How brands read your mind
I’m about to demystify what’s happening when it feels like a brand is reading your mind.
They didn't. They're not more persuasive than their competitors. They're not better writers. They're certainly not more creative in their marketing.
All that's happening is that they're speaking to the most specific person possible. Not a demographic group. ONE person.
Let me show you the difference with a made-up but very typical example. A wellness coach describes her audience to me as "women who want to feel better." Reasonable, but literally useless. "Feel better" about what? Which women? So we keep narrowing. Not "women who want to feel better" but "women in their first year of motherhood who used to feel capable at work and now feel like they've lost the person they were."
Now there's a real human on the other end of the sentence, with a specific ache, in specific words.
Watch what that unlocks. The headline writes itself, because you know exactly what she's afraid of. The testimonials you feature change, because you know which story she needs to see. The things you leave out get easier, because anything that isn't for her is now just noise. One decision upstream, and a hundred decisions downstream get clearer.
That's the move.
And please don't confuse this crystal clear picture of your customer with demographics. We're not looking for an age, a city, or an industry. We're looking for what keeps a person up at night. What motivates them to pull out their credit card. Knowing your audience isn't the goal.
It's about going from a group to a person, from a demographic to an ache, from "feel better" to a sentence so specific it's almost uncomfortable.
Branding isn't some creative gift. It's just courage with a process.
So here's your challenge this week: take how you describe your audience right now and keep narrowing it until the sentence makes you a little uncomfortable. Until there's one real person on the other end of it, with one specific ache, in their own words.
That sentence is the most valuable thing you'll write for your brand all year.
Getting to it is step three of my nine-step brand strategy framework, and it's the one that makes every step after it easier. If you want the whole process, The Complete Brand Strategy Course walks you through all of it, with the psychology behind why each piece works.
