How to Craft a Brand Message that Captivates and Converts

Adam Torres and Jimi Gibson discuss brand messaging.

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Show Notes:

How does The Magic Script™ help businesses cut through the marketing noise? In this episode, Adam Torres and Jimi Gibson, VP Brand Communication at Thrive Internet Marketing Agency, explore Jimi’s 25+ years in brand messaging.

About Thrive Internet Marketing Agency

Thrive is a full-service digital marketing agency. We’ve been providing a wide range of services to clients of all industries since 2005. Their digital marketing services include consulting and management options for a variety of online marketing tactics including search engine optimization (SEO), pay-per-click (PPC) ads, copywriting, conversion rate optimization (CRO), and more. They also offer expert web design and development services for both eCommerce and B2B companies.

Full Unedited Transcript

 Hey, I’d like to welcome you to another episode of Mission Matters. My name is Adam Torros and if you’d like to apply to be a guest in the show, just head on over to mission matters.com and click on Be Our Guest to Apply. Alright, so today I have Jimmy Gibson on the line and he’s VP of Brand Communications at Thrive Internet Marketing Agency.

Hey Adam. All right, Jimmy, so , we got a lot to talk about today, so I want to, we’re gonna get into how to craft a brand message that captivates and converts. And I know you’re bringing over 25 years of experience in brand messaging. So, so you’re the guy to talk about this subject. And I guess just to get us going here.

25 years plus of experience and brand messaging. Man, I don’t, were we using those terms back then? And I mean that in a good way. That’s a great, it’s a great, great topic. How’d you get started? Well, I know we’re gonna talk about some cool things related to magic. I was, gosh, I was part of Merlin’s Mail Order Magic Club that goes way back when I was four years old and I was always interested in messaging and how to communicate.

And then that sort of translated you working for an ad agency? Yep. That’s another, mm-hmm. Prehistoric term ad agency when I was in high school and yeah, just kind of went from there. So I don’t think brand. Really took off till about maybe 10 years ago, but everybody was tap dancing around it, and then we realized the power of it.

So I was, always attracted to it, I guess from years as a magician and how that relates to communication and marketing. I. What was it like in those early days working in like an, an ad agency? Like, let’s school, school. Some of the youngest who are like, what’s that? Everybody can go back and watch Mad Men too.

And that’s, now that’s dated too, but Great series. Go ahead. Oh yeah. Yeah. I would say Mad Men is sort of a mishmash of everything that was going on. My bosses at the time were from that era and, you know, when I got outta school I was. gonna be one of those people and yeah. You know, the computers were not fully integrated into the system.

We did paste up with waxed galleys. I know that’s probably a foreign language where I. Galleys would print out on a typesetting machine and you actually had to cut with an exacto knife to make the Oh, wow. Oh, I know. It was painful. Painful, especially when the knife rolled off the table and stabbed you in the leg.

But I mean, you know, it was a much different world. We had a guy who had a dark room and developed transparencies before things were sent to the printer. Also, another relic term. And. Instead of a Coke machine they had replaced the Coke machine with beer. And that was just sort of a typical vibe of a, an ad agency.

So you didn’t think it was anything weird while you were in it, but now looking back, you’re like, I don’t think that really fly today. Wow. What th thanks for the lesson on that one. I definitely recommend gonna see a Mad Men and this idea with magic and I’m kind of like, when I think about my career, I’m like, how come magic wasn’t a thing around mine?

I like going to Magic Castle out here in LA and I love going, but, but I’m, man, that wasn’t a thing like hot. Did that carry over, like throughout, you know, those younger years into this ad agency thing and, and just even further, like how, how did that stand as like a theme? Yeah, so I mentioned I was working for an ad agency doing some promotional shows for one of their clients and I.

I was doing that in high school, doing about 50 shows a year while everybody else was babysitting and cutting grass. So I got to sit in on some planning meetings and I was just fascinated because, you know, if you think about it, magic is persuasion in its purest form. I. You’re controlling attention, you’re guiding perception, you’re shaping belief.

And as I started to, like, I never wanted to go to college, but my parents were like, yeah, sure. Going to college. And so I had to pick something and the closest thing that I could pick to magic was marketing. And it actually panned out. I’ve actually continued to perform magic throughout my career. It’s been sort of a, dual pathway and.

I just sort of have this lens of magic and theatrical presentation related to communicating a message, and I’ve enjoyed it. Amazing. How does magic and, how does that kind of inspire your work today? How does it help you cut through the, the marketing noise? Yeah, so I think one of the things that when a magician walks out on stage, there.

You have to grab ’em in the first three seconds, you know, they’re sizing you up. You know, who is this person? You know, are they gonna be able to fool me? And so you really have to capture that attention, that connection you have to make a connection with the audience. I did some work for Broadway director being about eight other.

Magicians flew to Canada and spent about a week with this Broadway director who was also a magician. He was an original cast of Annie, and we literally practiced how we walked on stage for two hours. Like it makes a difference. And so capturing that attention and then activating curiosity. And you know, we’ve all heard the term sitting on the edge of your seat, right?

Well, that’s a theatrical term. Instead of people lean back staring at their phone, talking to their person beside them, they’re lean forwards. And so activating that curiosity and what’s the next thing that’s gonna happen, and then bringing that effect to a conclusion. And so I was actually working at a theme park in part of my professional career as a magician.

I did 372 shows in six months, and so.

The first a hundred shows, you’re just trying to hang on. This was a cast of 22 people and there were all sorts of music cues. I’m not musically inclined, so I had this little way that I followed the music cues by counting off in my head. But after about a hundred shows, It’s this weird thing that happens that actually time slows down and now you’re able to slice time into micro moments and you could feel the energy of the audience when they were leaning in, when they were relaxed, when you know, I could pretty much tell you within a millisecond when somebody was gonna laugh or when they were gonna clap or those types of things.

And so I actually ended up taking all of that experience and reverse engineering into a framework I call the magic Script where. It just sets up a sequence that grabs that attention, activates curiosity, and then brings that closure or conversion. So, wow. And so can, can you give me like a, obviously in a, you know, a 20 minute podcast episode, there’s so much, of those stuff that we can, we’re gonna get, but like, gimme a flavor for like, what some of that entails, what you can share.

Sure. So if you take all magic tricks, whether it be a production, a vanish, a transposition, a restoration, you can boil them down into 13 effects. And so that really relates to marketing. It relies on focus. So without a clear effect, the audience is gonna get lost or the customer is gonna get lost. So if you’re trying to make something vanish, but also trying to transform it.

It’s just confusing, right? It’s not very amazing. So the same goes for a marketing message. You have to choose one effect to focus your efforts on. And I’ve actually been able to translate the 13 effects into marketing effects. So let’s say that we’re trying to, and again, there’s three phases to it.

The first one is connection we talked about, and that’s actually releasing oxytocin, the trust chemical in your brain where we trigger. The audience or the customer gets us. So let’s say an example for a surgery center that does knee replacements. So the connection point is, Hey, we know your knee pain is keeping you from the life that you love.

So what does the audience, or the, what does the customer say? They immediately. Know that you understand them, you’ve shown empathy. And so if you don’t connect again in the first three seconds, your audience is gone. So I think a lot of businesses are all about me, me, me, me, me. Here’s my story, here’s my story.

But what the customer or the potential customer is actually wondering is, are you gonna be able to help them get from where they are to where they want to be or solve this problem? Mm-hmm. The next phase is the curiosity phase. We talked about that the lean in. And that’s actually releasing dopamine. And we all heard dopamine, you know, I’m addicted to social media.

It’s actually not the addiction to, so social media, it’s the need for closure or reward. And so once you’ve built that trust, you need to earn the attention, right? So yeah, this is where curiosity, it triggers the dopamine, the brain’s reward chemical. It makes people lean in and think, Hmm, tell me more. So.

We work with a large organization that sells aftermarket car parts. I know it sounds boring, but you can make it exciting, right? And so if we lean in and we say, instead of saying we sell car parts, you could say, what’s the one upgrade that could make your ride faster and smoother? Mm-hmm. Well, immediately you want closure to that.

So that sparks the curiosity to keep the audience engaged. Then the last one is conversion, which is a release of serotonin or the satisfaction chemical. And so this provides the closure, the resolution, just like on stage, the finale of the trick, and you need to give a. The person on your website, or if they’re listening to an ad or whatever the case is, a clear call to action because you’ve opened up this need for reward or closure, now you need to guide them to the next step.

So let’s say we’re talking about a plumbing company. We work with a lot of home service companies, so call today for a no clog guarantee. It gives. So that just little snippet there gives the audience a simple, satisfying next step. And so without that, the message falls flat. And so if you look at that structure, it can happen very quickly.

It doesn’t have to be some long, drawn out process, but if you’re missing any component, it just sort of feels flat. It feels self-serving. It doesn’t. Give that person listening to the message the feeling that they understand, they know what to do next, and they’re intrigued about making that conversion.

So anyway, whether you’re crafting a message for a plumber or surgery center, e-commerce brand, it really cuts through the noise and gets to. That part where it almost feels like the person has made their own decision instead of being forced to hold. What I like about your framework is like, it doesn’t matter.

what medium you’re using. Huh? Like what I mean by that is you can, I mean, this can be done digitally in any of your marketing. This can be done even on the, like, the concepts you talked about, like the sales side of things and like verbally like your sales scripts and like, but it seems like all that framework can be used in all different stages of marketing slash we’ll say brand messaging.

Am I, am I off on that? Very astute, Adam. I know you’ve had thousands of these conversations and I’ve actually tried to break it. I’ve tried it for a keynote speech. I’ve tried it for how you answer the phone. I’ve tried it for a pay per click ad. I’ve tried it for Yes. A sales script a blog post and it all, it’s universal.

Yeah. I thought so, like, because the way you’re saying it is, and this is the most interesting thing to me because you, you’re really you’re really just matching human nature. I mean, this can be done in different parts of your life, but this is matching, right, like human nature, even like relationships or other things or interactions with individuals.

Like you’re really melding human nature in the way our work. Where our psychology or, you know, physically, like the way we’re created with this concept, and you’re kind of matching those, which I’ve never done when it came to marketing. I’ve heard some of these things, like the, like the concepts you’re talking about, maybe in the mm-hmm.

You know, kind of like relationships circles or things like that. But I’ve never heard it in marketing and it may, when you just not said it, it’s like, duh.

Well, I kind of sat on it for a while and then when I real class you in a real class showed Jimmy Yeah. That the hook feedback was duh. Well, I consider that a success because I had the same feeling when it hit me like it’s on bricks, and I was like. Wow, this has been staring me in the face for all this time.

And yeah, it was kind of exciting. We’re both, we’re both using three letter words, so I don’t feel quite so bad, but at least yours was an actual word. Well, I always say if you can’t explain it to a 10-year-old, your marketing message is too confusing. So.

Oh man, this is great. No, I love it. It makes, it makes complete sense and this is something now I’m definitely gonna take this back and start thinking about how to meld those concepts in different parts of, of my life and marketing and other things like that, because I feel like probably many people are missing, maybe like one or more of those components.

But you need a all, especially the way you’re explaining it, like maybe they’re not doing the right call to action so there’s no clear defined like payoff.

Seems like there’s probably, if something’s not working, there’s probably something missing. And if there, if something is working and something is missing, it might, it might benefit from revisiting and tweaking to make sure all the, all the bases are kind of loaded there or full like it seems like.

And I think we also have to look at different types of performers, right? And so if we consider the voice of a brand as a performer, and I, I kind of get twisted up when we talk about avatars or I, ideal client profile. it’s dehumanizing and we all have different personalities. Like I’m kind of.

Easygoing. I’m fun loving. I like to joke around and so my voice is gonna be a little snarky, a little sarcastic, a little kind of poking you in the side. Somebody else, and again, depending on the brand or the product, might need to be mm-hmm. Sort of serious and matter of fact, and you just have to shape what is that character?

How am I speaking through these three phases? You can still activate the same brain chemistry. No matter what your personality is. And so I think that’s the beauty of it, is you gotta be yourself. I see too many businesses that try to do the, I’m speaking like a business talk, and it just, it falls flat.

It’s just adding to the noise. And you know, customers are looking for somebody that they can connect with, whether it’s through a product or service or an emotional level. And you might not be the right person. If you try to be all things to all people, you’re probably gonna end up with a book of clients that you really don’t want to work with.

’cause you’ve attracted the wrong crowd. Yeah. Well, Jimmy, this has been a lot of fun having you on the show today and really and just getting, into your mind and learning more about the magic script. how do people work with you and your team and, and how do they follow up? So again, we’re Thrive Internet Marketing Agency.

The URL is pretty short, just Thrive Agency. I’m actually posting a video every day, Monday through Friday on LinkedIn. So that’s a good place to find me. My name is Jimmy Gibson. JIMI. So it’s spelled a little bit different and if somebody wants to DM me or comment on a post would be happy to send them like a little framework that they can follow for.

Storytelling and how to make their message more memorable and, just open the invitation for anybody to, contact me and chat. I’d be happy to talk through any trouble they might be having or give them some more clarity. Amazing. And for everybody listening, just so you know we’ll definitely put the links in the show notes so you can , go check out Jimmy’s page.

And speaking of the audience, if this is your first time with Mission Matters and you haven’t done it yet, hit that subscribe or follow button. This is a daily show. Each and every day we’re bringing you new content, new ideas, and hopefully new inspiration to help you along.

Absolutely. Thanks Adam. It was fun.