Startup Communications: The Everything Tastes Better With Butter Principle

Introduction

Since the beginning of time, dating back to simple dishes of ancient nomadic tribes, to complex creations on the menus of today’s Michelin Star restaurants—every great chef knows the magic of the tried and true ingredient that just makes everything better: That yellow stick of divine fatty pleasure, we call “butter.”

Everything Tastes Better With Butter

It'd be easy to say the basic pain with startup communications is it's not creative enough. Or as trending wisdom of the day says, it's not "disruptive" enough.

But sometimes, what's of greater value is to go back to what's "tried and true." If your communications assets aren't getting the fanfare you hoped. This first principle of startup communications is for you.

The Everything Tastes Better With Butter Principle," has to do with pattern matching. The definition is as follows:

"In place of creative intuition—pattern matching—is about identifying tried and true ingredients that consistently make communications concepts work." 

It's much easier to apply proven traits and characteristics that make communications assets successful in the modern day. Than lock creatives in a room and ask them to come back with a new miracle idea. 

Predictability, is an undervalued commodity. 

You can think of predictability as the first step to layering substance into a startup communications standard. We want to be able to define what's "good" or "bad." We have an obligation to give substance to what those two words actually mean.

Especially, if in-house marketers are to exceed them. For example, a startup marketing director should ask not what would be a good slogan? But what makes a startup slogan good? What does good actually look, sound, and feel like? Here, are a few more quick suggestions:

• Study the niche: What competitor startups have broken through, and are growing as a result of their marketing?

• Study the concepts: What does the success of their marketing concept say about what's appealing to your audience?

• Find an outlier in a different industry: It's unwise to copycat a competitor in your market, therefore, identify traits you may apply from a distant sector

When the standard of "good" has been determined. Only then can that standard be set, met, or exceeded.

One exercise for leaders of a startup marketing strategy, or program, is simple.

Look at the World's 100 Hottest Growing Startups List. The goal is to put pattern matching to work by seeing if these most recognizable and successful slogans have certain characteristics.

Write them down. 

Because despite all the very good slogans serving different startups and different audiences with decidedly different desires, there’ll be a very flexible yet unshakeable something about every one of them that says, "We're cut from the same cloth."

In this case, shared traits falling into two kinds of distinct classes: The tangible vs. the intangible (or physical versus the non-physical).

Tangible characteristics of a slogan on the World's 100 Hottest Growing Startups List look like:

• Easy to say

• 3 words or less

• 7 syllables max

• Layman's terms

• Alliterative structure

• Benefit-conveyed

Intangible characteristics of a slogan on the World's 100 Hottest Growing Startups list look like:

• Forward-looking

• Industry-relevance

• Cultural-relevance

• Contrary nature

• Universal appeal

• Originality/freshness

• Overall charisma

Charley + Company, is a midsize startup marketing advisory: We help startups learn and apply the principles of startup marketing, empowering missions to grow sustainably.