Mixed Messages

Susanna Forest | April 2023

Our work at Evviva Brands is powered by what we know—and what we don’t know. Surprisingly, you will also need that combination to deliver your brand’s message.

As a business, you live, sleep, eat, and breathe your product or service from the initial idea to manufacture, sales, and customer service follow-through. You know your stuff—you’re a nerd to your own brand, living in the details. Your clients know something about what they want, too: they have criteria to tick off, they know how their own businesses work and what needs must be met. But they have other motivations: low prices, ease of access and purchase, high rewards and low hassle. They also see a bigger marketplace.

These knowledges overlap in some places but not others, and you may be overestimating how nerdy your customer base is about your product. Here’s where it’s easy for your messaging to take a swing and a miss, batting at a player who’s no longer there. When you think in minutia, you miss that bigger picture and other customer priorities outside your ballpark, which inevitably change over time. Maybe your competitors are closer than you think. Maybe the market got new priorities. Maybe your selling points aren’t so relevant any more and you need new angles. That’s when someone needs to ask your brand some basic questions.

Evviva arrive as outsiders and learn what your business does and what your competitors want from scratch. We’ve learned that starting from zero gives us both a bird’s eye view and an understanding of the fundamentals. Because we can only take the learning journey once, we pay particular attention to points at which we get stuck, feel lost, feel stupid, and have to look for secondary sources. In fourteen years’ experience, we’ve found that these stumbling blocks are where the big opportunities lie.

What you don’t know doesn’t hurt you, and it could make all the difference.