A Queer Marketer’s Take on Clarifying Your Message and Finding Authenticity in your Brand

Earlier this year (2022), I read “Building a StoryBrand” by Donald Miller, and it changed everything about how I perceived my brand message. This book––a marketer’s clear framework to having a message that speaks to your audience and converts them into sales––allowed me to look over the previous two years of business and personal development with a shocking amount of clarity concerning my digital marketing agency.?

A profound disdain for the systems we live in had riddled me these previous two years. And every passing day radicalized me more and more. A pandemic occurred, and racial injustice (yet again) came to a head with the murder of George Floyd and countless unnamed others. Additionally, I so graciously graduated into an American student loan debt crisis with a master’s thesis on queer fashion, which seemingly no employer saw the value in. All this–– wonderfully topped with a cherry of Great Resignation, a phenomenon that trickles on today––constantly had me asking myself:?

How can I, in good conscience, take all of this and––what––smile for social media and insist that I am a commodity worth buying into?

There is no easy answer. I’ll go even further and say there is no good answer I think I’ll ever be content with. That’s a personal journey I’m still on.?

I’m just trying to live life with dignity here. Isn’t that what we’re all trying to do? It’s the life we are entitled to, but we live in a world where apparently it must be fought for, earned. Suppose it weren’t for the near-daily reminders that my right to life depends on how much money I make; maybe I wouldn’t be griping so much about it. If it weren’t for the body parts I have, whether I can break my family out of the generational trauma cycle, and secure a safe life for the future of my partner and me, maybe I wouldn’t hate the systems that set all of this up in the first place so much.

Workers need a dignified life––everyone does, worker or not.?

In hindsight, isn’t this part of what drove and still drives the Great Resignation? People, especially younger people graduating into the pandemic economy, have realized that their work is valuable, and employers should compensate accordingly. Even though I may have dodged the bullet of corporate misery by starting my own business, I can’t escape––I mean really escape the disillusionment that plagues many of us.

And that is the intrinsic difference between telling you exactly a step-by-step process on, say, How to Authentically Market to an LGBT+ Audience, and just sharing my story, hoping you can resonate with it, at the very least, or take something out of it.

I’ll tell you about how my journey of disillusionment allowed me not to rise above it but to use it as fuel to find others who feel it as profoundly as I do––and are willing to name that disillusionment for what it is. It is the innate knowledge that we are all entitled to a life of dignity, regardless of race, gender, socioeconomic status, educational background, and beyond.?

All “StoryBrand” did was unlock what was already there: a disillusionment that blinded me so much that I couldn’t see my potential for two years. I won’t break down the framework here for you––Miller does a pretty good job explaining it himself. But it allowed me to come up with this message that you’ll see coming from me, time and time again:?

Let’s take up space that was never there historically for us LGBT+ folks and people of color, and let’s achieve that dignified life that we are entitled to as humans together.

It’s a simple message, right? Maybe it speaks to you. If it does speak to at least one reader, then I’m doing something right.

I realize with 20/20 hindsight, since the beginning of my journey about two years ago, that I can embrace my story of disillusionment––that it can add to my message and not detract.?

Let’s circle back to my two years of wayward messaging. Part of the disillusionment I felt was resentment. It was resentment that I thought I had to write the listicles and package every piece of knowledge into a consumable thing. I felt in those two years that I had to post five times a day on Instagram lest I fall behind on my competitors and lose a fa?ade of knowing-it-all. The truth is that, just like the rest of us, we’re just faking it ’til we make it, and every single day we can learn something new about our skillset, digital marketing or not.

Unpacking that resentment and really feeling it allowed me to feel connected to the buzzword of the century: authenticity. But what does it mean? It meant the unthinkable (at least for me): putting my resentment and disillusionment on blast to find others in the same position.?

Respectability politics had me thinking that I couldn’t possibly air out my gripes and gain something from it, especially in the professional world. In my years working in corporate America, respectability politics was the only way to get ahead. Respect your superiors, swallow your pride and grievances, and work.?

What did I do? I put my resentment on blast and started to share it on my website, my socials, and any networking event I attended––everything aired out like it was hiding in the basement for years collecting dust. That raw authenticity, something that I’ve learned my peers value above all, allowed me to do what I didn’t think could be done––say what’s on my mind and have people respond to it.?

Once I got the hang of it, the floodgates opened. I didn’t worry about making people care about my 10+ years of digital marketing and fashion industry experience and life-long experience as an LGBT+ person of color. It all speaks for itself when you get it under one message.?

Following the “StoryBrand” framework, I wrote all my website copy with disillusionment as fuel.? I started with my website, which trickled down to all other places I show up online.?

While I spent two years blinded with resentment, I hadn’t spent that time only fuming. I had gained experience: hired clients, fired clients, took masterclasses, and had journalistic endeavors with queer business site Queerency, all allowing me to strengthen my writing skills and adequately put to words my experience only after Miller’s framework unlocked that for me.

While going through those two years, I thought that everything I listed above, plus every misguided sales call since the start of Marketing by Rocio, led beguilingly nowhere. Except, it did lead me somewhere: right here, speaking to you, which is decidedly not an inconsequential place to be.?

People are responding to my message. Everything else, including my experience in digital marketing and other skillsets, genuinely comes second to the message.

And it goes to show, as Donald Miller explained it, as well:?

A simple (brand) message can go a very long way.?

It took two years to figure out what I needed to translate and find my voice. This discontentment needed its time to come forth. This disillusionment had a place, a purpose. I don’t regret feeling it––I still use it as fuel.?

There is still a way to go and more disillusionment to unpack. But, ultimately, it all starts with a simple message, and everything else follows.?

I found a message that is authentic to me. Have you found one that is to you?

I’d love to hear you share your own story in the comments.?