5 essential brand message examples

No matter what industry you work in, understanding how to effectively communicate your brand message is essential, because it creates a consistent brand experience and helps establish a strong connection with customers.

Here are the basics of brand messaging, and a few elements you might consider throwing into your communications mix.

What is brand messaging?

This is how a brand uses words to showcase its value propositions and demonstrate a commitment to its mission. A robust brand messaging comes as an inevitable part of your brand awareness strategy and proceeds from your target audience's needs, appealing to them in different ways.

Brand messaging communicates more than just product features and special offers. Done well, it forges a relationship with your customers, creates a brand ethos and helps businesses invent and tailor their reputation. Brand messaging may take multiple forms and genres: from slogans to curated blogs and from digital editorials to educational materials. Here are some typical examples:

Mission statements

Mission statement is a succinct summary of an organization’s purpose, values, goals and objectives. From an operational standpoint, it serves as an important guide for decision-making within the organization by providing a focus on what matters most. As a messaging tool, your mission statement serves as a tether for all of your messaging strategies because it outlines which themes, ideas, and values are most pronounced in other elements of your brand messaging.

A strong mission statement concisely communicates who your brand is, and what it strives to achieve. However, this is not the place to get into details about procedures or fine details. Keep your mission statement big picture, but not vague. Consider include three well-tailored components:

A cause or goal: tell your audience the specific reason your brand exists, and who or what will chiefly be affected by your work.

Plan of action: outline big-picture steps you are taking to achieve or work towards your cause.

Measurable results: demonstrate your company's success based on reliable metrics. Someone who reads your mission statement should be able to simply identify a way to determine whether a brand is effectively staying true to its brand mission.

Starbucks’s mission statement, for example, includes all of these components: “To inspire and nurture the human spirit—one person, one cup, and one neighborhood at a time.”

Slogans

Slogans are punchy catchphrases that are often repeated and incorporated throughout brand messaging. These phrases are meant to be short and pithy, generating an immediate idea or association with your brand and what it does.

Although short, a slogan should be well crafted and use a tone and style appropriate to your brand. Typically, slogans also incorporate or appeal to emotions and experiences.

For example, when KFC prints “Finger-lickin’ good” on its products and repeats it in ads, Mailchimp says it helps people associate specific qualities and values with KFC’s food. It draws on a relatable association we all (hopefully) have had with food that is so good, even the last crumbs can’t be spared.

It’s a powerful, memorable feeling that KFC’s marketing department has successfully attached to the chicken fast food chain over the years. The same is true with Nike’s “Just do it”, and Red Bull’s “Red Bull gives you wings”.

Social media content

Videos and images allow brands to convey their essence, features, and storytelling in a captivating way. They can be used to showcase products or services, share behind-the-scenes glimpses, demonstrate product usage, or communicate brand values through visually compelling storytelling. Infographics are effective for presenting complex information in a visually appealing and easily understandable format, making them ideal for sharing statistics, tips, or educational content.

Posted in Instagram, Twitter, Facebook and other social media, such content helps establish consistent brand messaging and create lasting bonds with the target audience.

Digital editorials

If your brand aims to build relationships based on trust, reliability, and credibility, digital editorials can be a powerful tool of brand messaging. Such unique and versatile pieces of content offer an opportunity to assert your brand as an industry thought leader and offer room to develop a robust voice.

Editorials use more than just words to build brand identity. They rely on creative elements, too.

How to create effective brand messaging

First things first: be sure to research your target audiences thoroughly. This will make it easier to cater your messaging to what’s important. Once you’ve laid the groundwork, start designing content that showcases who your brand is. For that, pick a design tool you can trust.

With Readymag, you only need a designer to create and publish a stunning website. It comes with a simple but powerful graphics editor: you begin with a blank page, then bring it to life with advanced typography, slick animations and custom code. Readymag offers also a space for teamwork: you can invite your teammates as collaborators and iterate quicker leaving feedback in comments. Here are some examples of editorials published with Readymag, that took full creative freedom to build and share their brand’s identity.