3 Key Ingredients to Create Your Knockout Brand Story

I’m Jennifer Chernisky with Jennesis & Associates, and I’m here to share with you three key ingredients to create your knockout brand story.

First, I recommend that you start with creating your 10 power words. So what are the 10 words that resonate most closely to you, your brand, your business, the words that you often say about yourself or what other people say about you? So some examples might be creative, might be uh intellectual, it may be powerful. What are the words that resonate with you? Expert, expertise,  women-owned. So there’s a lot of words that really align with your business, your culture and your heart that would be your first 10 words to start with.

The second ingredient is what I call Mad Men style. So it’s that brainstorming session, often around  a table, a whiteboard, three to five people. Sometimes wine and scotch is involved, sometimes not. And you really just start putting words against  a whiteboard, of phrases, ideas, pictures, images, and really see what resonates and what doesn’t. Oftentimes that creative process, what comes out of my mind or thought process really sparks someone else’s creativity. And what evolves in that just simple brainstorming session is insanely beautiful by the end.

So the third key ingredient is what we call ‘in the trenches’ and it’s the down-and-dirty part that a lot of people don’t like to do. It’s composed of conducting a competitive analysis. So what are your competitors doing, where are they at on trade shows, on social media, in the marketplace? So really understanding who your competition is and are you aligning with that culture? The second one is understanding your audience demographics. So what’s the age? Is it geography-based? Is it industry-based? Is it B2B or B2C? So understanding who’s buying and paying  you to do your services is a really important key. And then the last one through that is developing your value proposition and your unique selling points. So what are those key words that really differentiate you from your competitors to your audience that you can articulate and your team can articulate well?

So to summarize those three key ingredients, it’s creating those 10 power words which should be fun light, having that Mad Men creative session, and lastly that down-and-dirty market research.