How to make your message memorable.
Voicemail #13
If you’ve followed my work for any period of time, you’ll know that I think messaging and copywriting are two sides of the same coin.
There are a lot of reasons for this… but one of the big ones has to do with memorability.
The truth is that while it isn’t easy to create messaging in the first place, the really hard thing about it is making sure your message is memorable.
And that’s ultimately the goal, right? Because as good as your messaging is, it’s worthless if nobody thinks about it for longer than a microsecond.
So, for today’s issue, I wanted to cover a few ways to make your messaging more memorable. I’ll dig into these more in the coming weeks — but think of today’s issue like a teaser for what’s to come.
Rob Meyerson’s Five Factors for memorable brand names.
This post today is largely inspired by a masterclass presentation I watched from Rob Meyerson, a brand consultant at Heirloom (a brand strategy agency in San Francisco).
Meyerson presented at the Brand Builders’ Summit recently, and I’m only now getting a chance to go through and watch the replays.
In his presentation, which was about brand naming, he highlighted that there are five key angles that a brand name can use to be more memorable. He calls these “factors” that’ll help make your brand name stand out.
According to Rob, great brand names are:
Emotive
Simple
Unexpected
Familiar
Story-driven
He goes on to say that you can (and should) combine all of these elements to increase memorability.
He uses BlackBerry as an example. Not only is it a fairly simple and familiar name (we all know what blackberries are). It was also really unexpected compared to the other alternatives on the market at the time (like the Motorola StarTAC).
How to apply the five factors to your messaging.
It’s easier to say that your messaging should be memorable than to actually make it memorable. That’s why I think more copywriters should be involved in the messaging process — because that’s literally our job description.
However, there are some quick ways to add in a little bit of a zap to your messaging that’ll already make it stand out.
Here are a few things to consider:
Make it emotive.
The biggest crime in B2B is that nobody wants to be emotive, but emotions make people pay attention and remember what you’re saying. To quote Maya Angelou, “At the end of the day people won't remember what you said or did, they will remember how you made them feel.”
The good news is that making messaging more emotional is actually pretty easy. You just have to sit down and feel while you’re writing.
One of the best copywriters I know wrote a million-dollar sales page. Literally. I think it sold $1.2 million worth of services. The page was for a business retreat for multi-seven-figure-entrepreneurs who needed help with their mindset.
When I asked her about the process, she came back to me and said, “I obviously don’t know what it’s like to be Mr. Beast or Gary V., but I do know what it’s like to feel stuck and alone. I just tried to sit in that emotion while I was writing, and it came out.”
As humans, we have 6 basic emotions: sadness, anger, surprise, disgust, joy, and fear. We experience every single one of these on the daily. If you want to make your messaging stand out, tap into those experiences and write from a feeling.
Make it simple.
“Simplicity” is a concept that gets beat to death in B2B marketing, but it’s something all of us are terrible at doing. The reason is because we’re often selling incredibly complex products. It’s hard to sell to engineers, for example, and keep things simple.
That said, it isn’t impossible.
I won’t spend too much time on simplicity, because I think it’s a topic that gets written about quite a bit. But, my top tip for writing more simple messaging gets boiled down to what Joanna Wiebe calls The Rule of One:
Write to ONE reader
with ONE message
that has ONE promise
and ONE call to action
^Anything else starts getting complicated, fast. Be ruthless with your messaging prioritization.
Make it unexpected.
If you want to “stop the scroll,” you need to give people a good reason.
One of the best ways to do it is by breaking the pattern and showing people something that pulls them out of the mindless thumbing of their LinkedIn feed.
A company I think does a really good job of this is Surreal. They’re a cereal company based outta London.
While it’s obviously not a B2B example, they’ve managed to build up a following of 113k people on LinkedIn. It’s definitely not the place you’d expect to see a cereal brand in the first place… and what’s more they appear to have a good time doing it.
I read every single Surreal post that crosses my feed. It’s refreshing and different and interesting. Unexpected in the best way.
Keep it familiar.
You don’t want your messaging to be too unexpected. That’s where you start to cross into the territory of coming off as tacky or confusing. You still need to consider the platform and audience, and make sure they know what you do.
Surreal, again, does a good job of this on LinkedIn. They talk about their marketing “plans” and relate it back to work. They aren’t just advertising cereal… they’re advertising the marketing team at a cereal company, which, in turn, sells the cereal.
Alex MH Smith talks a lot about “weirding the normal” or “normalizing the weird.” He writes that you want your marketing to be distinctive, but not necessarily unfamiliar. His book’s a good read if you want to learn more about it.
Make it story-driven.
Ahhhhh. The favorite marketing buzzword. “Storytelling.”
We all know that stories sell. As humans we are hard-wired to create stories, and connect with others through story. It’s an important part of what makes us more than just animals on two legs.
If you want your messaging and copy to tell a story, you have to think about the whole context. Where is someone right now, and where do you want them to be?
I got really into storytelling a few years ago (I even did a presentation on the topic for the B2B Writing Institute). I have a lot to say on the topic, but my tips are:
Think about the beginning, middle, and end of your user’s journey
Give your user a tool that helps them solve a problem, don’t solve it for them.
Read Dan Harmon’s Story Circle framework in full. Take notes.
Memorable copy starts with bolder, more memorable messaging.
As you’re writing your messaging docs, take some time to think about the words and phrases and concepts that would make it stand out more.
I promise that your copy team will be happier if they feel empowered to make bolder choices — and you’ll start building brand writing as an internal skillset.
Literary technique of the week: antanaclasis
To quote LitCharts:
Antanaclasis is a figure of speech in which a word or phrase is repeated within a sentence, but the word or phrase means something different every time it appears. A famous example of antanaclasis is Benjamin Franklin's statement that: "We must all hang together, or assuredly we shall all hang separately." In this example, the first time "hang" appears it means "stay" or "stand," while the second time it refers to being "hanged."
Basically, it’s a trick that lets you focus in on a single word and make it memorable. If that word happens to be part of your strategic messaging, it’s a good way to connect your brand to that message.
One example of this ^ is an old slogan from Pall Mall cigarettes: “The long cigarette that’s long on flavor.” Not only is it interesting to read, it also firmly connects Pall Mall with the word “long” and its positive benefits — long lasting, long flavor, et cetera.
Antanaclasis also makes your writing more interesting, rhythmic, and memorable. Take a look at some of these other examples, all courtesy of LitCharts:
"Cats like Felix like Felix" — Felix Cat Food, whose mascot is a cat named Felix
Translation: Cats that are similar to Felix like this brand of cat food.
"People on the go . . . go for Coke" — Coca Cola
Translation: Busy people buy Coke.
"If you don't get it, you don't get it" — The Washington Post
Translation: If you don't buy this newspaper, you won't know what's going on.
"When you run out, run out to White Hen" — White Hen Pantry
Translation: If you run out of something you need, come to our convenience store.
“Run to White Hen” is nowhere near as memorable as the repetitive form of “When you run out, run out to White Hen.”
Your homework this week is to play around with antanaclasis in your own messaging work. What’s a word that is in your current deck that you could play around with?
For example, I’m working on something right now that’s all about being “easy.” I can’t talk about the product because of an NDA, but the point is that it’s an easy integration that makes it easy for the target audience to move faster/stress less.
I could play around with that word easy and come up with some stuff like:
Easy to integrate, so you can take it easy.
Easy way in for an easy revenue win.
^These are bad examples. But the point right now is to have FUN. Who knows, maybe you’ll come up with something clever.
Stuff I’m digging from other people this week.
Justin Blackman’s opened the doors to Brand Voice Visionary. If you’re a word nerd, you’ll like this program a lot.
Peep Laja had a great post about why you shouldn’t look to the big dogs for your messaging inspiration. I agree with him (you can see my comment here).
Dom Kondziela had an excellent post about how to name your business. I loved it.
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See you next week.