Not That Why

mlns='> Guess what? No one cares about your why. Here’s what they do care about. [View Message in Browser]( / [Add Us to Safe Sender List]( Weekly News 6.3.22 Connect With CMI [Take Binary Bias Out of Your Content Conversations]( Transgender and nonbinary consumers often feel excluded from or ignored by brand content. Try these simple steps to give your content universal appeal. [Read more]( By Jodi Harris More of the week's best stuff: - [5 Reasons Your Landing Page Conversions Don’t Jump With Traffic Bumps]( by Lakshmi Padmanaban - [5 Steps You Can Take Now To Make Future Content Updates Easier]( by Ann Gynn - [Why 'Know Your Why' Isn't Such Great Content Marketing Advice [Rose-Colored Glasses]]( by Robert Rose - [ICYMI: 5 Tips To Engage Your Overlooked Content Creation Force]( by Jodi Harris  Not That Why So many articles tout the advice to "know your why" that the phrase is now a marketing cliché. And, yup, this article will talk about that adage. But there's a twist. I think that advice steers content marketers wrong. The idea of finding the "why" behind what you do caught on almost a dozen years ago due to Simon Sinek's book (and accompanying Ted Talk), Start With Why. From a marketing and brand lens, Sinek's idea was simple: He claimed, "People don't buy what you do; they buy why you do it." Therefore, he suggested, brands should start their positioning with their why. Sinek pulled back from the brand-positioning why in his second book (Find Your Why: A Practical Guide for Discovering Purpose for You and Your Team), focusing instead on how people can find their unique purpose to motivate their actions. But the approach – finding the brand's why before creating content – stuck. Now it's the rallying cry of many agencies and consultants for brand storytelling. Here's the problem: Most likely, no one outside your brand cares about your brand's why. Even some of Sinek's original examples have evolved from this approach. For instance, his Ted Talk opened with Apple's why as a success story: "In everything we do, we believe in challenging the status quo. We believe in thinking differently." That statement inspired Apple's successful Think Different campaign, which ran from 1997 to 2002. By the time Sinek was writing his book and giving his Ted Talk in 2010, Apple had moved on to the ["Get A Mac" campaign](. These commercials featured John Hodgman personifying a PC and Justin Long as a Mac talking about how the Mac platform made things like creating photobooks and listening to music easier. Instead of focusing on Apple's why, the ads explain how what the product does connects to why potential customers would want it. Consider Apple's [latest ad campaign]( Privacy on iPhone. It does what Sinek says every company does – it focuses on features and benefits. But here's the difference – it explains why the customer should care (because their personal data is being sold without their knowledge). And, sure, you could argue that there's an echo of that original why statement (Apple thinks differently about personal data). Here's the thing. Apple didn't create or discover its why and then decide to change its business to match it. No. It came to understand its customers' whys for its products. Then it clarified what (emphasis intended) business it was really in (making "life stuff" easy) and how they communicate it. Understanding your brand's why is important. But (not to get too meta here) understanding why you need to know your customers' why matters more for marketing and content development. In [Rose-Colored Glasses]( this week, I share a process to help you connect with your customers’ why – and uncover your brand why, too. Try it, then let me know in the [article's comments section]( or [by email](mailto:cmi_info@informa.com) how it turned out for you. In the meantime, remember: It's your story. Tell it well. 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