I recently spoke with the owner of a branding agency about a content challenge. Her firm had invested heavily in producing content. Aesthetically, it looked beautiful. But, in her words, what they were putting out felt “generic.” It covered best practice, was broad, and vanilla. After two years of investment, the content was having no meaningful impact on her business.
"I just don't think there is anything different enough about what we were doing that makes people think – Yes, I've got to work with them!”
What she lacked was context. She shared advice that would be relevant to a wide range of different customer types, which meant it was interesting to none of them.
Brand advice in a specific context can be interesting and useful. Without it, it’s familiar and undifferentiated.
Let me give you an example:
If I create an email series on telling stories through brand, what will I say that hasn’t been said before? Story plus Brand is a combination that was fresh almost two decades ago. Today, it’s stale. Without selecting a context within which to frame the subject, I have no interesting angles that contrast with common thinking on the subject. I’ll simply regurgitate concepts that people like Donald Miller and Nancy Duarte have already shared.
But what if I focus on the same topic as applied to pet products? Now I can frame my expertise on stories and brand as they apply to a particular situation with unique dynamics. Customers buy products for a loved one who is not human, but is often treated like one and cannot articulate its own buying preferences. The owner projects their preferences and personality on the pet. What’s the psychology here? How do you tell a story that resonates with a person in this context?
When you develop sustained insight in one context, you unearth unique thinking that contrasts with other thinking on the subject and resonates with one group of people who’d buy what you have to sell. When you look closely enough, you’ll often find certain best practices conflict with the specific circumstances in the environment you focused on.
The expertise is the same, what changed is the context.
If your content feels vanilla, it may be because you haven’t had the courage or discipline to settle on one context and hone your expertise on it.