Is your brand starting to look and feel like all the others in your space?
Years ago, I was part of a team supporting the separation of the Motorola website as the company split into two independent businesses. One of our responsibilities was helping untangle years of web content while managing a broader rebranding effort.
The assignment gave me an unusual opportunity to learn as one of the world's best-known technology companies rethought how it presented itself.
A central theme of the rebrand was to move the camera back. For years, Motorola's marketing for its two-way radios emphasized the products themselves. The imagery featured the equipment up close: rugged housings, internal components, circuitry, technical specifications. It reflected the pride of a company built by engineers for people who understood engineering. Let's face it, a Motorola walkie-talkie was chosen for the moon landing in 1969.
In the rebrand, radios and equipment were no longer the central theme of the photographs. Firefighters, police officers, utility crews, and first responders in critical situations filled the frame. Their equipment was still part of the image, but a smaller focal point in a larger story about trust, coordination, and reliability “in the moments that matter most.”
Motorola had spent decades making the case for what its technology could do. But new competitors were entering the market with comparable specs, so Motorola would need more than spec sheets to win the argument. It was time to make an emotional connection with the people who actually made the buying decisions.
The team, led by Gary Prooyen used imagery and content to transform specs and circuitry into a promise people could feel: reliable when it’s essential.
Expertise is rarely the first thing customers are looking for
I've thought about that experience many times because I keep seeing the same pattern with tech-based businesses and consultancies who rely on data (which is important) but aren’t always able to establish the human connections behind the data. They begin the conversation where they’ve spent the most budget or the most time talking about features, specifications, methodologies, and technical capabilities.
That information matters. Eventually.
But most customers start somewhere else. However technical the conversation gets, there's usually one question running underneath it: Yes, yes — but how does this solve my problem? We want to see solutions that matter to us, and then dig in to judge their value and make sure they’ll fit within our own systems.
Every interaction either reinforces confidence or slowly erodes it.
The Motorola project taught me something that has proven true across many industries.
We are ego-driven creatures. We want to see ourselves in the story, and we want to know what’s in it for us. Making a connection on that level is about emotion, even if you’re selling computer chips. Now that you’ve got their attention, they’ll be more interested in thinking through your solution and how it might make their life (or at least their life at work) a little better.
How do you present a genuine brand?
Communicate like a human. Develop a brand voice around your promise and your company’s personality. Use that voice in everything you put out there. Better yet, use the voices of your people in videos, blogs, and other communication, and train them to be on-brand whenever they’re writing or talking about your company.
Use images that support your story. Motorola spent a lot of money flying photographers and videographers around the world to capture images of their products being used by real people. We’re in an age where being genuine will matter more and more, so invest the time and budget in delivering authentic visuals that show your products, and how your customers use them.
Be genuinely interested in your customers’ outcomes. So much effort goes into brand, voice, and visuals for your sales and marketing efforts. Take the extra steps to ensure there is a clear through line across your organization, so that your new customers will have the same experience in all the interactions they have with your brand. From follow-up to billing to customer support, they should always feel like they’re in the same conversation.
The organizations that communicate best have simply gotten good at translation. They take what's true and impressive on the inside and restate it as a promise their customers can recognize on sight.
Motorola had mastered that translation. During the rebrand, I overheard someone from the marketing team describing a photo shoot with a firefighter: “This guy said his Motorola radio had outlasted his marriage." If only we could have used that line in an ad! But the high-quality photography, re-styled layouts, and “we’re-talking-to-you-in-YOUR-language” copy transformed the client experience into a visually compelling way to connect immediately with the idea, “these radios are trustworthy.”