Brand Messaging

Speaking the language of your target group

Brand messaging, indeed all communication, should be a conversation. There is you. And there is the customer. There is your positioning. And there is a human need. There is your brand architecture. And there is a market. One without the other is a monologue.

Developed correctly, your brand messaging will be less about how you would like to come across, and more about what your target group needs. Speaking without listening never goes over well.

How well do you know your target groups? Especially if you operate in different markets, this can quickly become a challenge. It’s not just about the language you use to communicate with them. Effective brand messaging does more than translate words. It also needs to consider meaning, mindset and market reality.

Our team can adapt your positioning, tone of voice and writing style guide so they resonate successfully in different cultures, while staying true to your original rationale.

Crossmedia storytelling

Every brand has multiple touchpoints where they reach their target audience. The point of your brand messaging is for your communication to come across clearly at every touchpoint. Campaigns, websites, social media, product packaging, even internal communication, should all draw on the same positioning, the same tone of voice and the same underlying rationale.

In alignment with your brand architecture, we help define the storytelling concepts that deliver this consistency across multiple channels and formats. From the first headline to the smallest interface text, every touchpoint should follow the same red thread. The result is communication that feels coherent, recognizable and trustworthy – no matter where it appears.

Consistency does not mean uniformity! Every channel, every market and every measure obviously demands a unique creative approach. Find more on this in the section below: “Let creativity reign”.

From a writing perspective, there are two fundamental tools to ensure your communication is on brand: your Corporate Language and a writing style guide. Based on your Corporate Identity, we can support you with the development of your brand’s own Corporate Language, in case you don’t have one yet. You can learn more about this specific tool in our blog article Good design needs the right tone.

A writing style guide is a smaller scale and more hands-on version of your Corporate Language. It includes dos and don’ts, best practice copy as well as rules on spelling and punctuation. A condensed version of a writing style guide can even be added to your prompts for generative AI. Our goal isn’t always to get the writing job, but to ensure the texts you publish are consistently on brand.

These are some of the media formats our writers at steelecht are well versed in:

• Content hubs (e.g. digital digests, e-magazines, blogs, etc.)
• Newsletters, emailings, direct marketing
• Social media posts, e.g. LinkedIn stories
• White papers
• Technical articles
• Video, animation, audio podcasts, infotainment
• Press releases / PR
• Live presentations
• Print media

Let’s work together to align your crossmedia storytelling with your brand positioning.

The master narrative

Having a master narrative for each major campaign or product launch can be a highly useful way to ensure your brand messaging works across different media. It is a long copy piece that includes all the key messages. Once it has been finalized and approved by your stakeholders, it serves as a rock solid basis for all future measures, ultimately making the approval process for those follow-up pieces much easier and faster.

Alternatively, a writing style guide may be preferrable. For instance, if your aim is to repurpose, recycle and refine existing content to serve multiple objectives in parallel. It serves a similar purpose, however: to help keep your communications focused, consistent and professional.

Whether you start with a master narrative or work with a writing style guide (or both), distributing your content across different channels will be mission-critical to the success of your brand messaging. Both new and old customers will keep finding you in all the right spaces. Done right, this ubiquity will not annoy, but reassure and even inspire your target audiences. There’s nothing better than when people start talking about you without being paid or prompted – with no room for confusion because the underlaying storytelling concept is built on a cohesive and consistent rationale.

Let creativity reign

Consistency is essential, but communication also needs room to unfurl its full potential. A clear brand architecture, a good writing style guide, a pre-approved master narrative can all serve as your foundation.

Now it’s time to unleash some creative minds within this framework – to add color, life and substance. Let them explore new angles, reinterpret familiar narratives and find engaging new ways to connect with your target groups.

Real world brand messaging balances both structure and imagination. While a solid rationale and compelling red thread guide the work, creative thinking brings personality and relevance to each new measure. This is how brands stay consistent without becoming predictable – and stay distinctive without losing their relatability.