Focus on Why: A Simple Rule for Building a Brand Online
A Conversation with Jack McCausland, Designer and Co-Founder of Dwell
It was the 7th of December 2019, that my friends Jack, Sam and I decided to create a company together. The idea was fairly simple. We felt that there was a need for media content to create a community of Christians in East London. And instead of digital media, we opted for a magazine, which turned into a trade book. A small paperback book, that collected poems, artwork and articles from Christian creatives in East London.
Our roles were clear from the beginning: Sam would be the editor, Jack the designer and I would handle the finances. But beyond a simple pipe dream, this now seemed feasible. The numbers added up. We could actually make this work!
And a few painstaking months later, our first issue was printed.
We called it… Dwell.
And now just a few months ago, we published our latest issue: Dwell 04.
I lately had an opportunity to look back on the lessons I learnt from this experience. A major one I learnt was from Jack, who along with Sam has been the driving force behind our online presence and brand identity. It completely changed the way I viewed marketing, so I decided to ask him to elaborate on it.
Marketing the Why instead of the What
This one hit me hard. I work for the church, and in that environment, we are naturally averse to anything “salesy”. We want to be transparent, truthful. And in that spirit, some adverts tend to revolve around what we offer and to a lesser extent how it can help you. If it’s a conference, it will be about its speakers. If it’s a course, it will be about its lectures, and so on.
Jack summed it up perfectly using Apple as an example:
They don’t talk too much about the battery life, but they say that you can watch films and take HD photographs for an entire day. They don’t talk much about camera specs, but they say and show that you can rival professional photographers with their smartphone.
The Why is a lot more elusive, a lot more inspiring than the what. In the above picture for example, rather than simply describing or showing artwork, it highlights the care that is taken in creating it and the environment in which it is being created. Comments sections on social media are also an opportunity to highlight the story behind a piece of art and how it came to be.
It comes out as a lot more inspiring and a lot more…human. It’s a voice we can all easily listen to, and relate to very well…
Focusing on why you came up with this product and why it is needed will helps you create a voice and a personality for your brand and unleashes your audience’s creativity and imagination around your company and its purpose.
Quality over Quantity?
When you’re making something for quality, […] you have a lot more time to think about what people think and feel when they receive your artwork. When you produce things in large quantity, it can be confusing, and itmight not be your best work.
I was raised in digital marketing with the idea that you are basically a nobody if you don’t post content as often as you can. In the age of oversharing online, the idea of scaling back and actually spending hours crafting a post sounds ludicrous.
And yet as Jack explains, this mindset has the potential of severely damaging your brand reputation.
If every interaction with the brand is positive, it’s a very good place to be. But if 50% is bad […]that will scar the reputation of your brand.
In the end, this remains a balancing act between spending enough time to produce high-quality work, keeping enough momentum to avoid spiralling into perfectionism.
Two great things are needed to have an innovative project: A [great] idea and not enough time.
While momentum and speed are essential in getting a project up and running, slower and more meaningful online communication might just be what keeps it going.
About this article
This article has been written by a student on the Grenoble Ecole de Management’s Advanced Masters in Digital Strategy Management. As part of a content creation assignment, students are given the task of writing articles based on their digital interests and disseminate the articles online. Articles are marked but we make minimal changes to the content. Thanks for reading! James Barisic, Programme Director, MS DSM.
