CLAIMS AREN'T A HOOK: WHY WE NEED TO REVIVE ASPIRATION IN BEAUTY MESSAGING
By Amanda Aldinger, Founder of Antonym, a white-glove brand messaging studio specializing in brand strategy, verbal identity, and luxury copywriting.
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Language is a living force, an inhabitable space, a space for encounter.
-Renee Gladman
The beauty industry is reckoning with unprecedented saturation.
Every category is overflowing. Legacy corporations are floundering. Abundant VC funding for indie brands is no longer. Younger generations are sweeping in with fresh demands, potent purchasing power, and a rejection of brand fealty.
To prove efficacy supremacy, a new messaging trend emerged: an absolute obsession with claims.
At the same time, everyone became fixated on shorter, shorter, and shorter copy. Suddenly, like Instagram face, homogeneity overtook beauty brand messaging. Claims became the focus, the sum total of storytelling, slapped on every asset in attention-grabbing type. Vibe, the essence of brand, was neutered.
But strong claims are table stakes. They’re not a hook. They don’t make you ownable or memorable.
The value of aliveness and uniqueness in brand messaging is indisputable. If wearers of all the moisturizers in the world agree that each one makes skin feel instantly 100% more moisturized, then why does it matter which one anyone chooses?
Consumers are human. They reach for beauty products to address human concerns and desires. In a world where so much has become automated, mechanical, how do we keep brands feeling human? Stripping away aspiration in brand voice results in an abject loss of meaning. It corrupts connection.
So, when everything is changing so fast, how can you revive aspiration and retain your brand’s humanity, generating a stronger connection to the people you seek to serve?
BE HUMAN. Write like a person talks. Center your audience’s desires, interests, and aspirations in your messaging strategy. Engage with your audience in a connected and empathetic way. Listen actively; be responsive and truthful. Express your brand through human thoughts and feelings with a pulse and perspective others can’t claim.
BE SAVVY. Show your audience you’re genuinely listening to them. When you tell stories in email or on social, contextualize the problems you solve in real-life circumstances. Ask pointed questions that draw you deeply toward their desires. Audit and interrogate your communication to ensure it’s real, original, and agile.
BE SOULFUL. Understanding your audience’s aspirations allows you to tell more impactful stories. Storytelling fuels the fire of aspiration and comes alive across your brand, which means more email clicks, more social copy driving people to the website, and outdoor ads that inspire people to find out more. A good brand story focuses on the company as much as the consumer, bringing everyone together for the same mission.
When it comes to strategic efforts, everyone wants an immediate ROI. Messaging strategy often gets punted because it doesn’t feel as tangible as other brand strategies. But that’s false logic.
Storytelling has an inimitable halo effect across your brand, impacting a holistic ROI. It is quite literally your dialogue with your audience; the most important relationship to your brand. The brands that invest in this strategy see an immediate impact in attraction, conversion, and cohesion because they are hooking people by connecting to their basic human instinct: desire.
If your brand doesn’t care about making people feel heard, then why should people care if your brand exists?
Words matter.
Ready to get started? THE BOARD is a vetted community of C-Suite talent from worlds of Fashion, Beauty, Tech and more. Whether your brand needs a 'Dream Team' to create a data-driven roadmap for what's next or an on-call advisor to provide objective feedback on your strategy, THE BOARD has you covered.
