What Happens When Your Message Ignores the Medium?

Every leader hears that their brand must be everywhere.

But the ambition to be everywhere creates a dangerous execution gap. Most companies cannot tailor every message for every medium, so they take a logical shortcut. They create one piece of copy and deploy it across all channels.

The result is a message that is almost always out of place.

The copy that shines on a trade magazine's website feels jarring and intrusive when it interrupts a podcast. The professional tone that works on LinkedIn feels like a strange, unwanted guest in a casual Instagram story.

Each time this happens, your message is not just ignored—it actively annoys.

Your brand feels like the guest who showed up to a dinner party in a swimsuit. It’s awkward, out of place, and signals you don’t understand the rules of the house.

And it can make great messages lose their power.

The Medium Is the Message

The media theorist Marshall McLuhan famously said, "The medium is the message." His point was that the channel used to deliver a message fundamentally shapes how that message is perceived.

It's why the "one-size-fits-all" message doesn't work.

Every medium has its own unspoken rules. Its own language. Its own etiquette.

When you push a single, generic message across all of them, you're ignoring the native language of each platform.

It's the equivalent of walking into a library and shouting.

You’re not just breaking rules. You’re also showing a lack of understanding and respect for your surroundings. This is what erodes trust and makes your brand feel intrusive.

This principle is relevant to more than just traditional advertising.

In today's landscape, the "medium" is the LinkedIn feed. The TikTok video. The email newsletter.

And your message needs to match the context.

True mastery isn’t just having a great message. It's being fluent in the native language of the specific digital space you choose to occupy.

Mastering the Language of the Medium

They succeeded because they embraced the unique format and culture of the medium.

Wendy's: Speaking Fluent Twitter

In the mid-2010s, most brands treated Twitter like a press release tool. They mostly posted promotions and updates. They didn’t engage with their audience.

Wendy's saw an opportunity.

They didn't just post on Twitter; they started speaking Twitter. They took on the platform's unique language of wit, sarcasm, and real-time dialogue.

Their team started roasting competitors and having fun banter with customers.

This communication strategy perfectly fit the medium. And they built a massive, engaged following that saw the brand as authentic and culturally relevant.

Humor served as a clever tool to express their core brand promise. And it matched the native communication style of the platform.

Wendy's brand is built on being "fresh, not frozen."

Their "fresh" comebacks and sassy replies reflected their brand's vibe. This created a strong contrast with the "stale" corporate talk of their rivals.

This approach aligned their brand promise seamlessly with the medium.

Blendtec: Creating for YouTube

In the early days of YouTube, most companies simply uploaded their polished TV commercials. The appliance maker Blendtec took a different approach.

They launched "Will It Blend?", a budget-friendly video series. In a lab coat, the founder blends unusual items, like iPhones and golf balls.

It was quirky and surprising. It matched the early YouTube vibe. Back then, people liked realness and fun over polished corporate looks. They didn't repurpose a message; they created a message for the medium, and it became a viral sensation that built their brand.

They focused on the product's key value, showcasing its strength and durability in a dramatic way.

By destroying coveted items like the first iPhone, they created a spectacle of suspense.

The tagline, "Will it blend? That is the question," framed each video as a dramatic experiment, not a product demo.

This tapped into a universal curiosity and made a "boring" product category into must-see content.

Corona: Integrating into the Moment

Corona's sponsorship of the Olympics with Corona Cero is a perfect example of context matching.

They understood a key behavior well: sports fans often drink beer while watching games.

Then, they identified the friction created by the specific context of the Olympics.

With events running all day, fans face a problem: they can't, or don't want to, drink alcohol for eight hours straight.

Corona’s communication wasn’t just another ad during the Games. It was a solution that let fans join in on a cherished ritual more often, without any downside.

The message—"Now you can enjoy a beer during any Olympic event"—was on target. The all-day context created the need for the product.

How to Find Your Brand's Perfect Moment

You don’t need extra resources to break away from the "one-size-fits-all" approach. You need more discipline.

It means trading the ambition of being everywhere for the clarity of being essential somewhere. Use these questions as a guide to discover when your message will not only be seen but also welcomed.

Ask these questions about your business:

1. What is the "native language" of the channel? Before you post, observe. How do the most successful creators communicate here? Is it humorous, educational, formal, or informal? Learn the language before you try to speak it.

2. Where does our message feel like a solution, not a disruption? Like Corona at the Olympics, where can your brand show up to solve a friction point that already exists in a specific context? Look for moments where they are receptive.

3. Can we create something for this medium? Ask, "If we were to create something just for this audience, what would it be?" instead of "How can we adapt our current ad for this channel?"" This shifts the focus from repurposing to true integration.

4. Does the context amplify our message? Wendy's snarky tone shines on Twitter. Does the place where you show up make your brand story stronger and more believable?

The goal isn't to be seen everywhere. It's to be welcomed somewhere.

Mastering the medium is how you earn that welcome.

Onward,

Aaron Shields

P.S. Is your best copy falling on deaf ears? It might be a sign you're speaking the wrong language for the platform. This is a common problem that wastes money and makes brands feel invisible. Reply to this email, and I'll set up a free 15-minute call to help you think about how you can find the right context for your message.