Don’t Bury Your Brilliance

DBYB

This is our mantra to clients. But when we say don’t bury your brilliance (DBYB to the in-crowd), what do we mean?

It’s as if Apple had launched the iPod by saying “64GB of memory in one handy device”, instead of “1000 songs in your pocket”

As if Aldi promoted themselves as a ‘shop full of things’ instead of a saying ‘spend a little, live a lot’.

As if… you get the picture.

When we tell clients they’re burying their brilliance, they have a couple of instinctive reactions. The first is an understandable wish to avoid seeming boastful or over-claiming.

“We can’t go around telling people we’re brilliant. We’ll just set ourselves up for a fall.”

But there must be something brilliant about your product or service, if not yourselves (although you’re probably pretty bloody marvellous). Because after all, if there wasn’t something brilliant you’d be out of business.

Customers aren’t in the habit of choosing so-so, meh products.

Everyone wants the most brilliant option they can afford. It’s natural. The important point is not to bury that brilliance.

What do we mean?

Surely no company would fail to tell its customers about their product’s benefits?

Well no. But are they highlighting its unique brilliance?

Organisations can do a lot of communicating without connecting. A lot of talking without saying anything. Shouting without cutting through the noise.

Why?

Because they haven’t asked themselves the hard questions. Or done the work required to disinter their brilliance. The result is often a word salad.

How often have you seen lines like:

Building tomorrow, today
Your trusted partner for <insert product>
Working with you for a better <insert service>

They’re the result of brainstorming meetings where people have scribbled furiously on whiteboards and sellotaped together all the words they like into one bland sentence. A sentence that covers all the bases but doesn’t land with the end consumer.

Very often you end up selling the category rather than your own brand.

For example:

An insurance company that says it’s trustworthy and well-established
A building company that says it’s reliable
A drink that says it’s refreshing

As opposed to what?

Every customer wants a trustworthy, well-established insurance company (and they pretty much all are both of those things). So why would they choose yours?

No one googles for an unreliable building company.

No one wants an unrefreshing drink.

It’s your brilliance that will set you apart.

Surprisingly often, we find that the reasons to choose one brand over another have been buried. The company is not putting its best foot forward.

That’s OK, we can help.

The first step is for us to listen, listen, listen. You tell us all about your business and your product and we digest that info.

Then comes the more challenging part. Because you can’t be all things to all people.

You can’t say ten things, when customers will only remember one.

Un-burying your brilliance means finding that one thing that sets you apart.

We don’t mean a USP. (The danger with those is that they lead you down the path to obscurity. Yes, yours may be the only printer with a spring-loaded wingnut, but so what?)

Your brilliance could lie in:

Your attitude
Your people
Your approach
Or what you don’t do

Whatever it is, we’ll tease it out, so that instead of teasing customers about what makes you the right choice, it’s 100% obvious.