There’s no magic formula to get a brand to spearhead business growth. However, here’s the best next thing. This a very simple but powerful guiding principle that we created in Madre Consulting , and always steers us in the right direction.

We believe the right balance between essence, relevance, and differentiation enables any brand to get its point across clearly and confidently, allowing it to grow strong. 💪❤️📈

The Sweet Spot of Branding

1) Is your brand truthful to its essence? 💎

For a brand to be solid, it needs strong foundations, and there’s nothing more substantial than authenticity. Yes, “being authentic” is such a buzz phrase, but it’s absolutely essential. 

As brand consultants, we facilitate getting to the bottom of things to identify a brand’s essence and communicate it effectively.

Ask yourself:

• Why does my brand exist?
• What is my brand’s purpose beyond doing business?
• What will my brand’s legacy be?

Get to the core of your brand’s essence by challenging your own biases, questioning assumptions, and digging deep. Embrace hitting some nerves on the way, as getting uncomfortable will be part of the process until you strike gold.

By unlocking emotional truths, you can engage more powerfully with your audiences. Remember that tapping into emotion is tapping into behavioural triggers.

2) How relevant is your brand to its audiences?

As crucial as it is to be truthful to the brand’s stakeholders, we can’t just please its leadership. Why not? Well, because the brand isn’t for them, silly. It’s for their audience! It’s for your clients, or in our case, our client’s clients.

The job is to discover what benefits we provide that the target audience values the most, lean into them and develop them legitimately. Often, we miss the mark on critical emotional benefits and focus solely on listing shiny attributes. By being empathetic and deeply understanding our audiences, their barriers and rewards, and what’s truly appreciated, we’ll have cracked the code to what’s relevant to those we aim to conquer. 

3) Does your brand stand out from competitors? 👀

The last component involves consciously understanding how you want to be perceived compared to your competitors.

• Do you want to fit among your peers or convey a differentiating message that only you can own in time?
• Do you want to fight over a sought-after positioning or stand out on your own terms?
• Do you wish to play it safe, or are you willing to disrupt and risk it at a more significant gain?

As creative people, we love projects where we get to go creatively wild. However, a strategy-first approach will always result in better-balanced business-oriented decision-making.

We have moulded our approach by creating and launching brands in over 55 markets, repositioning, attracting new audiences, and ultimately helping our client’s businesses grow up to 7X. So it’s fair to say that this “cheat sheet” is well-tested.

Try it and let me know if it helps you hit the sweet spot.