How do you create a brand messaging playbook?

When launching Happy Camper Live, I focused on our core mission: to make the joy and learning of summer camp accessible year-round. Understanding our audience—kids and parents looking for enriching, safe online experiences—shaped our messaging. We aimed to be seen as a source of fun, growth, and community. Success metrics were defined in user engagement, content interaction, and community growth. This clarity in who we were and who we served became the bedrock of our brand messaging, guiding our communications and offerings.

Defining the goals of the brand and its target audience is the most important, foundational part of the work. Unfortunately, if you make a mistake at this stage, all other efforts, no matter how good they may be, will be futile or even harmful. Therefore, it's important to pay special attention to this stage and involve not only the brand and marketing departments but also sales, management, and production. I also recommend thoroughly studying the market competitors to either qualitatively differentiate the brand from them during planning or, conversely, utilize the best working practices.

To create a brand messaging playbook: 1. Define your brand's core values, mission, and unique value proposition. 2. Identify your target audience and their needs. 3. Craft key messages that resonate with your audience, emphasizing benefits and differentiators. 4. Develop a tone of voice that aligns with your brand personality. 5. Create templates for common communication types (e.g., social media posts, emails). 6. Include guidelines on language, style, and visuals. 7. Regularly update the playbook to reflect changes in your brand strategy or market. This ensures consistent, effective messaging across all channels.

Creating a brand messaging playbook involves defining brand identity, identifying the target audience, crafting key messages, establishing tone and voice, outlining messaging framework, providing guidelines, training stakeholders, and iterating. For example, a tech startup aiming to revolutionize digital learning defines its mission, identifies its target audience as tech-savvy educators and students, crafts key messages around accessibility and interactivity, establishes a friendly tone, and ensures consistency across channels.

When it's time to pen the brand's messaging playbook: 1. Brand Analysis: Start with a deep dive into the brand's identity, values, and target audience. Understand who you're speaking to and what you stand for. 2. Voice and Tone Guidelines: Define the brand's personality and the tone of voice that resonates with your audience. Are you quirky and playful, or serious and authoritative? 3. Key Messages: Identify the core messages you want to communicate. What sets your brand apart, and why should customers care? 4. Usage Guidelines: Provide examples and guidelines for how to apply the messaging across different channels and scenarios. Consistency is key to making your message stick.

An interesting personal experience is that when I was leading the launch of our new product line, we conducted a thorough analysis of our competitors' messaging strategies. Through this process, we discovered a gap in the market for a more eco-friendly alternative. Leveraging this insight, we positioned our brand as a sustainable solution, which resonated strongly with our environmentally conscious audience and set us apart in a crowded marketplace. Craft a positioning statement that succinctly communicates our brand's promise, target audience, and points of differentiation. This statement should serve as the foundation for all our messaging efforts.

At its core, a truly authentic brand personality is born from deep self-knowledge, rooted in your archetype, expressed through a distinct POV, and communicated with a consistent voice. When authenticity shines through, your brand feels more human, relatable, and trustworthy – all increasingly important qualities in a world saturated with AI-generated content. A well-defined personality shapes everything from your website copy to how your customer service team answers the phone.

Define the personality traits and characteristics that embody our brand identity. This includes elements such as tone of voice, language style, and visual aesthetics. Ensure consistency in our brand personality across all touchpoints, including marketing materials, social media content, and customer interactions. Encourage creativity and authenticity in our communication approach, allowing our brand personality to shine through in every interaction. Foster a strong sense of brand advocacy among our team members, empowering them to embody our brand personality in their daily interactions with customers and stakeholders.

Creating messages is my favorite part! It's important to distinguish messages from specific advertisements, slogans, and texts - a message is still the idea that you convey to your customer. And you will convey it through different words and channels, but carefully preserving the core idea. If you thoroughly develop this block, it will become an excellent support in creating further communications and will be the main foundation for both texts and visuals.

Crafting messages and content for a brand messaging playbook demands a strategic approach. Begin by deeply understanding your brand's essence, audience, and competitive landscape. Develop key messages that not only resonate but also differentiate your brand effectively. Construct messaging pillars that reflect various facets of your brand story, ensuring versatility yet coherence. Integrate visual elements strategically to enhance message delivery and brand recall. Continuously assess and refine your content based on data insights and market trends to stay relevant and impactful.

In my experience, this point has become massively more relevant in recent years. Since each channel has its own dynamics and these are constantly changing, it makes sense not to work out points 1 to 4 in too much detail in advance, but rather to proceed more like an MVP: Focus on the question "What is the core of our brand (attitude) and what are our goals?". For both the tone of voice (ToV) and the corporate design, it makes sense to start "sharp" and then test it on the respective communication channels. Which ToV is well received on which channel and by which target group? Which visual approaches work well? On this basis, communication can be continuously developed.

Starting in the late 90s with CD-ROM guides for global clients with local stakeholders, my journey in creating brand playbooks has evolved over the decades in step with and alongside technological advancements (I'm currently exploring how AI can be used in this arena). Leveraging the latest digital platforms and tools, incorporating videos, clickable links, and immersive case studies, this multimedia, interactive approach caters to various learning styles and cultural nuances, ensuring universal comprehension of the brand's essence. It reflects a commitment to adaptability and innovation in communication strategies, making the brand's messaging accessible and engaging for all stakeholders.

For several years now, it has made sense to create dynamic playbooks instead of static ones. Here are a few arguments: 1. multimedia content can be integrated (no one can imagine social media without video content these days) 2. content can be constantly updated, expanded or added to 3. there is a central "source of truth" instead of multiple documents in circulation 4. files and brand assets can be downloaded directly 5. the playbook can be used as an interactive learning platform