How to check if the brand message is clear?

There’s a saying that goes something like this: “The one who knows less about the water is the fish.” Of course it knows tons about living in the ocean and every specificity about it, but being so immersed makes it almost impossible to see it in perspective. Sounds familiar? That’s why it’s so hard to create a brand strategy alone. 

Founders highly connected with their business certainly will have a hard time decluttering thoughts and defining a crystal clear brand proposition, because it’s difficult to have a broad perspective when immersed body and soul in the business for so long. Besides that, when there’s an emotional connection with the business most possibly there’s also some sort of overlap between personal values, vision, and beliefs and the business ones.

Even business specialists would need guidance in this process, the same way psychologists keep doing therapy with their peers. That’s why besides a creative and strategy exercise, branding will always be also a sensitive and elegant mentorship process, asking the most important (and avoided) questions to reach and uncover the essence.

But that doesn't mean that you can’t run a couple of tests to check for Clarity. One good way to do that is the 5 seconds test. Basically, it consists of showing to your audience a sample of your communication (the first fold of your website, for example) and giving 5 seconds to them to see it.  After that, you can ask some open questions, such as: What does this brand sell? For whom? What problem are they solving? You’ll notice that it is a real challenge to understand the gist of your message in only 5 seconds, but believe me, it represents most of our interactions with brands. 

The answers from this simple test will show you exactly how your audience perceives your offer and what you need to adjust. You are not looking for 100% of success, but at least 6 from 10 should be able to describe what you are offering. If you want to know more about this test and suggestions of tools to do that, check out the article “5 Steps to check if you are building a strong brand?”.