Mastering the Core Brand Message

At the core of each and every piece of content your startup generates for public and stakeholder consumption - press releases, general content, marketing materials - there should be a clear brand proposition. Before you even start thinking about pitching specific news stories you seek to get covered by the media, you need a short, succinct and consistent company-level Brand Message.

As Beck Bamberger writes in her book “Flack Fairy – Navigating PR and Media for Venture-Backed Startups" (Page 37):

If you can’t explain the why, how and what of your startup in under a minute, you need to get this nailed down before launching a PR campaign or talking with anyone in the media.

Repeat, Repeat, Repeat

You want your core brand message to be:

Emotive: A distillation of what you want people to think and feel about your brand - it's not only information, but how they feel

Consistent: Your full team – and, ideally, your investors, too – should all be able to always communicate the same core message, because consistency is the only way to cut through the noise and make your message stick

Repeated: Used in every piece of communication your company puts out, by everyone. When you get to the point where you are (all) sick of repeating the same message over and over, in every conversation, every presentation, that’s when it is likely to be finally cutting through.

The Structure

Your core message should have a three-part structure:

Why? This is the Story, the heart of your mission. The personal driver, for you as a founder or as a company, is what will catch interest. Why are you doing what you are doing? Why are you motivated to do it? Why do you believe in it? Why are you trying to achieve it?

As Simon Sinek so famously said in that TED Talk back in 2010:

People don’t buy what you do, they buy why you do it.

So, tell them, short and succinct!

How? The mission, how do you achieve this? And how are you doing it differently from others?

What? The one we’re more used to talking about, what are your products and services?

External Voices

Your core message matters because it helps you explain why you are relevant and deserve to be covered and listened to. Pitching your company in the PR context is about getting the points that you want to be known for to be picked up by other people, journalists and other external voices, and repeated by them to get what you’re about through to the particular audience you want to reach. The talent, the customer, the follow-on investments.

We kept this post short and succinct – hopefully you got the message?