How to Write Brand Copy: Get a “BAM!” Brief
Take a client brief in a way that helps you escape decision fatigue, establish accountability, and upsell your strategic services.
TL;DR:
Before you start writing, define the following with painful precision:
- The Brand
- The Audience
- The Message
These are the foundation of your brand writing. They have to be clear enough to write them down in three (short-ish) sentences. Once defined, it becomes easy to catch yourself when you get distracted. There are lots of tactics for writing brand copy that addresses the “nuts and bolts” of the copy, but they won’t have an impact unless you have a clear BAM.
Overlooking the Obvious.
“Duh”, right?
One would assume that these key choices are made and clarified long before a client reaches for their wallet to hire a copywriter. Assumptions like this will lead you to disaster.
The first job of any freelancer is really to be a doctor and counselor to the client. You have to diagnose and take a case history to understand what the client doesn’t get, and why their current solution is broken. This diagnostic process is called “taking a brief”, and you should absolutely include this process in your billing structure.
It’s amazing how often a client doesn’t have a clear brand, audience, or message. Sometimes one of these three hasn’t been thought about at all. More often, the client has a vague idea in their head but never bothered to define it in writing.
Unclear BAM forces the writer to make arbitrary decisions when writing or forces them to run to the client several times for clarification. When the copy is delivered, a client may be confused, puzzled as to why what the copy they imagined by gut and feel does not match the output of a professional writer. Or, the client will be annoyed at the amount of “hand-holding” they’ve had to do in the process. By getting the brief right you set yourself and your client up for success. By letting the client get away with giving a bad brief, you’re putting yourself and the project at risk.
What’s a Bad Brief?
Having a solid brief takes a solid process where you help identify and fill the holes in the client’s understanding of what they want. Here are a few (dramatized) examples from my work that I (in hindsight) could have diagnosed and fixed through the BAM model:
“Make the Numbers Go Up”
“We want to get a following on Twitter and Instagram. And maybe Ticktock. As big as possible because numbers go up = marketing! Yes, we’re a B2B brand that sells only widgets for highly specialized industrial processes. Ooh, we should do one of those viral videos as well! And cat memes! Can we get a 1000 new followers in the next month?”
Diagnosis: This client is unclear on the brand (as well as the audience and the message). This is a common attitude in marketing departments across the land, where chasing vanity metrics replaces a disciplined and targeted approach.
This client isn’t thinking about ultimate marketing outcomes that will help their brand be better at what it does. A B2B brand needs to establish authority and thought-leadership in an industry. Better yet, they want to become the golden standard by which others measure what they should do. McKinsey is a good example of this kind of content-led branding. They achieve it through putting numbers behind their copy (and any other content) — putting insight and analysis first and then sharing it. Brands like Hubspot and Unbounce do similar things with creating tools and reporting metrics.
The social media vanity metrics don’t matter for this brand, they aren’t going to sell more by amassing a twitter following. It makes no sense for them to look for a general audience. Reminding the client of what the brand stands for, why it matters, and whom it serves will help re-align efforts back from a “grab everything” frenzy to a strategic approach.
“I Just Want To Be Liked”
“We need a blog post about our product launch. Target audience: Males and Females from 15 to 96. No, there’s no other identifying characteristics, why do you ask?”
Diagnosis: Unclear on the audience, the brand tries to be liked by everyone, without regard to who the actual customers are.
Trying to appeal to everyone washes out the unique selling proposition of your brand and product. Your natural tribe will not be able to pick up on what makes your brand attractive. There won’t be a sense of in-group belonging. The kind of brands that create love, adoration, fandom, are exactly the kinds of brands that generate hate, at least from some. If you aren’t disliked by anyone, you are unlikely to be loved by anyone, either. Staking out a strong brand position means aligning your brand with actual, meaningful values. That means taking a risk, and some level of sacrifice. For a brand, the worst thing is not to be hated, but to go unnoticed. Failure, in branding, is not getting a second look.
By making your brand stand for something, you will earn integrity and cement your position with the people that matter, your customers. In fact, by turning off, or even pissing off a few people, you reinforce your position with the target audience. Of course, it helps to know the values of your customer base.
“TMI”
“We want to promote our new product, but also mention our funding grants for entrepreneurs in Bangladesh… oh, and that award we received last month for an unrelated to our business activity! Let’s try to get it into the Wall Street Journal, too. ”
Diagnosis: Unclear message, communicated with an excess of enthusiasm.
Trying to say too much says very little. Without a clean, sharp, targeted message the reader has to do the work of putting it context and seeing how it applies to them. That’s work. Don’t make your customers do your work for you. They won’t, and they will give their money to someone who doesn’t ask them to do work instead.
Whatever message you want to convey has to be easy to digest, relevant, and specific. This is true for effective business communication in general. And engaging your customer, whether via Tweets, in UX microcopy, or your thought leadership white-paper, is, in fact, a business communication.
“This Is How We’ve Always Done It”
“I would like to make sure that the product copy for this bluetooth smart-watch says that it does not emit any harmful radiation. Also, we need to list the specific electrical potential and voltage, amperage, and resistance numbers for the watch’s battery. Yes, in top-level product descriptions. This is important information, you know!”
Diagnosis: Poorly defined (and in this case, an outdated definition of) the brand.
The quote above is almost verbatim. A high-end personal electronics manufacturer that I worked with in China gave me this as feedback. Of course, it came from a middle-aged engineer who vividly remembered the suspicion with which the general public regarded microwave ovens and computer monitors (placing cactuses between themselves and the monitor to “absorb the bad radiation”). The engineer just happened to have enough pull in the top-down organization to dictate the changes, and the agency I worked with simply agreed (eventually moving the copy to a minimized footnote later in the process).
I would assume that if a client knows anything, it’s the image of the brand they want to portray. This assumption would be an error in two parts:
One — Ignorance: the brand owner may not be up-to-date with the market and where the brand fits. As markets change, brands have to follow. What was a seemingly miraculous product some time ago (think TV or the microwave) becomes hum-drum and silly. Imagine Electrolux trying to market a washing machine on the merits of not having to do it by hand. That would be ridiculous. Without a mention of the energy efficiency or implementation of IoT capabilities, a high-end washing machine is just not competitive in the market. By failing to understand the brand and how it fits in the market context, you can actively damage the brand by saying ridiculous, dopey things. The decline of Nokia is one very pertinent example of how this error can lead to a complete deterioration of the brand.
Taking a generic, poorly-defined brand vision and pointing out what the competitors are doing above and beyond that can help bring a sense of clarity to the brand owner. When done timely, and communicated in a non-confrontational way, you can add a significant amount of value to a project, potentially creating a lasting relationship with a grateful client.
Two — Insanity: the brand owner might just be insane. In the same way that Pierre Cardin diluted his once-luxury brand by licensing anything and everything, a brand owner or client may just want bad things. As a copywriter, you don’t necessarily get to correct the course of a ship, even if it’s being actively steered into an iceberg. Still, you may be able to talk the brand owner away from the ledge. Since the brand itself is the most relatable part of BAM to the client, talking about the value that the brand represents and their incompatibility with what the client is asking for can bring perspective to the conversation. By goading the client into taking the time to think about the brand and what it means, they may potentially figure out what they actually want.
Regardless of whether the client’s view of their brand is just a little out of touch with the market, or actually insane, asking them to define the brand more precisely can prevent a project from turning into a mess. Communicating this request early in the process and with respect for yourself, and the client can even provide leverage for a bigger sale, helping you expand the scope of your project. Who knows, you might get to a solid, transparent, actionable plan for your project in the process.
Take the Brief Your Project Deserves
A vaguely defined BAM derails the writing process from the start. If the writer is lucky, they get in sync with the client and make the right creative choices. Even then, just one other stakeholder looking over the piece can create chaos. Without clearly defined reasons for the creative choices, a single disagreement can throw the project into an endless revision circle hell. It’s a huge waste of time, and it makes the writer seem less professional. It’s much better to walk the client through the foundational steps in defining what, how, and to whom the copy is supposed to communicate. After all, it’s your role to be the expert, so leading the creative process can inspire greater confidence and respect from the client.
By insisting on clarifying the brief to the point where you and the client are clear on what is being communicated, to whom, and how, you are giving yourself a significant head-start. If you discover that you are working with a client that can’t clarify these things, and tries to insist on starting work with a half-baked brief, you can be sure that working with this client will be difficult in later stages. You can help yourself avoid the kind of projects that tend to get stuck and drag on forever, slowly leeching away your passion for your work. Avoid these projects. Seriously, they likely cost more than the compensation you’ll get for them.
When in doubt, remember the following:
Clients don’t know what they want.
Even if you’re your own client. In fact, especially if you’re the client.
If you are writing for yourself, you are probably more confused about what you want and unclear on most of your BAM.
Why? Because people tend to keep things in their heads. There’s a vague sense, a notion, an example you may have in your mind. It’s not clear until it’s written down. Writing clarifies thinking. Don’t trust me, trust McKinsey.
Putting words one behind the other helps organize thoughts. The structure of language helps you create hierarchies and dependencies among ideas. It also shows when the thoughts are incompatible or unconnected.
When you’re unable to explain what your brand, audience, or message are, it forces clarification and thus makes for a more specific target to hit. You don’t know what you actually want until you write it down. If you can’t write each of these in one sentence, you haven’t boiled it down enough. Only when you have concentrated the three basics can you start writing.
By committing to limits you set on your brand, your audience, or your message, you are making these things known quantities.
Get a Clear Brief, and Then Translate it Again to Be Useful
Once you’ve b̶r̶o̶w̶b̶e̶a̶t̶ gently convinced your client to have clear definitions of the BAM in the brief, you will need to translate it for your use. I suggest rewriting them again in the style that works for you, limiting each to no more than a single, short sentence. By restating these ideas yourself you can be sure that you aren’t letting slippery words with fuzzy definitions slip by. By clarifying what, to whom, and how you are selling with your copy, you will have a rock-solid reference point that can guide you in the writing process. You will also have a very clear touchstone when presenting your work to the client. If any questions or confusion arise about your creative choices, it will be easy to explain. I picked X word because it is consistent with the brand, it is part of the vernacular of the X audience and communicates X message.
By front-loading the core decision-making with a BAM brief, you’ve made your writing process about writing, not guessing what the client might want or mean.
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