Your brand messaging can be a thing of beauty—here’s how

“As a master luthier meticulously crafts each instrument to strike the perfect chord, so must we shape our brand narratives. Using Socrates’s three filters – truth, goodness, and utility – we can ensure our brand stories resonate with authenticity, positivity, and value. And just like that guitar in the dimly lit room, when our brand sings its melody, the audience won’t just listen – they’ll be entranced.” —  Rande Vick , chief storytelling officer @ Rande Vick Agency  

Above all, brand messaging and narratives are functional. They exist to achieve a certain commercial purpose: to convince, to sell, to inform, or educate. The purpose of your brand’s messaging is not to make your audience swoon with wonder, but to bring them closer to your brand. But are brass tacks messaging and beautiful language always at odds? According to this week’s contributors, they don’t have to be. 

First, Rande Vick applies Socrates’ timeless ‘Three Filter Test’ to brand narratives. According to Socrates, people respond most deeply to stories that they perceive to be true, good, and useful. A specialist in musical instrument branding, Rande explores how brands like Gibson and Yamaha strum these three chords, creating a melody that moves people not just to buy products, but to remain loyal to those brands over time. (1) Next, Nick Barthram dispels the notion that in order for brand messaging to be accessible, it must be ‘dumbed down’. In actuality, for brands doing sophisticated things in science or tech, oversimplification can significantly dilute your brand. (2) In a similar vein, Paul Anderson argues that the ‘rules’ of brand messaging—such as ‘Keep it simple’—should be broken if they contradict your purpose as a brand. (3) 

All three of these articles—and many more on Brandingmag.com—advocate for a bolder approach to brand messaging and narratives, one that strives to engage the better nature of their audiences: their intelligence, their curiosity, and their natural hunger for great stories.  

Three Chords and the Truth: Brand Narratives and the Three Filter Test

By Rande Vick  

“How do we ensure the narrative we’re crafting is heard and truly resonates with the audience? How can we fine-tune our brand marketing for maximum impact? We could seek guidance from an ancient philosopher: Socrates.

Socrates, the father of Western philosophy, proposed a straightforward method of filtering out noise from a conversation known as the ‘Three Filter Test.’ The test poses three critical questions: is it true, good, and useful? Let’s look at how these can be incorporated into brand marketing.

Is it true?

In the realm of brand marketing, authenticity is vital. It feels too obvious to say as much to my peers, but storytelling isn’t make-believe in our world. Consumers are not interested in buying a product; they are even less interested in being sold. They are investing in the story, the ethos, and the authenticity that a brand represents. 

For instance, Gibson guitars have built their brand upon this bedrock of truth: they build handcrafted instruments that have shaped the sounds of generations. 

Their advertising campaigns focus on the artists that swear by the brand–from various genres and generations. You might see an ad featuring Gene Simmons (of KISS fame) sporting his signature bass, or the newest TikTok sensation, an emerging talent–who happens to be 12.

One noted Gibson enthusiast was one of the world’s most beloved bluesmen. B.B. King said he tried them all, but ‘When I found that Gibson with the long neck, that did it. That’s like finding your wife forever.’

These endorsements create a sense of authenticity, demonstrating that the brand’s claims aren’t just marketing fluff but a veritable truth. Their claim to have shaped the sounds of generations is indeed a fact. It rings true. Hence, before broadcasting any brand message, ensure it’s factual, authentic, and reflective of your brand’s core values.

Is it good?

The ‘good’ in Socrates’s second filter implies a positive impact. How is your brand making the world better, and how does it contribute to the well-being of the consumers?

Consider the brand promise of musical instruments giant Yamaha. Yamaha is a global brand renowned for its diverse range of instruments. The company has a rich history of manufacturing quality instruments, promoting music education, and contributing to local communities. Their marketing often highlights these initiatives, showcasing their commitment to improving lives beyond mere profit. Their brand promise: Make Waves. . . .

As a brand marketer, evaluating your narrative through the ‘good’ filter is always a good idea. Is your brand story inspiring, uplifting, or encouraging positive behavior? Your audience will appreciate your brand’s commitment to social good and respond positively if it is.

Is it useful?

Finally, Socrates asks us to consider the utility of our message. In the context of marketing, this translates to value—does your brand narrative offer value to your consumers?

For instance, let’s look at how high-end guitar manufacturer PRS (Paul Reed Smith) differentiates itself from, say, Gibson. They understand that their target demographic isn’t just looking for some regular old guitar that’s been played out. Their audience is looking for something new, unique, and next-gen quality. They’re looking for an X-factor, and PRS is happy to deliver. 

PRS’s marketing often emphasizes the uniqueness and sonic versatility of its guitars. For example, they work hard to capture the beauty of a quilted maple top guitar. They showcase angles, cuts, and bevels that make their instruments stand out. . . .

When crafting your brand narrative, it is helpful, of course, to focus on your products or services’ unique value. Highlight how they can solve a problem, fulfill a need, or enhance your consumers’ lives.

Three filter test

The beauty of the Socratic Three Filter Test is that it enforces nuanced simplicity and gives a tidy framework for clarity.

As a master luthier meticulously crafts each instrument to strike the perfect chord, so must we shape our brand narratives. Using Socrates’s three filters–truth, goodness, and utility–we can ensure our brand stories resonate with authenticity, positivity, and value.

And just like that guitar in the dimly lit room, when our brand sings its melody, the audience won’t just listen–they’ll be entranced.”

Why Keeping It Simple Doesn’t Mean Dumbing It Down

By Nick Barthram 

“We’re told that keeping it simple is core to building an accessible brand, but great brands are built from dramatised details rather than abstract generics.

A core tenet of brand-building is to keep your messaging focused and easy to understand. People usually give communications and ads little attention, so whatever you say needs to be simple, understandable and memorable. Not only that, but it must also be attributable to your brand, building memory structures over time.

For some categories, that’s an easy task. Have you got the same thing as everyone else with an extra twist? That’s great. Tell everyone about the difference, and let them fill in the gaps! Familiar categories have memory structures so that brands can double down on the differentiating factor.

However, for complex and innovative products, the type often found in university spin-outs or resulting from research challenges, the need to simplify can often result in dumbing down the message to an easily duplicated or ignored level.

These organisations might be trying to catch the attention of investors who don’t have time to get into the detail of every new product they come across. Or they’ve saturated the early adopters and need to reach broader audiences. Whatever their reasons, they hit the stage where their complexities hold them back in communications. At this point, the precise details of the innovation are thought to be too complex to grab attention, and they opt to cut it down. 

Here’s the trap. Ask any writer, there is a big difference between simplifying and removing content that doesn’t add to the story.

So many innovative brands chose the former, laddering up to trite anodyne statements which, though perhaps attributable to their products, don’t distinguish them from their competitors. . . .

These innovators must remember that great brands are built from interesting stories. Instead of simplifying the whole product, brands built around complex products and services should find interesting details and dramatise them. But it can be challenging to see what makes your business special when you’re close to the details, so here are three prompts to help you stay simple and interesting.

Keep an eye on the category

Dumbing down affects everyone, and you can often spot common simplifications to avoid across your competitor set. A straightforward trick is to copy and paste your competitor’s website copy into a blank document, remove the brand names and ask someone slightly removed from the category to go through the paper and highlight the repeated phrases. If you’re short on friends to pressure into this, BingAI does a good job of spotting the similarities too.

Find the differences and motivations

Secondly, become a product and brand investigator, analysing and detailing your motivations, product and competitors. Break your findings into clusters relevant to your category, and don’t let up until you’ve found a unique difference, no matter how small. It doesn’t necessarily have to be the critical part of your technology; it just has to be the basis of an interesting story. What a friend calls the ‘chocolate in the chili’ (because adding chocolate to a chili con carne improves the dish’s flavour).

Dramatise the difference against audience needs

Once you’ve found the difference, bring it to life distinctively and compellingly. It doesn’t have to be a novel–illustrate the difference and how your audience’s world will differ as a result. 

We’re often asked to start with why, but I advocate we start by answering so what?

Putting these simple steps into practice should help us reach a place where complex products get the attention they deserve, not by dumbing it down but by dramatising the details.”

Break the Rules: Brand Language Is Yours to Create

By Paul Anderson

“Simplicity is a useful, even vital principle for all writers to learn. It teaches them to remain focused on their purpose and to only choose words that help them achieve it. It reminds them to consider the limited time and energy of their audience, who may not carry dictionaries on their person.

One recent variation of the rule says Never use a word you wouldn’t use in your own daily life—a combination of Write what you know and Omit needless words. Most professional writers, especially those in marketing, seem to agree with this one. If a word isn’t in your own everyday vocabulary, cut it. 

Most people don’t want to read at all, so you have to bring language to a level where it informs, but never excludes or frustrates. This is the most logical justification for slicing every bit of language that might be perceived as excessive. Ultimately, it could push readers away before they’ve been engaged, which hurts your bottom line in the long run. Rules exist for a reason.

But the result of these rules is often sameness. Terse language. Single. Word. Sentences. A dry and unconvincing substitute for wit. Snarky rhetorical questions? You bet. 

What a rule like this lacks is context. It lacks any regard for the elements that must be considered in the foundational stages of brand development, and in the writing process in general—questions about the network of relationships that exist in the real world beyond the writer, beyond their blank page or blinking cursor, and beyond whatever rules they’ve swallowed without chewing.

Before determining what type of language a writer can or can’t use, they have to consider a host of other questions relating to context. These are questions about market audience, about their product and its competitors, their economic and cultural context, and so many more. If engaged with intelligence, imagination, and a sense of possibility, these questions provide the fuel for crucial creative choices that make up a brand’s identity. 

Once your brand determines its verbal and visual aesthetic, banning flowery words from your copy makes as much sense as banning simple ones. . . .

What these brands [Apple, Dr. Bronner’s] do is evoke a sense of possibility and aspiration. I highly doubt the creatives who dreamed them up devoted a second’s effort to limiting their vocabulary to what they ‘know’. There’s a lot we don’t know. Isn’t the purpose of creativity to go beyond limits and build new realities—ones beyond what we already know? 

The less-considered risk of limiting vocabulary—and for that matter, our ideas—to that which is simple, digestible, and predictable, is that we may end up boring and frustrating audiences by pandering to them, patronizing them, or spoon feeding them more of the same thin soup.

The question is not whether your language is too simple or too complex, but whether or not that language is on brand—whether it aligns with the aesthetic identity you’ve made through a dynamic, even demanding creative process. . . .

Without considering context in brand development—the relationship between language, audience, culture, and more—no rule will save your writing from stinking like so many wilting flowers. For brand writers, this consideration of context is an essential part of the brand development process. 

This is the part of the process where we can take creative risks and make imaginative leaps, where creatives can work together to dream up brands that aren’t timidly beholden to arbitrary rules. We can choose what we want our brands to be—what feelings or ideas they might evoke, and what words we’ll use to do so, no matter how flowery. In branding, we don’t write what we know, but what we want to create. The language that follows, whether plain or Victorian, baroque or blunt, should grow directly out of the brand, not limits or rules.”

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