Here is the harsh truth about your brand and the vast majority of brands that populate our world. Nobody wants to hear about you. They don't want to hear about your products or services. They don't want to hear about your features or how you function. They don't want to hear about any of it. Because they have busy lives. And with those busy lives comes a constant stream of challenges they need to deal with. So asking them to take a moment and listen to you talk about you just isn't going to go well.

So what do they want to hear about?

The idealized self

We each have an image of our idealized self. It's what life looks like when we get beyond the challenge(s). This is what all of us really want to hear about. That means telling us how you're going to help with the challenges that are keeping us from reaching that idealized state. Or, what life will look like once you help us get to that idealized state.

Focusing on the idealized state does a couple of things for your brand.

1. It redirects you from talking about yourself to talking about those people you hope to serve

2. It taps into a powerful emotional driver

Great brands understand this. Gatorade tells us less about what's in their stuff and more about what it can bring out in us. Think about the brands you admire. I bet you'll consistently find that they have a knack for connecting you with that idealized self.

A bit of guidance

If you want to orient your efforts to help people in their quest for that idealized self, here are a few questions to ask:

• Who do you hope to serve?

• What are their challenges (that your brand can help address)?

• What does their idealized self look like?

• How can you connect what you do to that idealized self?

Before starting any discussion about the brand, focus everyone on that idealized self. It will help your ideas become more meaningful to those you hope to serve. So much so that they may just want to stop what they're doing and listen.