Ep 105 Brand as Mirror, Not Mask: The Framework

Alright, I wanna start with something I've been watching happen in real time. Now, as you probably know, I work in brand communications and I've been doing this for more than 25 years now. And the question that I get asked more than almost any other thing right now is some version of why isn't my brand landing? So why does it feel like I'm saying all the right things?

and nothing is actually connecting.

And here's what I've realized after looking at this from every single angle I can find. It's almost never a visibility problem and it's almost never a content problem. It's almost never a strategy problem, at least not in the way that most people think. It's a mask problem. And today I want to explain what I mean by that, the mask thing.

because I think it's one of the most important things that I can share with you right now, especially given the specific moment we're in with AI, with content overload and Hear Me Out, I know you feel this. There is a sheer amount of noise and every single one of us is swimming through it right now, every day. We see it on LinkedIn, we see it on LinkedIn, we see it on Facebook, we see it.

everywhere. We even see it in the news. What's real? What's not real? What's created by AI?

And actually, before I get into the framework that I have created, I wanna talk about something that I actually read this week as well, because it's exactly what prompted me to make the second episode instead of waiting it out. There's a piece making the rounds. It's from a PR agency, and it's not mine, to be very clear, and it's about how they're now using AI to generate entire thought leadership campaigns for their clients.

And I'm talking about like completely ghostwritten LinkedIn posts, preloaded article pitches, automated content response, comment responses, the whole shebang. Scaled, fast, cheap, and the kicker of all of this. The agency sells this as an authentic brand voice service. And the reactions in the comments were awesome and fascinating at the same time.

Because half the people were horrified. Like, purely horrified. And this is exactly the problem. This is where, this is why nobody trusts content anymore. And the other half were like, this is just efficiency, how cool is that? And this is just where things are going. And you're being naive if you think anyone is doing it differently. And my take? Both sides have an honest

real point here. And that's what makes this genuinely complicated. And I'm sitting there reading both sides and I'm thinking they're both right actually. And I'm thinking they're both missing the actual problem. The problem isn't AI. I use AI, you all know this. I've built workflows around AI. I have built systems using API calls.

And I think it's genuinely transformative when it's used the correct way. But the problem is not when you're using it the right way. The problem is what happens when you use AI to produce content for a brand that doesn't have a clear point of view to begin with in the first place. Or doesn't have a clear brand strategy in the first place. Or doesn't have a clear positioning starting out.

Because when you're not scaling your actual voice, you're scaling the absence of your voice. You're making more noise then, and you're making it louder and you're making it faster with AI, but it's still just noise. It's not your opinion. And that is the mask problem. That's exactly it.

Okay, so let me explain the mirror, not mask concept that I've created. A mirror brand is one that genuinely reflects who you are, what you actually believe in and how you actually work and what results that you actually deliver and why you actually do what you do. It doesn't mean you share everything. It means what you do share is authentic and it's real. It has texture to it.

It has specificity to it, and it sounds like a person who lived something when creating it. But a mask brand is something totally different. It's one that has been built to perform a version of you that you thought the market wanted. So not your actual authentic self.

Maybe it's polished in a way that feels slightly foreign to you. Or maybe the language is more formal than you actually speak in real life. Or it's more inspirational or structured than you actually are. Or maybe you picked a pitch because the market said that is where the money is, but not because it's genuinely where your expertise lives in. And the mask, it's not always obvious out there.

It's not always obvious. Most, and the mask isn't always obvious. It's not always fake by itself. Most masks are built from very good intentions. You thought I needed to be more professional. I need to be more consistent. Maybe I need to sound more like an expert or I need to sound more like that person who's got a large amount of business in the market share.

and then you constructed something that ticked the boxes that you thought you needed. But the difference is, is that the market can feel the gap. Not consciously. Not necessarily, that is. But when someone reads your content and it doesn't quite land with them, or they actually speak to you, the human behind the brand, and it sounds like a completely different person, the nuance isn't there anymore, or it's more polished.

or when you get engagement but not conversations, when people say super nice things to you.

or when people say nice things about your work, but they don't reach out to hire you. Or when you feel like you're showing up, but you're not actually connecting. That gap is usually where the mask sits.

I work with a diagnostic framework that looks at three states a brand can be in. I'm going to walk you through them quickly because most people will recognize themselves sitting in one of these states. State 1. The mirror. This is where your brand is in genuine, pure alignment. Your voice sounds like you. Your positioning reflects what you actually do. Your clients, the clients that attract you, no.

The clients you attract are the ones who actually want to work with you. You're not performing, you're expressing yourself. And when you do show up, even imperfectly, even imperfectly, people feel that it's you. There's resonance there. Things that you say and do land with other people. Most people are not in this place yet, and that's okay. This is the goal.

It's almost never the starting point, so keep that in mind. There's no failure here. Now, state two is the mask. This is the most common state that I see. Your brand probably looks awesome from the outside or it looks fine. There's nothing wrong with it. You have a website, you have content, you have a niche statement about what you do, but there's a layer of performance sitting between you

and the market. And you can feel it every time you write something. There's a slight resistance you feel that inside you.

Something like you're having to translate yourself into a language that's almost yours, but not quite yours. AI has made this much worse, state. Weirdly, because now the mass can be produced fast. Much, much faster than the old days before AI. You can have more content in less time. All of it is fine, but none of it is really

Yours truly yours and then the third state remember there's three the third state the third state is the crack This is when the mask is slipping and you know it the content is inconsistent Your positioning shifts you're trying new things constantly because nothing and I mean it nothing seems to be working

You might even be going quiet sometimes, pulling completely back from visibility because it doesn't feel like you anymore. It doesn't feel good. Something feels off. Now I will say this right now that the crack isn't a failure. It's actually a signal and you need to open your ears and eyes and watch and listen for this moment. You're going to feel it happen inside. It means you're close to something more honest, but it needs to be worked with.

and not plastered over. Most rebrands happen in that crack state. And most of them go wrong because instead of addressing what's underneath the crack in the first place, they just design a new mask and they slap it on top of what they have.

And here's why I'm talking about all this right now and not five years ago, because five years ago, if your brand was a mask or it was masked, you'd still get some traction because everyone was masked to varying degrees. And the volume of content was manageable enough, was manageable enough that you could still stand out by being reasonably consistent and relatively useful. The bar was much lower five years ago, but now the bar has shifted entirely.

AI has made it possible for everyone, and their mom, and their brother, and their bestie, to produce any amount of content that is technically correct, it's reasonably structured, and it's completely and totally generic and sounds like the next expert next to them. The floor has risen completely. You can now produce at the level of a competent, but without it costing you any time or any effort at all.

But what this means is that confident is now the noise floor. It's the baseline and it's invisible. So what cuts through this noise? What is that? It's specificity. What cuts through it is a real point of view. And I don't mean a polarizing point of view, but I do mean an honest, real point of view. Something lived.

What cuts through is a brand that sounds like it came from somewhere, a person who has done the work, who has seen the patterns and formed an opinion that's actually theirs and not regurgitated from AI or from the next expert next to them. And you cannot generate this with a prompt. Remember that a prompt for AI is not going to make this for you. You can organize it. You can amplify it. You can.

Express it better than you might alone. But the raw material has to come from you, the human being, from your actual experience, from your actual perspective. What have you seen with your eyes? What have you experienced? But also your belief system. What is true in your industry and what have you experienced? That, my friend, is the mirror that I was talking about. And that's what we're building.

So to help you along the way, I've built a really short diagnostic and it's called the Mirror Check. It takes you less than five minutes and it looks at all four areas of your brand. Your brand, your voice, your proof, your offer, and your visibility. And it helps you to identify where the mask is sitting for you.

And over the next few episodes, I'm gonna break down each of those four areas in more detail. But if you wanna get a read on where you are right now, before we get there, you can go take a look at it. It's at mirrornotmask.com. And there there's also an ebook there that you can download or read it directly online. It's free. You don't have to do anything to get it. You can read it right there. I'll put the link in the description as well.

And this is a starting point. But the real work is what you do with what you find. And it's about what this series is all about.

And I want to come back to that article I mentioned at the beginning, because I think there's something in it that I don't see people saying clearly enough. We're in the middle of an identity crisis in brand and communications. And it's not because AI by itself is horrible. It's not. I love AI, but it's because the tools aren't always useful in the way that we are trying to use them.

We've picked up the tools before we figured out what we actually are trying to say and we're using the tools to figure out what we want to say. But we need to flip the script. I talk to founders every single week who have beautiful website, super strong brand aesthetics, like awesome content calendars full of great content. All of it generated or assisted in some way by AI. But when I asked them,

What's the one thing you believe about your industry that most people in your space don't say out loud? They go quiet. They don't know what to say. They don't know what they believe in anymore. And that is the problem I want to address. It's not the tools at all. It's the sequence in which you use the tools and you utilize them. You can't shortcut the thinking. You can shortcut the production.

But the thinking, the clarity about what you actually stand for and why it matters and who specifically you are for, that has to come first. And right now, a lot of us, a lot of people in general are running to that sequence backwards. You're producing before you're clear and then wondering why the content doesn't really feel like you or it feels hollow, even though it looks awesome. And I'm not judging that. I've done it too.

I have produced content that was technically really good and personally it was meaningless to me. And it's a really important lesson that I have actually had as well. And it's an easy trap to fall into, especially when we love our tools. I love my tools. and especially when the tools make production feel like you're making progress and the tools are constantly telling you about new things you should produce. Toggle that off by the way.

It's not progress until it sounds like you. It's not done.

So that's the framework, mirror versus mask. Three brand states, three brand states, and the reason it matters more now than it ever has before. And in the next episode, I'm gonna start with the first mirror check, that's voice. Do you actually sound like you? Do you sound like yourself? Because usually that's where the mask starts. And it's also the place where the work is most concrete and almost immediately impactful, if you follow my advice.

If something in this landed for you, share it with someone who needs to hear it today. And if you're still sitting there with something, a question, a reaction, a piece of this that doesn't quite fit your experience, I really wanna hear from you, I wanna hear it. You can find me on LinkedIn or through the website or through ogsolutions.nl. Thanks for being here and I'm gonna see you again in two weeks time. See you then. And remember,

Your brand isn't a mask to wear, it's a mirror to hold. Do you have the mirror in your hand?