Descriptors are crucial to brand storytelling

What is a descriptor & why are they important.

In simple terms descriptors help identify something. It can be a word or an expression and can refer to a person, place or thing. In brand stories, they can be used to reinforce a brand message, clarify what a brand does, and who creates it. Let’s explore.

The obvious brand descriptor - a brand’s name.

A brand's name works really well when it expresses the brand’s promise i.e. the unique and compelling value the brand promises to deliver. But that’s not a hard and fast rule, as we also know that a brand with really good messaging can survive with an ambiguous name. Take lululemon for example, the word itself has no meaning but we know that lululemon is here to help people feel good in their workout clothes and they make innovative technically designed athletic-leisure wear to do just that.

A brand name is the obvious descriptor, but there are others that should be considered. 

Other descriptors to consider.

There are many descriptors that are vitally important in communicating a brand’s key message. How a company positions itself in the market, how it classifies itself and the roles of employees also tell the story of what the company does and who does it.  

Let me share some examples of where we repositioned and reclassified what companies did to reinforce their brand stories. 

Examples of repositioning to support brand stories.

The position a company holds in the marketplace is a description of what they offer in relation to competitors. It’s the position where they should hold a competitive advantage. This is expressed as a Brand Positioning Statement. Before building a brand story we assess the position a company holds in the market place to see if it’s competitive. If it’s not, then we reposition the brand. That entails identifying a stronger position they can hold, and creating a new descriptor for that position. Below are examples of two agencies I recently did this for:

OK Dave is a wonderfully creative design agency that I repositioned as a ‘Brand Studio’ to reinforce their brand promise of creating Unexpected Brands that Pull You In. This reclassification communicated their speciality of brand design and took them out of the general space which helps speak more directly to their potential customers. 

Colony Digital was a ‘Full Service Agency’. In the discovery process we uncovered that the majority of their work was in fact servicing social media. Of all of their deliverables, be it video or image production, or copywriting, most were used in social media marketing campaigns. Some social marketing activities had also been classified under other general descriptors like ‘Production’ and ‘Paid Digital’ so hadn’t been recognized as social. We repositioned them as a ‘Social-First Creative Agency’ which spoke to the truth of what they offered. You can read more about that in this blog and case study.

In both these cases the descriptors conveyed their speciality which made them more competitive.

Examples of classifying and renaming people's roles to support brand stories.

I recently built a brand story for a Life Coach, Ean Kramer. In addition to life coaching he is also a master and teacher of many physical practices including Kung Fu, Pilates, Rock Climbing and more. When Ean coaches people he uses practices, tools and techniques from all his different areas of expertise. 

The brand promise created for him is “Upgrade Your Life” to reflect how he can help you in many areas from physical to mental & emotional. But calling him a Life Coach just didn't cut it, so I renamed what he did as Whole-Being Coaching. See how it works together below:

Upgrade Your life 

With Whole-Being Coaching 

When building a brand story for a team of amazing scientifically minded consultants from SysEne who are experts in Decarbonization and Transportation Systems, the general titles of Management Consultants or Change Management Consultants did not convey their expertise. We renamed their roles as Engineering Management Consultants, and it sung to their expertise and the new brand story. You can read more about that in this case study.

Those are some examples of where repositioning companies and reclassifying and renaming employee roles can speak more directly to what the company offers – but there’s more.  

Creating brand new descriptors to stand out.

Another tactic I love to employ when appropriate, is to create a brand new term that can communicate an offering better and help a company stand apart from the competition. 

For Bower House, a social-first creative agency, I renamed a collection of service offerings as ‘Connected Capabilities’. This encompassed various supplementary service offerings linked to enhance/support social media, such as website development, asset creation and branding. This allowed them to keep their primary focus as ‘social’ and make sense of how these non-social offerings supported social.

Do your descriptors reflect your brand message?

If you’re not sure, then maybe it’s time to revisit the words and phrases your company uses to describe what it offers, who delivers it, and check if those descriptors express your most important brand message. If not, brainstorm new descriptors that could help. The more specific and specialized the better, as long as they are easy to understand. And have some fun! 

If you’d like help uncovering your brand story and the descriptors that can support it, reach out to me at annabelle@ilikestorytelling.com.

Stories About Creating Brand Stories

This is the forth story about interesting things I’ve uncovered on my journeys to create brand stories, from the pitfalls and red herrings to the ah-ha moments. For more, visit Stories About Creating Brand Stories