on talking to your grandma at a bar vs church

I'm generally a believer of brands being channel agnostic in their messaging. You should, in theory, show up the same way everywhere.

But while your voice should stay the same, your tone can — and probably should — change, depending on audience and/or setting.

The theoretical example I often give in brand training is to think of the brand like a person. Fundamentally, the personality (i.e., voice) isn't going to change from person to person, place to place. But the tone might.

For example, you might talk to your grandma differently than your friends. And then again, you might talk to your grandma differently at church than at a bar.

(Or, if your grandma's anything like mine, maybe not. Mine owned a country-western bar in rural southeastern Ohio called the Wrangler. 🤠)

My favorite real-life example comes from my time at Pedialyte.

It was 2016, and Pedialyte was in the early stages of transitioning from a "hydration solution" for infants to one for anyone (but mostly hungover adults). (The story behind this transition is interesting, too, but probably for another day.)

Except, talking about Pedialyte in this way on Facebook did not go over well with moms. Like, at all. Especially those moms who lived in college towns and often found bare shelves at their campus-adjacent grocery store because college kids were buying the stuff in bulk.

Yikes.

So. We pivoted our #notjustforbabies messaging to other channels where the audience would be more receptive to that side of the brand.

And the rest is, I guess, history. I chuckled to myself recently, though, as I perusing a subreddit and saw multiple suggestions of Pedialyte as a way to avoid hangovers with children.

Looks like it's still working. 😎