The words around us constantly influence our decisions. For example, seeing a bold “SALE” sign in a store window might pull you inside. A coffee shop promoting a seasonal drink as “limited time only” could tempt you to try it over your usual order.   

In crowded, competitive markets, how you communicate your message matters more than ever. Clear, compelling copy is a powerful tool for standing out—whether it’s through humor, surprise or helpful information. But it’s equally important to know how to adapt your message to the platform you’re using and the audience you’re speaking to. 

Social Media Messaging

Social media is one of the most powerful branding tools available. While these platforms offer freedom and reach, they also come with challenges. Without understanding how users engage—keeping in mind their attention spans, trends and algorithms—your posts may miss the mark.  

Instagram: As one of the most visual platforms, Instagram prioritizes imagery. Keep tile copy minimal and visually cohesive. Captions should be concise and easy to skim—emojis, line breaks and short sentences go a long way. Avoid long paragraphs that cause viewers to scroll past. 

LinkedIn: LinkedIn calls for a more professional and educational tone. Long-form posts are encouraged, but you still need to grab attention in the first two lines due to the “See more” cutoff. Think of your copy as a mini article: lead with value, avoid being too casual and support your credibility with relevance.  

Website Copy

Website copy often requires more depth, but that doesn’t mean more words. Online attention spans are short, and walls of text can overwhelm visitors. Prioritize clarity, hierarchy and usability.  

Your website should:  

• Guide users toward a clear call to action.  

• Speak in plain, compelling language.  

• Use SEO strategically—integrate relevant keywords naturally without sacrificing tone or flow.   

The goal is to help visitors understand who you are and what they should do next, quickly and confidently.  

Print Communication

While digital media dominates, print still plays a key role in branding. Unlike online content, print doesn’t allow for clickable CTAs—so your message must make a strong impact.  

Focus on:  

• A strong, clear headline.  

• Supporting copy that’s scannable and organized.  

• Thoughtful layouts and information hierarchy.  

Remember that your flyer, brochure or postcard might end up pinned to a bulletin board, sitting on someone’s desk or even hung up on a fridge. Make every word count—it might stick around longer than a digital post.  

Before writing your next piece of copy, consider two things: who you’re talking to and where they’re seeing it. The more you tailor your message to the platform and the audience, the more effective it is. Start with a clear core message, reinforce it across formats and make your call to action easy to find—and even easier to follow. 

While I still find it hard to believe, I have reached the end of my college experience. With all of the emotions and changes that come with senior year of college, my internship with Front Porch has been a constant that I could always depend on. As I approach my one-year anniversary with the team, I want to reflect on the value that internships bring to college students. 

Real-World Experience 

As overused as the term may seem, internships are without a doubt one of the best ways for students to immerse themselves into the professional space. Although our coursework helps give us an idea of the responsibilities expected from our potential career, nothing beats the real thing. No matter the industry, interns are excited to jump into the professional space with you – there’s no better way to learn than by doing! 

Project Management and Multi-Tasking 

Between my internship, schoolwork, on-campus job and social life, this past year has been anything but boring. Students have spent years juggling their commitments, such as classes, extracurriculars and hobbies. We understand the importance of time management and want to help carry the weight of your company’s day-to-day operations. By getting the opportunity to simultaneously work on multiple client accounts, Front Porch helped me strengthen my multi-tasking skills and feel confident in my abilities. 

Collaboration and Fresh Perspectives 

Like with any partnership, interns develop a sort of symbiotic relationship with the company they work for. Learning from professionals helped me not only start developing my own relevant insights but altered my way of thinking to reflect a more sophisticated and focused approach. Front Porch has always encouraged me to think critically and creatively, welcoming my ideas and asking questions to help me strengthen them. By giving your interns the chance to share their thoughts without fear of judgment, new and unique perspectives can be brought to the table. 

Increased Confidence 

My internship has helped me in many personal areas, especially with promoting myself and networking. I feel more secure in my creative work, as I found myself approaching my educational tasks with a mindset geared toward what a client or other target audience would be looking for. Front Porch gave me many opportunities to engage in client relations and present my work to our partners, which significantly increased my confidence in public speaking. The skills and lessons I’ve learned in my internship have shaped me as a creative professional, and their impact will carry with me into my future endeavors.  

So, with all of that to be said, companies should consider adding an intern or two to their team. Students are happy to gain any experience they can and will be passionate to push your company’s professional goals. Remember that everyone has to start somewhere, so consider being the helping hand who kickstarts someone’s professional experiences — just like Front Porch has been for me. 

Brand messaging is the foundation of the relationships your company makes. Whether it be with potential or current consumers, staff, partners, or investors, healthy relationships are crucial to successful brand operations. Just like any relationship, communication is the binding force that brings us together and helps us achieve our goals. The choices that a brand makes regarding vocabulary, tone and style can make or break connections with relevant audiences. 

Consistency Creates a Cohesive Brand Identity

Before crafting any marketing materials, a brand needs to discover and strengthen its unique identity. By having a firm grasp on what your brand represents, every step moving forward has guidelines to work off of.  

This includes determining the feel of your brand — what tone do you want to approach your audiences with? Whichever mood you focus on should be prevalent throughout your marketing materials. This means carefully choosing words and phrases that go along with your tone. The more you push this identity to audiences, the more their familiarity with your efforts will increase. Familiarity often transforms into dependability, strengthening your brand reputation. 

Clear and Transparent Communication Shows Reliability 

Audiences won’t support a brand they don’t trust — it’s as simple as that. Choosing a brand to engage with depends on many factors, such as product quality, pricing and brand values. But how do audiences learn this information? That’s up to how the brand decides to tell them.  

If consumers can’t clearly learn who you are and what you stand for, they may view you in a lesser light, or not even give you any more of their time. This can easily be avoided by thoughtfully crafting your brand messaging, removing fluff and other factors that take away from your main points. When you know who you are as a brand, you can communicate it more clearly to your target market. When audiences recognize that you’ve put the time and effort into defining your brand, and you convey these values clearly, they’ll see you as more established and reliable each time they interact with you.  

Empathy and Relatability Make Your Brand Human 

Most industries are overwhelmed with competition, with each company looking for ways to differentiate themselves from the others to win over consumers. While it’s more important than ever for brands to capture the attention of target markets quickly, it’s just as crucial to nurture relationships and build consumer loyalty. Like with any relationship, a brand must be readily available to talk with its audiences.  

People value the authenticity of a personal touch and are more likely to engage in friendly conversations than with robotic, automated messages. Whether it’s crisis management or customer service, the customer experience should always feel approachable and genuine. While methods may vary based on company resources, brands should prioritize accessible and direct communication with consumers, as adopting a natural, conversational tone can encourage higher engagement and increased customer loyalty. 

Speak Clearly, Connect Deeply

Brand messaging is the cornerstone of all company relationships. Audiences learn about your brand from what you tell them, so first impressions — and each impression after that — are everything. By prioritizing consistency, reliability and empathy in your messaging and approach, your marketing materials will prove why audiences can confidently supporting your brand. 

The Super Bowl is one of the biggest sporting events of the year, drawing in millions of viewers worldwide. Even if your team didn’t make it, the game offers something that everyone can look forward to: commercials. Super Bowl commercials have become a main talking point in pop culture, with some people caring more for the ads than the game. Since these ad placements are such a big investment, companies are very particular about the message they want to share. There are many lessons to be learned from some of the most successful Super Bowl ads in past years.

Emotion Drives Engagement

Just like any good story, most Super Bowl commercials center around a well-developed plot. The Farmer’s Dog delivered one of the top-rated ads in 2023, showing the story between a girl and her dog. The ad highlights their evolving relationship, tapping into the ‘dog is man’s best friend’ theme to evoke an emotional response.

A campaign can benefit from targeting emotions. Depending on your product, your message, and your brand voice, the emotions you focus on may vary. But ultimately, audiences are more likely to remember information when it’s given to them as a narrative, especially if they feel personally connected to the storyline.

Sometimes Risks Pay Off

Since so many companies put their all into Super Bowl ads, it may seem difficult to take a risk. In reality, many successful commercials have appealed to viewers by surprising them. Tubi’s commercial in 2023 sent viewers into mass panic with a design that looked like someone was changing the channel. Even though the prank only lasted for a few seconds, viewers expressed online the stress they felt while scrambling for their remotes.

Even though people had mixed feelings toward Tubi after that commercial, it is still talked about two years later. Tubi took a different approach from relying on humor or emotion to grab viewers’ attentions. Similarly, marketers shouldn’t be afraid to push boundaries in their campaigns. When they assess potential outcomes, the buzz from a bold campaign can attract more attention and curiosity.

Cross-Media Consumption

For many viewers, a TV won’t be the only screen they’re focusing on during the game. Audiences have become more likely to watch the game while also focusing on their phones, laptops or other devices. With the increasing impact that social media has on consumers, as well as the desire to reach new audiences, companies have started to expand their Super Bowl campaigns to different platforms. For example, Olay’s 2020 commercial aimed to inspire women to “Face Anything,” incorporating celebrity cameos and emotional storytelling to drive the message. Olay encouraged viewers to use the hashtag #MakeSpaceForWomen on social media, vowing to donate one dollar (up to $500,000) for each use in a given time frame. This not only increased Olay’s impressions and audience engagement, but significantly strengthened their brand image.

It’s important for companies to know where their audiences are engaging with content online. Understanding different platforms and media outlets ensures that your message is reaching as much of your target audience as possible. Like the Olay commercial, this may go past simply posting the same content across channels. Giving users interactive opportunities makes them feel involved with the brand and the message your campaign hopes to convey. Fostering that feeling of community is key to increasing retention rates and building trust with your consumers.

Like Super Bowl commercials, marketers should hope that their efforts generate positive buzz for and increased attention on their client or company. Giving viewers an experience they’ll remember is crucial to improve engagement and push your message. Even if you’re not developing a campaign for the big game, it’s important to give each project the same care and attention to detail. Trust in your work and produce content that you, as a consumer, would be excited to talk about.  

Collaboration is inevitable, whether in our careers, schooling or social life. This past semester I have worked to find balance between my schooling and work. Through this, I’ve gained valuable insight into how brainstorming, critiques and suggestions are all necessary to reach meaningful results.  

Growing up, I had a difficult time taking suggestions or criticism of my work. I was quite a perfectionist in that I couldn’t help but feel that any critiques were slightly personal. Yet, as I’ve grown creatively and gotten to work with other talented creatives, I’ve shifted my perspective on collaboration. My mindset has changed from previously becoming discouraged to now feeling motivated to improve. Here are some tips that have stuck with me that I keep in mind during any project I work on.  

Tip 1: Critiques are not a Criticism of your Creativity 

In my graphic design course, my work is regularly displayed to the class for my classmates to comment on. Going into my first critique session, I was terrified for my work to be perceived by others. But after listening to the critiques and making the changes to my work, I’m able to see both aesthetic and practical improvements. This has shown me that critiques should not undermine your creativity. Ultimately, you’ve already done the work that becomes the base for any critiques you may receive. You were able to create something worth discussing and that people want to see grow to its best potential. No project is perfect from the jump, and sometimes it takes multiple sets of eyes to notice things you haven’t.  

Tip 2: Don’t Hold Back Ideas  

Growing up, I tended to hold back my ideas unless I felt confident that they would impact the conversation at hand. I became hard on myself when it came to brainstorming, often thinking that if I shared an idea people didn’t use, it was a waste of time. Recently, I’ve come to learn how harsh I was on myself and now understand the value of sharing any relevant ideas that come to mind. You never know whether your idea will have that big impact unless it’s shared, and if it doesn’t, that’s ok! Most of the time, our ideas become catalysts for others to expand their thought process. Great solutions are discovered from bouncing ideas off of one another.  

Tip 3: Push Yourself to Think Past the Safe Choice 

The most important thing to ask yourself when working on a project is if the work is a good reflection of your company. This requires you to consider your audiences and stakeholders, recognizing what they want from your business and prioritizing that. By fully understanding your audience, you can experiment creatively with your messaging. Although it’s important to stick to a cohesive brand voice, don’t be afraid of creating content outside your norm. This could mean hopping onto current trends or trying out a new advertising campaign; regardless, audiences want to see fresh, entertaining content. This is another area in which conversation is key. Speaking with others and gathering multiple opinions is the best way to grow creatively without straying away from your brand image. 

Collaboration is the backbone of the creative process. With each critique or suggestion, we learn more about our craft and improve our skills. It’s important to trust those around you, for that trust fosters innovation and can motivate groups to work towards a common goal. So, don’t be afraid to speak your mind, ask questions and learn from others — you never know which ideas will spark successful content. 

During my senior fall semester at the University of Arkansas, I am taking courses that challenge my creative thinking. One of my courses, Creative Strategy, focuses entirely on developing an advertising strategy for a client of our choice. After defining target audiences and brainstorming strategic approaches, we reached the central reason for the course: writing our creative strategy statement.  

What is a creative strategy statement? 

This statement defines the purpose of a campaign and identifies how advertising and marketing efforts will benefit target consumers. Each aspect of a campaign should consider how it can bring value to its audience, and this strategy statement helps make ideas more tangible and attainable.  

How should you prepare to write one? 

Before writing this statement, the campaign team needs to have conducted the necessary research. The creative strategy statement is a great tool to guide advertising strategy and development, so it’s important to properly prepare to write it. This means taking time to define key elements of the campaign, which can be done by: 

• Customer research: Who are your current and potential consumers? What can you learn from their behaviors that may dictate how this new campaign appeals to an audience? 
• SWOT analysis: A SWOT analysis is a classic method for analyzing your brand – and for good reason. Writing out the benefits and challenges that your brand faces compared to competitors can help you discover innovative ways to meet consumer needs. 
• Current advertising approaches: Looking at and dissecting current advertising can reveal a lot about what works and what doesn’t. From analytics to behavioral reactions, there are multiple ways that a brand can strengthen its advertising presence. Then, the brand can become more distinguishable by ditching what’s not working and enhancing what is. 

What should it include? 

These statements should be succinct, only using a few sentences to provide relevant information. Developing these statements may look different depending on the client or the campaign, but important details include: 

• A description of the target market: Who do you want to reach, and what characteristics are necessary to consider when developing material? 
• Benefits offered: Why should your target audience pay attention to this campaign? What value can they get out of it that incentivizes action?  
• Customer need addressed: Offering benefits is only important if they directly and positively impact the consumer. What need does the target market have that the campaign can satisfy? 

What does this statement mean for the campaign? 

The information provided in this statement connects the strategic with the creative. Writing out the necessary details provides the parameters that advertising and marketing materials need to guide them. This statement can also help a team ensure they have thoroughly and accurately identified the target market, selling argument and tone of the campaign.  

As I enter the second half of my fall semester, the course is shifting to the development of creative work. From magazine ads to a digital ad series, my work from now on will be guided by the creative strategy statement. By combining research and recognizing the needs to be addressed, the statement is a great tool to ensure campaign materials are cohesive and on strategy.  

Brand storytelling has become a popular marketing strategy in recent years as companies face greater competition in the marketplace. This strategy consists of sharing personal stories and experiences to stimulate an emotional reaction from your consumers. When done thoughtfully and honestly, telling your stories can greatly benefit your brand. 

Storytelling Makes Your Brand Feel Approachable and Personable 

Whether you are just starting your company or have been established for years, your team has worked hard to develop a strong brand identity. So, you should want to capitalize off your company values and the personal values of the people that make up your team. Incorporating team testimonials and bios as part of your company presence adds life to the brand. It can make customers feel more familiar with the company when they choose to interact with and support you. 

Unique, Relevant Stories are Key to Differentiating Your Brand 

Your company should continually develop new ways to distinguish itself from competitors. Sharing anecdotes from your business and its members offers unique perspectives that consumers can benefit from. Sometimes, stories are much easier to remember then lists of facts or statistics – finding a good balance is important.  

Utilize Various Media Platforms to Attract New Audiences 

Practicing brand storytelling across media platforms is a great way to increase your company’s brand awareness. By posting on and monitoring different outlets, such as social media, newsletters, and company websites, you can expand your reach and gain insights into the customers who engage with your posts. Be sure to promote your different accounts across platforms and encourage viewers to share your content with others. Developing this relationship with consumers can build trust and loyalty, which encouraging customers to want to share your company with their friends. 

Be Sure to Include Customer Experiences 

Brand storytelling should not only include the stories of your company and its employees. You want your customers to also feel like a part of your business. By providing space for customers to share their experiences with your services, you can strengthen their loyalty to your brand and hear how your work is perceived. Effective communication between business and consumer is crucial to appearing transparent and ready to help.