Could Your Customers Explain Your Brand Better Than You Could?

Ask a brand to describe itself and you'll often get a paragraph.

Innovative. Customer-centric. Purpose-driven. Best-in-class. End-to-end. Creating meaningful solutions for...

Ask one of its customers and you'll probably get three words.

And strangely enough, those three words might tell you more about the brand than the paragraph ever could.

Take SKIMS. When I think of the brand, a few things immediately come to mind: snatched silhouettes, skin-tone neutrals, comfy basics.

Then take Glossier. My associations are completely different: millennial pink, effortless beauty, that whole my-everything-but-better aesthetic.

Someone else might use different words. That's expected. The point isn't that everyone describes a brand identically. It's that the associations tend to orbit the same territory.

That's brand clarity.

It doesn't mean everyone can recite your tagline. It means people have formed a reasonably clear understanding of who you are, what you offer and what they can expect from you.

And sometimes, your customers can articulate that far better than you can.

Brands speak from the inside out. Customers remember from the outside in.

When you work inside a business, everything feels important.

Every service. Every product feature. Every differentiator. Every company milestone. Every value painstakingly debated in a meeting room. Naturally, you want to communicate all of it.

Your customers don't have that burden.

They experience your brand from the outside and retain whatever feels most relevant to them.

That's why I don't necessarily believe every business must be explainable in a single sentence.

Some businesses are genuinely complex.

A bank offers hundreds of products. A technology company might operate across multiple divisions. An integrated agency can work across communications, events, digital, creative and technology.

You can have a complicated business without having a complicated brand.

People don't need to understand everything about you immediately.

They need a useful mental shortcut for understanding why you matter to them.

So how do you know whether they have one?

I would start with three very simple questions.

1. What three words come to mind when you think of our brand?

Don't show them your brand guidelines first.

Don't give them a list of adjectives to choose from.

Just ask.

Then compare their answers with the three words your organisation would use to describe itself.

If you want to be perceived as premium, innovative and dependable, but your customers consistently say affordable, convenient and familiar, there's a gap.

That doesn't automatically mean the customer perception is bad.

In fact, you might discover something incredibly valuable.

The point is to understand the difference between intended identity and received perception.

Communications lives in the space between the two.

2. How would you describe us to a friend?

I particularly like this question because it removes corporate language almost instantly.

People rarely recommend businesses by saying:

"They're an integrated solutions provider delivering innovative end-to-end solutions."

They say:

"They're expensive, but really reliable."

"Go there. Their service is damn good."

"They're the ones that do those crazy interactive experiences."

"Their clothes somehow make everything look snatched."

That's how brands actually travel from person to person.

Listen closely to the words customers naturally use because there may be a better articulation of your value proposition hiding in everyday conversation than in the brand deck you've spent months perfecting.

3. What do you expect from us?

This question goes one step further.

Strong brands don't just create recognition.

They create expectations.

Walk into a luxury hotel and you already expect a certain standard of service.

Buy an Apple product and you probably have expectations around design and usability.

Encounter SKIMS and there are expectations around fit, silhouette, neutral palettes and the body.

Those expectations were formed before the next transaction even happened.

That's the cumulative effect of communications, product, experience and reputation working together.

And it's incredibly useful to understand what expectations your own brand has created.

What if the answers are all over the place?

Don't immediately rewrite your tagline.

Look at the bigger picture.

What does your website communicate?

What stories are you putting into the media?

What does your social content repeatedly talk about?

What does your leadership say publicly?

What does the customer experience feel like?

What do your events, partnerships and campaigns reinforce?

Clarity isn't created by saying the same sentence repeatedly. It's created when different touchpoints consistently lead people towards the same conclusion.

If every touchpoint is communicating something different, you can't expect your audience to somehow piece together the brand for you.

But equally, don't only look for inconsistencies.

Look for unexpected strengths.

Perhaps customers repeatedly praise your speed, even though you've never positioned yourself around efficiency.

Maybe they return because of one particular product.

Maybe everyone talks about an incredibly charismatic salesperson in your store.

Maybe your founder's perspective has become part of why people follow the business.

Sometimes the strongest territory for a brand to own is already sitting there. You simply haven't recognised it yet.

Try the Brand Clarity Test

You don't necessarily need an enormous brand study to get an initial sense of how clearly your brand is understood.

Start small.

Ask customers. Ask your sales team. Ask your newest employee. Ask someone who only vaguely knows the business.

Then compare two columns:

Look for overlaps. Then look for gaps.

And perhaps most importantly, look for things people see in your brand that you've overlooked yourself.

Because we spend an enormous amount of time deciding what brands should say about themselves.

Sometimes, it's worth listening to how other people are already saying it for us.

Ask them:

1. What three words come to mind?

2. How would you describe us to a friend?

3. What do you expect from us?

Their answers probably won't match your brand guidelines word for word.

They shouldn't have to.

Because the clearest measure of your communications isn't whether your audience can repeat your messaging.

It's whether they've understood what you meant.