After many years of consulting I’ve come to realize a simple marketing truth…the most fruitful starting point for planning your marketing is to first define your brand.

Many business owners start defining their brands when developing their logo…but before the ink is dry on the business cards, they often move onto other things and their brand strategy remains partially defined, in a “fuzzy wuzzy” state.

Failure to deep dive on the brand strategy usually results in a lot of tail chasing for years to come. In contrast, a PRECISELY defined brand will act like your compass, it will keep you (and your marketing) pointing in the right direction.

Most brands live in one of three stages:
Stage 1: Fuzzy wuzzy
Stage 2: “Me too”
Stage 3: Uniquely you!

Stage 1
The “fuzzy wuzzy” brand is still uncommitted to deciding who it really is. It’s still in contemplation mode but usually is already marketing itself. This is a fruitless stage since you are asking the marketplace to interpret and clarify for themselves what your brand should mean to them. Consumers are simply too busy for this, they need you to figure out who your brand is and then telegraph this message back to them via their preferred communication channels.

Often clients stuck in fuzzy wuzzy land are afraid of declaring any “specifics” for fear of “leaving out” large portions of the marketplace. The first thing every client has to admit to themselves is that they are not a fit for everyone, accepting this is extremely liberating.

Stage 2
Unlike the fuzzy wuzzy brand, the “me too” brand has decided something! Unfortunately those who find themselves in this stage have decided (consciously or not) to be on par with their competition— making the same claims and similar promises. In other words being a “me too” brand is just playing it safe but not doing anything extraordinary in its marketing message, marketing tactics, product design or customer experience. As consumers, we see “me too” brands daily and we’re adept at tuning it all out. But “me too” is a step in the right direction as it’s at least giving some definition and shape to the brand.

Stage 3
The “uniquely you” brand is where you want to land as this is the place where you know what makes your brand so brilliant.
And you get there by PRECISELY defining WHO your brand really is.

I say “who” because brands are a lot like people, they have names, values, personalities, aspirations and “friends”.

You know your brand is on its way to being “uniquely you” when you can honestly answer the following:
1. What is my organization passionate about (aka my brand’s core values )?
2. Who do I best serve (aka my target audiences)?
3. What can all my customers consistently expect from us (aka my brand’s promise)?
4. How do I boil down our promise to 2-3 words so my employees and partners never forget why we’re in business (aka my
brand essence)?
5. How do I tell my story so it separates me from my competition (aka my market positioning strategy)?
6. How do my employees and I “show up” as our brand when interacting with our customers (aka my brand experience)?

A “Uniquely You” Case
One brand that has really broken out of “me too” and into “uniquely you” is Ally Bank, the 24/7 online bank. This is a masterful example of branding since Ally Financial is part of the former General Motors Acceptance Corporation (GMAC) dating back to 1919!

In 2009 Ally Bank began running humorous television commercials featuring kids as bank customers and the discrepancy in how some bank customers are treated better than others. You’ve likely seen the 30 second TV spot featuring a little girl who is asked by a man in a pinstriped suit, “Would you like a pony?” And when she nods, she’s given a toy pony. Then her little friend is asked the same question, she nods and voila she’s given a REAL pony.

When the first girl protests, “You didn’t say I could have a real one,” the pinstriped fellow says, “Well you didn’t ask.” Morale of the story, Ally Bank is not like every other bank, they don’t hide behind the fine print…they’re straight talkers who do right by their customers and strive to be obviously better than competing banks.
Ally Bank Pony TV Spot

Ally is a vivid example as the antithesis of “me too” brands. And they did it by first defining who they really want to be in the marketplace (the straightforward bank people). You can read about their brand story on their website

Remember, the STARTING POINT to all great marketing is defining your brand strategy FIRST. The world is already full of fuzzy wuzzy and “me too” brands, dare to be uniquely you!

About Pecanne Eby, MBA

Pecanne is speaker and an independent Marketing Consultant in Denver, CO. With 20 years of marketing practitioner experience (many of those years in the fast-paced advertising agency world), she helps clients clarify, simplify and unify their brand strategy so that their marketing “sticks” in their audiences’ long term memory banks. Pecanne regularly facilitates a variety of marketing workshops including: Brands that Sell; Building a Buzzworthy Brand and Brandtopia.