The Hook Comes First: What Songwriting Teaches About Positioning

Here's something I learned in the studio before I learned it in a boardroom.

You can have a great band, a great room and a great mix, and still end up with a song nobody remembers. It happens all the time. The problem is almost never the production. It's that the song doesn't have a hook, or it has three competing ones, and the listener walks away humming nothing.

Brands fail the same way.

My work has always run on two tracks. For 25-plus years I've done brand strategy for global companies and founder-led businesses. I also write and make music. "Be Beautiful," which I co-wrote with David Ryan Harris, was a #1 Billboard jazz single. The two jobs look different from the outside. From the inside, it's the same pattern: clarify what matters, then transmit it beautifully.

The songwriting side has taught me a lot about positioning. Here's the short version.

The hook is the thing people repeat

A hook isn't the cleverest line in the song. It's the line people can carry out of the room. It's simple enough to remember, specific enough to be yours, and it shows up at exactly the moment the listener is ready for it.

In brand terms, the hook is your position. It's the one idea about your business that a buyer can remember and say to someone else. "They're the people who..." Whatever comes after that phrase, when a client describes you to a friend, is your real hook. It may or may not be the one you wrote.

That's the first exercise I give founders. Ask three good clients how they'd describe you to a peer. Listen for the repeated phrase. That phrase is data. Sometimes it's better than anything on your website.

Write the hook before the verses

Most songs that don't work were written in order: verse, verse, then a chorus bolted on because it was time for one. The strong ones usually start with the hook and then write the verses to earn it.

Most brand work gets done in the wrong order too. Somebody builds the website, then writes the About page, then tries to find a positioning line that sums it all up. By then the verses have wandered off in different directions, and no single line can pull them back.

Flip it. Decide the position first. Then every page, pitch and post is a verse that sets it up. The services page explains how the hook is delivered. The case study proves it. The About page shows why you're the person to deliver it.

Three hooks is no hook

A common problem in expert-led businesses is the song with three choruses. The founder is good at several things, so the homepage leads with all of them. Strategy and design and coaching and speaking.

Every one of those might be true. Together, they cancel out. The listener can't tell which one to hum.

You can have supporting ideas. A song has verses and a bridge. But one idea has to lead, and the rest have to serve it. If you can't choose, that's the signal that the positioning work isn't finished yet.

Arrangement is where you earn the hook

Once the hook is right, arrangement decides whether it lands. What comes in when. What drops out so the important part can be heard. A good arranger spends as much time removing parts as adding them.

On a website, arrangement is structure. What's on the first screen. What gets a page of its own. What you cut because it competes with the main idea. A lot of what I do in a Brand & Website Build is arrangement: taking a position that's already decided and making sure every page supports it instead of talking over it.

Production can't save a weak song

This is the one founders don't want to hear. You can't fix an unclear position with better design, more content or a bigger ad budget. That's like trying to fix a weak song by adding reverb. It sounds bigger. It's still forgettable.

I've written more about that gap in polished but weak. The short version: when the brand looks good and still doesn't convert, the fix is almost never more polish. It's the hook.

The hook test

Try this with your own business. Answer each in one sentence:

• What do clients repeat about you when you're not in the room?
• What's the one idea you want a stranger to remember after thirty seconds on your site?
• Does your homepage lead with that idea, or with a list?
• Could a competitor say the same sentence without lying?

If the last answer is yes, keep writing. A hook that anyone could sing isn't a hook yet.

Where to go from here

If you want the fuller argument on why strategy now matters more than surface, read The Death of the Logo. If you want to understand what brand strategy actually covers, start with what brand strategy actually is.

And if you're ready to find your hook with someone who's done it in both a studio and a boardroom, book a strategy call. Every engagement is led personally by me, with no junior handoffs.