Branding, marketing, and messaging walk into a bar… and this whole episode turned out to be the punchline.
‘Cause if you’ve been spiralling down the “Do I need a rebrand? Do I need more marketing? Or is my messaging just… bleh?” rabbit hole, me & Emelie Sanders, aka Head Honcho of Pass The Queso, are here to explain who’s responsible for what… and probably tell you to get over yourself (sorry not sorry).
We hear all these terms thrown around the oNLine sPaCe, like everyone’s got a marketing degree tucked behind their Canva templates.
The reality is we’re all just winging it. And even if we do know what they mean, we rarely stop and ask ourselves:
“How do I make branding, messaging & marketing work together to grow my business?”
Ironically, this isn’t *really* an episode about copy (although yes, we do talk about sales pages & emails, and how to tell if your words are doing their job).
But the conversation got wayyy bigger, since we found ourselves coming back to clarity.
The point isn’t to sound clear OR clever. It’s to be *relevant* to those who matter, so you can get paid.
Emelie passed her Freak Show Audition with flying colours:
Emelie has four kids, left home as a teenager, never went to college, has been married and divorced, and has had more careers than most people have had jobs. So how does all of that become a coherent personal brand?
A lot of it comes down to acceptance. When you stop feeling shame or embarrassment about the messy parts of your story and actually process them, you stop tip-toeing around them. You just... talk. And whatever's relevant, naturally comes out.
The other piece is finding the red thread. Early on, you might have to think about how your stories connect to what you're doing now. Over time, it reveals itself faster. But the shortcut you can’t skip is knowing yourself. Not your content pillars. YOU.
There's a tendency (especially for designers and copywriters) to spend so much time building other people's brands that there's almost no self-development going into their own. The result is weak positioning in industries that should know better.
The fix for this isn't a rebrand but a YOU-brand.
Oh, and the theme isn't some clever concept you have to brainstorm. The theme is also YOU. (do you sense a pattern here?)
Let's just make it unsexy for a second, because the oversexified versions are why everyone's confused.
Branding is who you are. It's the big umbrella everything else lives under.
Under branding, you've got messaging (the strategy behind what you're saying: not the words themselves, but the why and what behind them) and positioning (the context: put you in a room with everyone else, what do you look like? How are you different?).
Marketing is simply the distribution of all of it.
So, Branding is who you are. Messaging gives you the words to communicate it. Positioning is "now that you know what I do, here's why you pick me." And marketing gets it all out into the world.
Emelie doesn't build a messaging strategy for the brand as a whole. Instead, she figures out what conversations the brand wants to dominate (usually about five), and then builds messaging per offer.
Your brand messaging is meant to guide content. But when you're talking about a specific offer, that needs its own focused messaging: who it's for, what it does, and how to talk about it.
There's also an important distinction she flags between messaging and copy. Messaging is the strategy. Copy is the words on the page. They're not the same thing: it's the difference between a brand strategy and a logo. People send her sales pages asking for feedback on "the messaging," and she has to gently explain: that's copy. Messaging is what informed it.
The number one indicator of good sales copy is relevancy to the buyer.
If your ideal client reads it and it's relevant to them, it's going to work. And relevancy comes from messaging strategy. Without a clear baseline of "here's what I'm saying every time," you're just burning brain calories and hoping for the best.
So if your copy feels off but you can't pinpoint why... It usually traces back to the messaging not being solid in the first place.
Emelie's own example: about a year into Stand Up Copy, things were going fine on the surface, but there was a disconnect she couldn't shake. When she took a beat to go back to the messaging and look at who she was actually attracting, she realised it wasn't quite the right fit. A small repositioning fixed it. But she only got there because she had something to go back to. You can't revisit foundations that don't exist.
This also comes up around boredom and consistency: two things that derail copy and content more than most people admit. When something stops feeling right, and you're tempted to blow it all up, Emelie's advice is to pause and ask why before torching anything.
Boredom with your output often isn't a sign that your messaging is wrong. It's a sign you've outgrown something specific. Maybe it's the format. Maybe it's a platform. Maybe it's one offer that no longer excites you. But your core values aren't changing every three months, so if you keep asking "why does this feel off?" and following it down, the answer is usually a lot more specific (and a lot more fixable) than "start over."
Don't think about being funny. Think about having levity: creating and accepting moments of fun that are true to who you are.
"Humour is like a fart. If you force it, it's probably shit."
When you try to write "funny" without it being natural, people can tell. The point is bringing your actual self to the strategy. If you've been given a messaging framework, you don't recite it verbatim. You run it through your own voice.
Same goes for the stories you share. Emelie talks openly about her unconventional path because she's processed those things. They don't feel like something to hide anymore. When you're not avoiding parts of yourself, showing up is just... easier. And your audience can feel the difference.
Emelie's believes you are the best person to write your own copy. You have everything inside you already. You just need to learn the skill.
Copywriting can be taught and learned. If anyone tells you otherwise, that's a teaching problem, not a learning one. And it's one of the most valuable skills to have, because no matter what you sell, you sell words every single day.
That said, there's nothing wrong with getting support. The key is that it has to be co-created. If you hire a copywriter without doing any foundational messaging work first, they're filling in gaps, and those gaps matter.
Where outsourcing makes total sense: having a second pair of eyes on your own stuff. Even the best copywriters struggle to write their own copy because they’re too close to it. That’s why hiring someone to look at what you've built and identify the opportunities you're missing can be super effective.
Three things Emelie said and refuses to take back:
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✦ “ZAG: The #1 One Strategy of High-Performance Brands”, by Marty Neumeier
✦ STAND UP COPY: Cut your copywriting time in half — without sacrificing conversion.
✦ PRODUCTISE YOUR NEWSLETTER: Skip the freebies and position your newsletter for list growth with the best way to pre-qualify your subscribers.
✦ THE COLOUR CIRCLE: Bring the Canva design you’ve been (over)fiddling with for hours
✦ Follow her Threads
✦ Check out her Website
✦ Subscribe to The Big Melt
✦ Say hey on Instagram
✦ Get my Uncaged emails
Business & Conversion Strategist
Over the last 5 years as a Brand & Marketing Designer, I’ve helped freaks like us design their unconventional brands so they can step onto the main stage & own their weird. Because if you wanted to be, look or sound like everyone else, you wouldn’t be where you are today. Now it’s your turn.
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