by Tim Staples
The best way to find your true voice is to strip away the gloss and sheen and return to whatever it was that made you think your business was a good idea in the first place, like we did at Shareability, and like Apple did. But make sure you are telling the truth.
To test this truth, we have developed four key steps based on our experience to help brands through this transition. If you’re struggling with finding your voice, these steps should serve as a roadmap of sorts, or at least guideposts.
1. Do basic research to find out who you are not.
Normally, you would do market research to find out what you can sell. In this case, you are doing market research to find out who you are. This sounds a bit overwhelming, but there’s a trick you can employ to circumvent the extremely broad nature of the question, and to help you home in on the truth.
You ask people who they think you are and what you should be doing, in terms of services, products, ventures, what have you. In truth, their answers won’t be as interesting or as telling as your reaction to them. Remember, you are looking for your truth, not the truth of others. That means, for example, that if you are a marketing company like Shareability and someone says, “You should become an advertising agency and compete with everyone making million-dollar TV commercials because you would be really good at it!,” that comment might make your skin crawl.
That’s where you pause. Why did that just happen?
You are not looking for the truth in what people say, only the truth in how that makes you feel. If half the people you ask tell you to compete with advertising agencies, but your instincts are screaming that this is the wrong path, that the agency model is dying, that TV commercials are the past and digital communication is the future, then you would be foolish to listen to the market research.
As our chief creative officer would say: “Statistics is the science that can tell you a person who is standing with one foot in a fire pit and the other in a block of ice is—on the average—doing great.”
Of course they are not. They are literally screaming in great pain from the fire and the ice but no spreadsheet or pie chart will ever be able to display these real emotions. That’s because humans are complex machines and everything we do is interconnected, not least of which is all your passion and your success. Remember, your passion is key. That doesn’t mean that you will automatically succeed at anything you are passionate about, but at least it means you have a head start and a fighting chance.
But, you ask, what if I’m not a passionate person? Well, then you don’t know yourself very well. Everyone is passionate about something. It’s simply in our DNA. You need to figure out what aspect of your business you are passionate about. It probably won’t be “becoming successful” or “making lots of money” or any such arbitrary and generic response. It will be oddly specific, deeply personal, and unique to you and your business in some very interconnected way.
For me, I love packaging. The idea of taking a slice of this, a hint of that, layered on a thick base of something else, combined in a new and unique way that tells a story that makes everyone excited the minute they hear it—that’s where my true passion lies. I have begrudgingly come to realize this is probably because I’m a storyteller. Initially I shunned the idea. It sounded soft and artsy, and lacking in profit potential, but then I realized that story is everything. It’s in the story of their packaging and positioning that companies like Snapchat, Airbnb, and Beats can be valued in the billions of dollars. It has nothing to do with detailed financials or even profit margins—it’s all in the storytelling. That is the high-wire game that I am inexplicably drawn to, and thinking about the packaging and positioning of Shareability is where I can add real value to the company.
So who do you ask for your research? Well, anyone really. Start by asking friends, family, and coworkers. Read up on other companies that are like yours, or very unlike yours, and see if you can find some consensus on where you fit. The heart of this exercise is to provide you with enough time and direction so that you can hear your own inner truth. Listen to the little voice that tells you where to go, and use the court of public opinion as guardrails to tell you where not to go.
2. Look at your competitors for opportunities.
Researching and understanding the voices that are already prevalent in your industry is a productive exercise to help you find your unique position. The trick is to find a market gap for a voice that aligns with something you believe in. That’s where the sweet spot lives.
An example of this is Jessica Alba and The Honest Company. Early in her career, Alba made a name for herself as the star of the television hit Dark Angel and in hit films including Fantastic Four, Sin City, and Valentine’s Day. Her persona and voice at the time were all about mystery and Hollywood glamour. That all changed in 2007, when she found she was pregnant with her first child. Her parental instincts kicked in, and she began researching all the things that she would need to know to be a successful mom.
One of the first books she read was Healthy Child Healthy World, by Christopher Gavigan, and it had a profound impact on her. The book served as a textbook for Alba on the dangers of toxic chemicals in baby products and the connection of these chemicals to various illnesses. As a child, she herself had experienced asthma and allergy-related illness; she was convinced there had to be a connection.
She was outraged to find out that regulatory systems were failing consumers and that manufacturers were allowed to put untested, toxic chemicals in products like baby shampoo and diapers in order to provide fragrance. She then scoured the market for “clean” products that wouldn’t put her baby at risk. What she found depressed her—there were very few products that were actually clean, and the exceptions were of poor quality or very expensive.
Out of this personal inner-voice journey, Alba made a life-changing move. She decided to become the voice for moms who demanded high-quality, safe, and affordable products for their children. She launched The Honest Company to do just that. It took several years to hone the business plan and secure the initial funding, during which time Alba had a second child. But in 2012, the company was up and running. It was working because it had a very unique voice, that of a brand that listens to parents and keeps their kids safe. The company skyrocketed because of that, and by 2015, its valuation had reached $1.7 billion.*
This process happened naturally for Alba, but you can do it much more deliberately. The first step is to take a deep look at the industry or category that you want to enter and then carefully study the voice of all of the major players in it. Try to boil down each voice into a few words and then write down what they stand for. Then look at all of your competitors as a whole, and think about how they are different and how they are the same. Are there any major holes in the market that come to mind? Is there room for a more conscientious brand? An edgier one? One that appeals directly to a specific demographic? Where are the opportunities? If you can pinpoint and identify an opportunity that aligns with something you are passionate about, like Alba did, then you are off to the races.
Finding your own voice can also mean making a change in your career or life path. My partner and a cofounder of Shareability, Nick Reed, is a perfect example of this.
Nick came up through the Hollywood ranks at International Creative Management (ICM), one of the industry’s top talent agencies. He started out as an agent’s assistant, was promoted to agent, and then rose to become head of the motion-picture literary department at ICM. He represented some of the top film directors and writers in the business, including Jay Roach (the Austin Powers and Meet the Parents series), Antoine Fuqua (Training Day) and Peter Morgan (Frost/Nixon), and put together hit movies such as Bridget Jones’s Diary.
His days were long, and weekends offered no reprieve. There seems to be a dictum in the agency business that if you don’t work a full day on Sunday, don’t bother showing up on Monday because someone else will have your job. Despite the pressures, Nick loved representing some of the most talented p
eople in the business and bringing their work to the big screen, and he forged ahead.
But over the years, the agency game began to change. Big agencies had to get bigger to compete, and acquisitions became the order of the day. Other agencies were constantly trying to poach his clients. So not only was Nick working with his clients, he was dealing with personnel issues, attacks from competitors, and intra-agency power grabs. One day, he sat back and looked at what he had achieved and what he wanted out of his career.
Yes, he had worked with the best filmmakers and biggest movie stars. Inasmuch as the job required creativity, much of his time was spent deal making and problem solving. He wasn’t actually telling the stories, he was facilitating them. So, in 2010, he took a leap into the unknown and left ICM to pursue his own creative avenues. He wanted to do something that moved him, something that was good for his soul.
Soon after, he met Alice Herz-Sommer. She had the most amazing story he had heard in years. She was the world’s oldest living Holocaust survivor, at 107 years old, with a unique story of survival and an outlook on life that moved Nick. An accomplished pianist, she was sent to the Theresienstadt concentration camp with her 6-year-old son. To endure and maintain her sanity, she turned to music. She performed more than 100 concerts inside the concentration camp, helping others maintain their sense of sanity as well.
Never mind the commercial prospects, Nick had to film her story. He convinced his longtime friend, documentarian Malcolm Clarke, to work with him on the film. Using his own money with Malcolm and working pro bono, they made a short film titled The Lady in Number Six: How Music Saved My Life, about how music, laughter, and optimism can lead to human triumph over the most trying circumstances.
Nick poured all of his know-how into the making of the film and its marketing, so that Alice’s story would be heard. He also discovered something about himself, that he in fact needed to be creative to be happy. He brought this with him to Shareability.
To promote the film, we put together easily shareable clips from the film’s footage, and then aggressively pushed those gems out to bloggers and influencers. The resulting reach was so vast and the media attention so wide that it gained the attention of Academy Award voters, who nominated the film for an Oscar.
After the nomination, we continued to build the community and awareness around the film. The combination of a wonderful film and its positive message helped push the film over the top. On Oscar night, The Lady in Number Six: How Music Saved My Life won the Oscar for Best Documentary Short Subject. Sadly, Alice died, at 109, a week before the ceremony. However, she lived to see her story impact so many people, as well as help Nick, who had won an Oscar for his first film, find his own voice.
3. Formulate and hone your mission statement.
This may seem self-aggrandizing, but at Shareability we honestly believe that the path to finding your mission statement lies in figuring out what’s shareable about your brand. Why would anyone want to tell their friends about you? Why would they share your story?
This is surprisingly applicable to even the dullest of businesses. Even a coat-hanger manufacturer has a story worth telling, you just have to dig deep enough to find it. It’s an exercise in finding the truth at the heart of the company and then romanticizing it to the hilt.
The bottom line is this: If a brand is doing something right, then it has a core value or asset that will cause people to respond. Something exists at the heart of the brand that defines it, and makes it unique. The key here is that this essence is not necessarily a selling point, but a core philosophy that makes the brand true to itself, that gives it a voice.
Take a look at the clothing brand Patagonia. They grew out of a small company that made tools for mountain climbers. They still do, but now they also make clothes for skiing, snowboarding, surfing, fly-fishing, paddling, trail running, and anyone who just wants to feel snug sitting in an outdoor café on a cool fall day. What they don’t make is motorcycle jackets, racing gloves, or team jerseys. They make products for the quiet sports, practiced in the outdoors, with a focus on individual achievement.
Their values still reflect the minimalist style of their roots, and their designs are always coming from a place of simplicity and utility. This love of the outdoors, the wild, is what has led them to take part in the fight to preserve our wildlife, flora and fauna alike. They work hard to minimize the pollution created by manufacturing, and they donate time, energy, and a percentage of their sales revenue directly to grassroots environmental groups all over the world.
Staying true to these core values, and making high-quality products, means they can command a premium from their customers. People are willing to pay extra for this kind of corporate integrity.
This truth at the center of the company has been boiled down to a mission statement that says Patagonia exists to “build the best product, cause no unnecessary harm, and use business practices to inspire and implement solutions to the environmental crisis.” Not bad for a company that’s been in business 30-plus years and is now doing over $200 million in revenue every year.
4. Above all, be honest.
The internet has a finely tuned bullshit detector that operates at warp speed. Unlike the days of television advertising, when people had to write letters to a company about bad or misleading slogans or wait until a newspaper wrote about it, today people can comment immediately—and boy, do they. Any whiff of inauthenticity in your voice or your message will blow up in your face at the speed of a Reddit thread.
Granted, this may be on a small scale for you or for a small brand, but consider what happens to a large brand when it posts something that seems inauthentic. A case in point is Pepsi’s campaign with Kendall Jenner.
Long ago, Coca-Cola was the dominant soft drink. It was “the real thing.” When Pepsi came along, they had to figure out a way to separate and distinguish themselves from Coke, to show that they were the new cola on the block. They came up with “the choice of a new generation,” and Pepsi pursued the youth market with amazing success.
But Pepsi has lately lost touch with the new generation. Pepsi produced an ad in 2017 that featured a white celebrity defusing a protest march with a Pepsi. In the ad, protesters are holding signs that read “Join the Conversation,” while surrounded by police. In the final scene, Kendall Jenner hands a police officer a Pepsi, ending the confrontation and causing the protesters to applaud.* The tone-deaf ad uses images related to Black Lives Matter, a movement protesting police brutality, in order to sell its soda.
This isn’t to say a brand can’t be edgy, witty, or sardonic. It can, as long as it rings true. Taco Bell has done a terrific job with its irreverent social media campaign aimed at millennials. When Taco Bell set out to announce its home delivery app, it went dark on social media. On every platform, over a black screen with white letters, it wrote: “Taco Bell isn’t on Twitter,” or “Taco Bell isn’t on Facebook. It’s #OnlyInTheApp.”
Everything Taco Bell does in its social media marketing stays true to its appeal to millennials. When it discovered there was no emoji for a taco, Taco Bell started a petition on change.org. After 33,000 people signed, a taco emoji was created. Taco Bell took things a step further, creating the Taco Emoji Engine.
Undoubtedly, Taco Bell’s marketing team carefully considers and plots its strategy. But it doesn’t feel that way, because with each step, the brand maintains its authenticity, which appeals to its target-market base.
So when you find your voice, make sure it is very true to your brand, to who you are, and to the core idea that caused you to put so much time and effort into it in the first place. That honesty will make all the difference as to whether your voice is ultimately heard.
Rule 5
Crush the Headline
From the early days of Shareability, we’ve always had a very simple and ironclad rule—if you don’t have a knock-out headline, well, you don’t have a video.
This started in our YouTube days, where a large part of our dis
tribution strategy was to have our videos noticed and then written up by publications around the world. In order to make that happen, the videos needed to be headline-worthy from a journalistic point of view. While we don’t focus on publications for PR nearly as much these days, the same original mantra translates beautifully to the current digital landscape, helping to hone the clarity and specificity of our campaigns. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve repeated this around the office: “If you don’t have a killer headline, you don’t have a video.”
Newspapers understood this concept before the internet even existed. “Headless Body in Topless Bar” is a classic New York Post headline. Known for its puns and wordplay, the Post has been running saucy, attention-grabbing headlines for decades. The paper hopes that a fun headline will make you want to buy the paper and read the story, and for years, it was also trying to out-headline the other New York City daily tabloids.
More traditional newspapers, like the New York Times and the Wall Street Journal, use headlines differently, keeping them much more focused on the content of the story. This results in news-driven headlines, like “Storm Gathers Strength as It Nears Florida” or “Passenger Is Dragged from Overbooked Flight.” For a more important story, these papers will increase the size of the font, creating a banner headline, but they won’t resort to New York Post–type puns for fear of losing credibility. It’s a delicate balance between credibility and audience attention, but the bottom line is that if you are a newspaper, headlines matter.
