<ul><li>Always be customer centric. Your ‘why’, your ‘what’ and your ‘how’ should be about them, not you. </li><li>A Brand-Led company is promising a human experience.</li><li>Look for cultural trends and Constructs all around you in daily life. Significant trends around Self-Care and wellness are front and center for Millennial generation.</li><li>Don ’ t give up. Just keep pushing yourself. When you get it, you know it.</li><li>Hidden truths will germinate in your mind and eventually find a path to the right message.</li></ul>

Best Practices

You can say you’re #1, best-in-class or world-renowned, but those aren’t differentiating markers anymore. There are just too many choices and too many alternatives… and in general, post-boomer consumers are too self-empowered to take a brand at face value.Talk is cheap. Actions are the new currency.

Earn respect, don’t demand it

The why is not your vision. It’s your reason for existing, and it answers the question, “Why should I care?”Lego’s why is because wholesome play should happen at every age  <ul><li>Andreessen Horowitz’s why is because systems will change humanity  </li><li>Chipotle’s why is because eating right can heal the planet  </li></ul>

Know which ‘why’ you’re answering

<ul><li>As other great branding bloggers have pointed out before, “the goal of marketing is to control perceptions and change behavior.”</li><li>Changing behavior and controlling perceptions is especially important for brand-led companies as opposed to branded ones.</li><li>Brand-led companies have an identity, but consumers truly identify them by their products. For Brand-Led companies, anyone will tell you the story should lead the product.</li></ul>

Controlling The Right Things

Create just enough contrast to spur action.Extremes are hard to follow. By connecting the new and unfamiliar with the old and familiar, we’re managing that tension and making it palatable.

Create contrast

If you’ve done your job as a brand-led organization, people will feel like they have jurisdiction over your company. They will feel like the brand itself belongs them, not as consumers, but as owners.If you think about it, that’s both a very powerful force, and a frightening one.

Signal before changing lanes

This framework is not an ending point, but rather a starting point to help you: <ul><li>Empathize with your customer and see the world through their POV </li><li>Ask questions that get to the subconscious truth, not the conscious answer </li><li>See the invisible matrix that controls your user’s beliefs, behaviors and perceptions.</li></ul>Remember, branded messaging usually addresses the pain point, but brand-led messaging addresses the reward.

A Framework For Getting Started

So yes, we all use emotion when choosing things, especially as consumers. Not just little things, but big things, too.

Decisions are 100% emotional

A good, brand-led messaging strategy begins by telling a new story that makes your direct competitors irrelevant to your core audience.

Change the baseline

That’s not hyperbole. It’s scientific fact. Without emotions, we’d have incredible difficulty choosing even the simplest of things, such as what to shoes to wear. Neuroscientist Antonio Damasio…

Signal before changing lanes

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