It’s not about you.

I don't know if it's just me, but, for the past few weeks, everywhere I look, I feel that someone is trying to sell me something, make me fitter, make me smarter, make me more beautiful….

All of these brands are trying to attract me by loudly shouting about them, themselves and what they do.

If this happened on a date, I would be making a very quick excuse and hot-footing out of there. Umm no thanks.

What these brands are failing to understand is that it is not about them at all.

To win the hearts and minds of customers they need to reframe their messaging and rather than focusing on them and their product features or benfits, they need to focus on who the customer is and the problem that they are solving for them.

Graze, CEO Joanna Allen, described it this way. "First and foremost, “your role as a brand is to solve a problem that people have”. Rather than obsessing over channels or formats, you should "focus on the people that you’re designing for and what is the problem that you’re solving for them (...) and be where you need them to be to solve this problem". Once you have defined this you wrap creativity around it and connect the dots to the consumer.

A great example of a brand doing this is THIS, the meat-free meat, designed for flexitarians- people who love meat but are consciously looking for plant-based alternatives.

They chose to launch the brand in January, a time of the year when people re-evaluate their life choices and in recent years been referred to as Veganuary. THIS™ knew that good intentions often wane in the first few weeks, so they positioned their product as the natural solution.

Almost 5 years in they continue to this through their social media, PR stunts - flashback to their contentious April fools- and as they grow I thew grow I suspect that they will take this approach through to mainstream media.

Lucky Saint, Oatley, Ecover, Estrid, MOJU- these are all other brands that do this really well.

If you need some help figuring out how to build a brand that lets to stand up and stand up, get in touch.