Branding for Tech Companies 102: Clarity and Consistency
How to assess and optimize your brand's messaging
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Tech companies have unique insights about future.
But how do they convince the rest of us?
This series tackles this questions:
In the first piece, I left off with a promise:
My promise for the following essays: Tech companies (subject) want to solve their messaging problem (desire) but don’t know how (tension). // Hint: This series will solve their problem (release).
Today, we will address how you can use clarity and consistency to solve your messaging problem.
Branding for Tech Companies 102: Clarity and Consistency
By Art Lapinsch (illustrations generated via Midjourney)
When consulting tech brands, I start with two things:
Establishing Context: What do we know? What don’t we know?
Establish a Baseline: It’s easier to discuss when people can point to something and say “that’s right because” or “that’s wrong because.”
We are trying to come up with a hypothesis.
The Framework: Brand/Narrative Pyramid
We establish this hypothesis via a Brand/Narrative Pyramid - a tool I’ve used and expanded over the years. It looks like this:
What is it?
A One-Pager for Your Brand/Narrative
A Narrative Pyramid is a structure where all elements of a brand/narrative are recorded.Why a pyramid?
The higher up you go, the more high-level it becomes. Think of vision and mission.
The further down you go, the more detailed/granular it becomes. Think of value proposition, products, and features.There are more elements on the bottom and fewer at the top. It’s structured just like a pyramid 🔺
(source)
Let me quickly summarize the different levels of the Brand/Narrative Pyramid (from high-level to low-level):
⛳️ Vision: How does the future look like according to us?
📋 Mission/Purpose: How do we contribute to making this future a reality?
👌 Brand Promise: What is a catchy way of summarizing our mission/purpose? What’s our tagline?
📖 Description: What is a slightly longer version of the Brand Promise?
📚 Boiler Plate: What is the 2-3 paragraph description we put on LinkedIn?
💚 Attributes/Values: What are our three core brand values?
🗂️ Category (Frame of Reference): In which category should our customers think about us?
🎯 Target Customer: Who are we addressing?
😢 Customer Need/Pain Points: What are their pain points?
😊 Value Proposition: What value do we provide to solve these pain points?
✅ Proof Points/Reasons-to-Believe: How do we back up our value proposition claims?
Let me show you what this looks like in practice 👇
The Audit: Establishing a Baseline
I start with an empty version of the Narrative Pyramid framework and spend some time digging through anything that’s publicly available:
Website: The most helpful sites are the main landing page, the /about, the /solutions, and the /careers pages. You can deduce a lot from there (e.g. Vision; Mission; Brand Promise/tagline; Value Proposition; RTBs/Proof Points).
LinkedIn: Great to find a standardized boilerplate section on the company.
Press Releases and Blog Posts: You can derive brand focus areas via looking for repeating narratives/language/words.
The result of (example: Lilac Solutions) is something like this 👇
Remember, this is used to get on the same page with the client. Literally.
Once we establish the baseline, we have to get two things right:
💎 Clarity: Clarity is about setting the right direction.
💠 Consistency: Consistency is about getting there over time.
The coming sections will dive into advanced concepts. If, at any point, you feel like you’re missing some fundamental knowledge, I recommend (re-)reading the first essay “Branding for Tech Companies 101: Future Mythology.”
Clarity: Language as API to the Human Mind
Clear does not necessarily mean simple.
We interact with the world through language. We talk to others, we learn by reading, and so on.
So what does it mean to be clear.
Let’s take this sentence: 1 G JOKER RT 3SCAT CHAMP Y IN F STICK
To me, and I guess to most of you, this reads like gibberish 🤷♂️
But to the San Francisco 49ers Offense of the year 2014, this was a clear command telling all 11 players what to do on their next play:
How did they decipher that?
Well, every language is composed of two things:
Syntax: How you structure a statement.
Semantics: What that statement means.
And so, the 49ers Offense created their own syntax-semantics universe - one in which “1 G JOKER RT 3SCAT CHAMP Y IN F STICK” means a very specific thing.
It’s not simple but it’s clear (to its intended audience).
When language is clear it acts like an API to the human mind. You have an input (= message) that is then correctly resolved in the recipient’s mind.
Sounds like magic… honestly, I think it is ✨
Optimizing Words for Clarity
You don’t have to be clear to everyone but you better be clear to your audience.
Explaining something to suppliers requires a different language than explaining something to your grandma.
One thing that has helped me over the years was the concept of Specificity.
When wording an idea, always, choose the most specific term that applies. An example from typical tech company lingo would be the interchangeable use of “Leader” versus “Pioneer.” At first glance, they mean the same thing. But they don’t.
A “Pioneer” is someone who was the ‘first’ at some point, while a “Leader” is someone who is currently first. One term is defensible. The other one is not.
Use specific words that match what you are trying to get across.
With great vocabulary comes great responsibility.
Clarity Sets the Direction
I wrote about the power of language in an older piece:
Our superpower as a species is that we are able to collaborate and coordinate. But unlike the algorithmic execution of ant colonies, our collaboration is rooted in shared ideas.
If you break down an organization into its constituent parts you are left with ordinary people. Each person has their own needs and ways of living. But how do we get everyone to work towards a common goal?
The simplest way I can explain this is by using the analogy of arrows. Imagine you are a brave lord and your goal is to save your land from an evil force. The evil force lives in a fortress. To overthrow the evil force, your archers have to fire arrows at the fortress.
Ideally, everyone is pointing in the same direction before they fire. If they do, they hit the target. If not, then they don’t.
Congratulations, you just learned the first lesson of management: Alignment.
Clarity sets the direction and specificity sets the coordinates 🎯
Consistency: Structural Brand Integrity
If clarity is about the idea, then consistency is about the execution.
Let’s think this through in terms of architecture. As an architect, you must have a clear idea of what you want to build before you start building. Otherwise, you risk wasting time, resources, and energy.
That’s why you need to tackle clarity first.
When you’re ready, your goal is to build something that is stable enough to last in real-life conditions. This is called structural integrity.
Ideally, your brand is also stable enough to last in real-life conditions. I call this Structural Brand Integrity.
These three ideas, have helped me build lasting brands for tech companies:
↔️ Horizontality: Mutually-exclusive and collectively-exhaustive building blocks on the same hierarchical level.
↕️ Verticality: Vertical alignment across all hierarchical levels.
✅ Values: Reference brand decisions against a value checklist to build consistency over time.
Let’s get into the weeds👇
1) Horizontality: M.E.C.E. on the Same Level
Consultants at McKinsey love the M.E.C.E. framework - it stands for Mutually Exclusive, Collectively Exhaustive.
The basic idea is that elements on the same communication level each occupy their own distinct area (i.e. mutually exclusive) and collectively bear the weight of that particular level of the structure (i.e. collectively exhaustive).
Have a look at this hypothetical example of value propositions:
Don’t say: Technology, Solar Installation Software, and Service.
Say: Technology, Policy, and Service.
Why is the first example incorrect? Because Technology and Solar Installation Software are not mutually exclusive. They mean similar things as software can be a subset of technology. Therefore it is redundant on the same level of communication. These two terms are not mutually exclusive.
Let’s do another one!
If you work in climate, you have probably heard about Climeworks - a Swiss climate tech giant that has raised $750M+ in funding to build Direct Air Capture (DAC) systems at scale.
Let’s look at their menu bar 👇
There are two issues, a small one and a big one.
🤨 Smaller Issue (purple & blue squares): The target audiences are split into (a) Enterprises, (b) SMEs, and (c) Individuals. It feels that groups (a) and (b) should be bundled up as “Businesses” as shown on the right side of their navigation. My guess is that they decided in favor of this split, since the two [Remove CO2] buttons lead to two different pages and could mean better conversion rates if you have one less click for the user. // Not particularly beautiful structure-wise but not that big of an issue.
⛔️ Bigger Issue (orange square): The “What we do” section could be very clean by emphasizing three value propositions: (1) Direct air capture, (2) CO2 removal, and (3) MRV & integrity. These are mutually exclusive and collectively exhaustive. Great! But adding “Our plants” and “responsible projects” introduces clutter since it feels like a distinctly different bucket of information. If Climeworks were my client, I’d challenge them to trim it down to the three value prop aspects [“First, (a) we capture CO2, (b) then we store it, and (c) we even make sure that all of that is legit.”] and park the other two content sections somewhere else.
Hopefully, by now, you have a better understanding of M.E.C.E. and why it’s useful.
Coming back to the architecture analogy, think of Horizontality as reminder to ensure structural (brand) integrity layer-by-layer.
2) Verticality: Consistency Across all Levels
The concept of Verticality refers to consistency across all levels of the Brand/Narrative Pyramid.
The top should be consistent with the bottom and vice versa. If your stated vision is the Electrification of Homes, then don’t sell them gas stoves.
Your product should match your value propositions, which should match your pain points, which should match your mission, which should match your vision.
As an example, imagine you run a software company and your customers are online vendors who grow like crazy. A common problem that you might hear from them:
“Each month, we are selling more products but we struggle to keep up with all the accounting.”
Your customer is sharing their pain point/customer need with you.
Ideally, your value proposition - and all its proof-points - correspond to that customer need. Stripe.com is a great case study for vertical consistency across all levels of communication. Have a look at how they respond to the customer pain point👇
If you would write this out in bullet-point format:
Pain Point #1: Customer struggles with large amount of transactions.
Value Prop #1: Stripe solves this via Revenue and Finance Automation.
Proof Points #1: Revenue and Finance Automation consists of of products like Billing, Sigma, Invoicing, Data Pipeline, Tax, Atlas, and Revenue Recognition.
As an architect, the Verticality principle should remind you that each level has to support the integrity of the entire structure - up and down.
3) Values: Reference for Brand Decisions
Brand values are the most under-appreciated tool in communication. Why?
In a lot of cases, brand values have turned into a set of incoherent words like “Courage”, “Innovation”, and “Creative” that are hanging around the office either as poorly-designed motivational posters or as decals in a dingy meeting room.
No one knows what they mean and as a result, they are completely useless.
But let’s reframe how brand values could be extremely useful.
IF clarity is the direction and consistency is the movement towards that goal THEN brand values are guidelines, which help you decide whether you’ll walk or whether you’ll take a cab.
That’s why, I start my client work by focusing on their brand values. Not some aspirational brand values - which have nothing to do with reality - but the actual cultural codes that make their company tick.
Some helpful questions to ask:
What’s important at this organization? Why?
What’s the opposite of what you want to be at this organization? Why?
Which qualities do you value in your team members? Why?
What would team members say about this organization? Why?
What is valued/encouraged? What is not valued and actively discouraged? Why?
After a quick brain storming session, we synthesize the output into three values.
We use clear language that is specific enough so that everyone understands what it actually means.
Also, I challenge the client to stick to three values - not two, not four, three. This number strikes the perfect balance between (a) easy to remember and (b) comprehensive enough to triangulate when facing brand decisions.
To illustrate this, think of two companies who do exactly the same thing (i.e. a solar/PV installation software company).
Company A has the following values: (1) Empathetic, (2) Responsible, (3) Elite.
Company B has the following values: (1) Speed, (2) Scale, (3) Innovation.
Now, think of any type of decisions - website copy; product decisions; ways of working; etc. - and think how differently the solutions would be communicated if you align them according to the values.
Sample taglines could read:
Company A: Sustainable solar energy on your terms.
Company B: Solar Systems for Net Zero.
Everything aspect of the used language (audience; terminology; capitalization; etc.) can - and should - be referenced against these three values.
Once you codify your real values, you have are sitting on an excellent reference that will make your brand execution much much easier. Trust me.
In an architectural analogy, values are like guidelines for your construction project. What materials to use? How to build? What to optimize for?
Clarity and Consistency Builds Strong Brands
If you are still reading by this point, then congrats, we’re almost done 🎊
Let’s look at what I wrote earlier:
My promise for the following essays: Tech companies (subject) want to solve their messaging problem (desire) but don’t know how (tension). // Hint: This series will solve their problem (release).
To recap, you have learned a few powerful concepts:
🔺 Establishing a Baseline: You can use tools like the Narrative/Brand Pyramid to create a one-pager for your communication project.
💎 Clarity: Language functions as a kind of API to the Human Mind. Be specific, since with great vocabulary comes great responsibility.
💠 Consistency: Strong brands are built over time. To achieve consistency, (1) apply the Horizontality principle via M.E.C.E., (2) establish Verticality across all communication levels, and (3) reference your three Values as guidelines for your brand decisions.
Now you know the 80/20 of what it takes to start tackling your messaging problem 🙌
⏩ Want to read more? Check out the next essay in this series: “Brand Audit in Climate Tech: Lilac Solutions”
🙏 Thanks, Matt for annihilating my first draft and setting me on the right path. Thanks, Ben, Sara, Finn, Gniewko, and Anastasis for listening to early versions of this.
Get in touch via Linkedin if you want to chat about ideas, projects, or a potential collaboration✌️
My questions to you:
What is particularly useful?
What would you like to read more about?
What has been left unanswered?
Amazing piece! Really liked the use of easy to understand examples.