attention. That’s what makes you open your wallet. Or spread the word.
Banish big words from your brand. Save ‘em for the holiday party. Or even better, shred them. Now. Think simple. It’s smarter. Don’t sweat it if it’s hard to get simple. Because it is. And that’s why most strategies are boring, obscure and forgettable. It’s time to free your brand. Let it zing.
