Your claims are not your brand

Emotion and aspiration should lead product messaging for beauty brands. Claims should be secondary.

That can be strong medicine to take, especially after years (decades?) of claims-driven marketing and packaging. But strong claims are table stakes and don’t make you ownable or special. If you don’t lead with brand aspiration, you don’t have a brand.

Understanding your consumers’ aspirations allows you to tap into them, and when you aspire to something you’re creating a story. Storytelling fuels the fire of aspiration and comes alive across the 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 the company as much as the consumer, bringing everyone together for the same mission.

As part of WE ARE THE BOARD’s new series Piping Hot, Antonym Founder and CEO Amanda Aldinger and Fractional CMO & Beauty Marketing Advisor Anna Vale discuss why aspiration must drive beauty brand messaging—including why many stakeholders misinterpret the ROI on this essential strategy that drives both conversion and connection.

Amanda and Anna also talk about the inherent danger to campaigns when the verbal and visual creatives are siloed, how to counter peak saturation in the market, and why there are no shortcuts in building your authentic story.

Their brilliant episode of Piping Hot is a must-see, and you can view it in its entirety at Beyond Claims: Why Aspiration Should Drive Beauty Brand Messaging.