If you want to be top-of-mind when your audience gets purchase cravings. If you want to connect deep with your target buyers. If you want your brand to be the top 1% in your market niche. Then you need to put your customer first.
Being purpose-driven and connecting emotionally with the customer through storytelling is a wet dream in business land – and in the business of beauty especially. It boosts brand awareness and sales, improves customer retention and fosters loyalty, and gives even a smaller business a strong competitive edge in a saturated market.
Here’s how Joli helped turn Dashl into a customer-first beauty brand powered by story, and fueled by empathy for its buyers.
The client: a modern beauty brand
Dashl is a digital-native beauty brand founded in Sweden by the cool fempreneurs Nina Akbari and Arbilina Nissan. It started as a platform where customers could book private nail, lash and brow stylists to their own homes, but has since grown into a company with its own beauty salons, a line of products, and the Nordic’s leading beauty school for aspiring stylists.
Unlike stand-alone beauty salons, Dashl offers shop-in-shop Beauty Bars with leading retailers such as H&M, giving them prime locations to meet shopping customers on the go. The company has moved beyond Sweden’s borders and is present in several European markets, including Germany, the Netherlands and the UK.
The need: Stand-out messaging
When Joli came aboard, Dashl were in the process of opening their first Beauty Bar on Regent Street in London, the same city where the idea was once dreamt up. Also about to re-launch their subscription model for nail and brow treatments, and expanding the e-commerce with their own beauty line, Dashl was on the roll to strengthen their positioning as an expert in nail, brow and lash treatments in Europe’s largest cities.
To boost the expansive growth in a global market Dashl needed to revamp its messaging. To clearly differentiate themselves from the competition. And to clearly stand out in the eyes of their target buyers – millennial and Gen Z women.
The challenge: Unclear positioning in the market
Dashl had an existing messaging platform, done by a glossy branding agency in Stockholm. But it didn’t align with the brand’s new offerings – the Beauty Bars and the beauty line. Nor did it mirror the desired outcome, or promise, that their target audience, millennials and Gen Z, actually purchased. It made the brand’s positioning unclear.
While other beauty saloons offer nail elongation with acrylics, fake on-glued lashes and microbladed brows, Dashl’s Beauty Bar’s ditch harsh methods and fake materials for treatments that are kind to the natural lashes, brows and nails. We needed to communicate this key differentiation to strengthen the brand’s positioning.
Dashl’s growing portfolio of beauty products is co-created with the Beauty Bar experts, as part of maintaining the customer’s results from the lash, brow and nail treatments. But products in class with top brands like Anastasia of Beverly Hills and Essie, deserve to be seen independently.
Younger millennials and Gen Z is by far the largest consumer of beauty and are spoilt for choice. How could we get them to see Dashl as their “go-to” for both beauty treats and products?
The brand messaging had to be refined from a customer point of view to emotionally connect with the target buyer. And the value of Dashl’s services and products had to be amped up to make it stunning to their mind and wallets.
When consumers decide to buy, their choice is more driven by how they feel about your brand, than what they know about your product
The solution: Story-led narrative for a deeper connection
Scientific studies in neuromarketing show that emotion is a key driver in consumer decision-making.
“Functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) shows that when evaluating brands, consumers primarily use emotions (personal feelings and experiences), rather than information (brand attributes, features, and facts).” – Peter Noel Murray, Ph.D., reports.
In other words, when consumers decide to buy, their choice is more driven by how they feel about your brand than what they know about your product.
Crafting a story-led narrative to position a brand is a great method to bring those feelings to life.
This powerful marketing strategy has been adopted by some of the world’s most successful companies – including Nike, Apple, Glossier and Patagonia – to communicate their brands in a compelling way that builds and grows their businesses.
A strategic narrative is a big-picture storyline that springs from your reason for existence (your big Why) and connects your product to the target audience. Your brand story or founder story, or any of your key marketing stories, are chapters in this bigger narrative.
Done well your brand narrative evokes emotions, makes you stand out, and unifies people around a certain POV narrated by your brand. Most importantly, it helps smaller brands compete with giants.
The transformation: Turning a me-first brand into a customer-first brand
Your customers long to be seen and heard. They want to find themselves in your brand’s message.
But a common problem is that many companies have a classic product-first lens and position themselves as the hero of the narrative. This egocentric move awakes nothing for the consumer.
Your brand narrative, or any story for that part, must always be customer-centric to break through the noise, hearts and wallets.
Instead of putting your brand first, you’re inviting your customer into a story that your brand beautifully narrates. In a land where your customer is the hero and you the guide.
Your customer long to be seen and heard, they want to find themselves in your brand's message
The how to: Building a spellbinding narrative that opens hearts and wallets - step by step
There are a lot of story frameworks for building a compelling narrative but in the Dashl case, I found the Hero-Stakes-Villain framework the way to go. We knew we needed to differentiate Dashl by aligning it with Gen Z and millennial values, and their desire for change in beauty.
The storyline goes:
- Hero
- Change & stakes
- Villain
- Pains
- Promised land
- Guiding star
- Superpowers
Before crafting the storyline to frame and connect your brand offerings with your target audience’s needs, you need to be clear with some points.
The reason you exist, your big why. The trends and changes that are moving the industry and the gap in the market that you fill.
And most importantly, your buyer.
You need to know your buyer better than you know your business. And you need to know the world of alternatives from which they choose if they don't choose you.
Step 1: Digging into the WHY behind your brand to develop a story with a purpose
Every brand has its reason for existence. And it’s not money. It’s not being in the top 1% of the market.
A brand’s purpose should always be seen from a customer’s point of view. Your products exist for the customer. Otherwise, you wouldn’t be in business.
I helped Dashl deep-dive into its origin by asking: ”Why do you do what you do?”, and ”What do you different?” By not offering more of the same, the target audience gets a reason to turn their heads.
The founders behind Dashl had spotted a gap in the market of beauty saloon treatments, which spurred the idea of building a new kind of service.
- The majority of beauty saloons use questionable materials and toxic ingredients that are not only bad for the staff who works with it, but also for the customer.
- Conventional lash, brow and nail treatments mainly consist of fake materials that alter the client’s natural look instead of lifting it.
- There’s a negative trend of employees being treated poorly, with bad working conditions and no rights.
Dashl’s reason for existence is to change the status quo by offering services and products that both lifted the natural beauty of the consumer, and the business of beauty saloons.
This would be the point of difference setting them apart from others.
Step 2: Getting under the skin of your target buyer with voice-of-customer research
You can never position your brand if you’re not crystal clear on what your target audience wants and doesn’t want.
A well-positioned brand is dialled into the problems it solves. The more you know, the better placed you are to serve your true buyer.
Doing voice-of-customer research as jobs-to-be-done Interviews and message mining is essential for finding the right message to empathise with your target audience.
The VOC data gave us insights into Dashl’s target audience’s problems, pains, desires and drivers.
A common theme emerged:
- They don’t have the time to go through 10-step routines and a large stash of beauty products to look good.
- They want to stop faking their look with plastic lashes and long brow routines.
- They long for beauty that speeds up their makeup process and makes them feel like themselves.
- Beauty is a tool for them to love themselves rather than altering who they are or making them feel less.
- They don’t have the time to go through 10-step routines and a large stash of beauty products to look good.
This new clarity into the target buyer allows Dashl to communicate more powerfully. In the voice and language of the target audience, and in ways that make them relate to the brand, which increases the opportunity of creating a connection.
Step 3: Making your buyer the hero of the story
As already said, the main character in your narrative is NOT your brand. It’s your ideal buyer. The one who spends the most, buys the most frequently, most quickly, and has the most to gain and lose.
The hero is the ideal buyer persona that you define by their aspirations, desires, problems and pains that are showing up in the VOC research.
Your hero exists in a market prone to change, something that’s disrupting the status quo. It could be culture or trends, but above all, it has to be real, relevant and risky to resonate with your audience. Your hero needs to adapt to this change if they are to survive and thrive.
By focusing on the change and stakes you shift the conversation altogether – away from putting your product first, away from features and benefits. You frame the conversation so that your best customers understand why what they are doing today to get to the desired outcome is not enough. This makes them believe that something has shifted, and they feel left behind if they don’t adapt.
The stakes are what happens if they don’t adapt. The consequence of the old way of doing. The worst-case scenario.
Introducing change into your narrative is important because it positions your brand as an agent of change – someone who sees a problem in your community and does something to take action. You are the one who will help your audience navigate the change.
In Dashl’s case, the change is that people are getting tired of fixing their looks with questionable methods and harmful ingredients. The old way of going with artificial nails, lashes and brows; everyday 10-step-skin routines; and a shelfie of 100 products to look good.
The consequence by keeping choosing these methods is not only damaging your natural look, but contributing to damaging the stylist’s health when they inhale toxic dust and particles on a daily basis.
Step 4: Building climax by introducing the Villain
A brand narrative will not be effective without a proper villain – the external or internal challenge that your hero must overcome.
Without a villain, there’s no conflict moving the story forward. It becomes bland and boring AF.
The villain is something standing in the way of change. It contributes to the pain your hero needs to defeat. Naturally, they want to get rid of it because it hinders the desired outcome they strive to achieve.
The more evil the villain, the more sympathy we have for the hero’s cause. We want the hero to win. And the more you talk about the villain, the more people want a tool to help them defeat it.
The villain helps to position your products as ”weapons” that customers can use to defeat it.
If we look back at the Dashl example – the villain is the damaging beauty treatments and unnecessary products. Acrylic nails, glued-on lash extensions, microbladed brows, 10-step beauty routines. It stands in our way of feeling comfortable with who we really are.
Step 5: Identifying your hero's Pains
The villain causes your hero serious problems. Consequences. Negative effects that keep on happening due to the problem not being solved.
Identifying and understanding these pains is the foundation for positioning, messaging and copy that resonates with them. It helps you to position your product as the ultimate solution.
If we go back to Dashl’s case. The questionable beauty methods are not an issue by itself. But the problems they are causing: weakened nails; redness and swelling around nail beds; infections that damage the natural growth process; acrylic fumes causing headaches or even asthma; brittle lashes that fall off or stop growing out; burning sensation in the eyes from the lash glue; allergic reactions to brow inks; dryness, redness, and breakouts from overloading too many products; and a feeling of looking faked and not like yourself.
Step 6: Turning your offerings into a Promised Land
When you’ve identified the pains, it’s time to introduce your offerings – the solution. People buy on emotions before they justify the choice with logic. So you need to paint the picture of a promised land, to motivate your hero to act.
Unconscious thoughts and human biases are always in the way of making a choice. Especially when choosing a new way over our old way of doing. We may know logically that we need to defeat the villain that is causing us our problems. But there’s that little voice inside that keeps saying: ”You’re doing fine. Your life may not be perfect but it’s kind of OK. You’ll manage. All this villain fighting is not worth the effort. The old ways are familiar and safe”.
Taking a step outside our comfort zone, trying new stuff, changing our beliefs. It takes brain calories. And our brain is always trying to save on those – to keep us from making a decision.
Most of your prospects are satisfied enough with their status quo, and not bothered to do anything about it. When you do like most companies, focus only on the product and listing all its features and capabilities, you’re speaking only to logic. Your prospects won’t be motivated enough.
What your audience cares about the most, is what’s happening to them after they’ve consumed your product. ”How is this going to make me more of what I want?”, ”How is this going to help me get to that desired outcome?”.
Building a promised land is defining your brand promise. The bigger and better version of themselves they will become after consuming your product. A desired outcome that’s difficult to reach without your help.
In Dashl’s case, the promised land is simple: No more faking yourself. Just be you, but better.
This brand promise also landed in a new, more emotionally appealing tagline: Yourself, but better.
Step 7: Positioning your brand as a Guiding star
When you arrive at this step, you’ve done the hardest part. Now it’s all about your business, your positioning on the market that helps the hero go from the status quo into your promised land. This one shows that you’re the best option to solve the hero’s problem.
The Guiding Star, your positioning, show the audience that you understand their problems. It shows them that your products address the problems. It shows them why you’re the best at solving it. You have credibility because you’ve either been there and done that, or have strong social proof.
For a beauty company like Dashl, this could mean having long experience in nail, lash and brow treatments; easy access; breakthrough techniques; well-researched ingredients; studies that back up product claims; or big names and influencers as support.
Your guiding star influences your Unique Value Proposition. How you are totally unique in your market.
In Dashl’s case, the guiding star is Beauty Bar treatments and a line of beauty products that are kind – to your looks, to the stylists, and to the planet. On an emotional level, the treatments and products lift your natural self instead of altering it. On a logical level, it doesn’t contain the harmful methods and questionable ingredients that damage natural nails, brows and lashes.
Step 8: Map your product's Superpowers in a messaging framework
In this final step, it’s time to build your messaging framework by mapping out your offering’s superpowers.
Your solution helps your audience, your hero, to go from the status quo (the stakes) into the Promised Land (the desired outcome & brand promise). You do that by giving them your ultimate Superpowers (the product features and benefits) to defeat the Villain (the enemy of change) that causes you problems (the Pain).
Here’s how you do it.
Begin with your hero’s problem and the consequence of that problem. Then map it to your solution’s benefit and outcome, and explain the feature that enables the result.
Remember, the outcome must match your brand promise. Otherwise, your messaging will be inconsistent. In Dashls’ case, the brand promise is ”products that lift your natural beauty, not faking it. So you can be yourself, but better”. If any of the product outcomes would say ”changing the shape of your brows or giving you new nails”, the messaging would be in conflict.
The end result: empathy-fueled messaging that relates with the audience
In today’s fast-paced and highly competitive business landscape, it’s simply not enough to have a great product or service. You need to have a compelling story that resonates with your target audience and sets you apart from the competition.
By crafting a narrative that connects with your customers on an emotional level, you can build a loyal following that not only buys from you but advocates for your brand.
Dashl got a whole new narrative to go-to-market with. The updated messaging platform was delivered in a Brand Messaging Playbook. This gave them the ability to always know how to express their brand’s uniqueness and how to be distinctive in a jam-packed marketplace.
They got story-led, empathy-fueled messaging to update their website and create assets across the whole funnel. By producing engaging content that reveals their brand’s story and highlights their products or services they can reach a wider audience and increase conversions.
The new key messaging (Embrace your natural beauty, don’t change it) aligned with Gen Z and millennial values (authenticity and realness), and their desire for change (break old traditions and beauty standard.
We turned it into powerful value propositions, a new tagline, a founder story, product stories and naming for their beauty line, promos and campaigns to launch their offerings, and an edgier tone of voice.
Do you need to update your brand positioning? Interested in working together to get you a fresh narrative and messaging platform delivered in a Brand Messaging Playbook?
Tap the button to get to know more about The Brand Messaging Revamp.
