Brands & Storytelling

Stories are the glue that holds societies together. Consider the stories of Plymouth Rock and the Pilgrims, the Boston Tea Party, the Revolutionary War, the Declaration of Independence, the Civil War, George Washington, Thomas Jefferson and Abraham Lincoln. These are the basis of our American Heritage. They provide us with a sense of history and values and common purpose.

Consider the Biblical stories of Adam and Eve, Noah and the Ark, David and Goliath, Jonah and the whale, Moses and the parting of the Red Sea, and more central to the Christian message, the birth of Christ, Jesus feeding the 5,000, and the crucifixion and resurrection of Christ. These stories unite more than 2 billion Christians across the world today.

Consider your own family's stories. Your wedding night. Your honeymoon. Your first child. Your best vacation. Your child's first major accomplishment or recognition. A favorite place to which you returned year after year. A very funny moment. A shared tragedy. A special holiday. These memories are the glue that holds your family together.

I have been involved in Boy Scouts for more than 50 years. The memories that keep me coming back are the summers spent at Massawepie Scout Camps in the Adirondack Mountains, the 70-mile trek at Philmont Scout Ranch in Cimarron, New Mexico, the National Jamboree at Fort A.P. Hill near Bowling Green, Virginia, and the World Jamboree at Summit Bechtel Reserve in Glen Jean, West Virginia. I can and do share these memories with other Scouters across the US.

Republicans enjoy recounting tales about famous Republican presidents such as Abraham Lincoln, Theodore Roosevelt and Ronald Reagan. While Democrats like to reminisce about the personalities, values and accomplishments of Franklin D. Roosevelt, John F. Kennedy and Barak Obama.

Whether you are a corporation, a not-for-profit organization, an industry conference, a brand of single malt scotch, a sports team, a rock band, a seaside town, a resort community or something else, you have your stories and your shared history.

Every society throughout history has had its stories. Every culture has had its myths and its folktales. Every religion has its parables and its stories about its founder and its history.

Stories provide context and meaning. They reinforce shared values. They tell cautionary tales. They imply standards of behavior. They provide a sense of heritage. And, most importantly, they create a sense of belonging to something bigger than oneself. They are what bind tribes together.

What are your brand's stories? Do they talk about the brand's origins? Do they convey certain personality attributes? Do they reinforce shared values? Do they reinforce your legendary service? Your extraordinary quality? Do they create a sense of community? Do they establish an emotional connection with its intended audiences? Are they memorable? Do they create a rallying cry?

I would contend that if a brand does not have its stories, it may be a brand in name only. I wish you great success in crafting and telling your brand's stories.

Brand Storytelling

I just returned from “The Un-Conference: 360 degrees of Brand Strategy for a Changing World” at which I spoke about brand differentiation and brand equity measurement among other topics. Clay Hausmann, a brand storytelling strategist, presented one of the most clear and practical approaches to brand storytelling that I have seen. Brand storytelling is the bridge between brand strategy/positioning and brand marketing communication.

In his approach to brand storytelling, he works with clients to help them identify four things:

• The Inciting incident } motivation
• The controlling idea } clarity
• The genre } context
• The characteristics } differentiation

The inciting incident is the pivotal event or decision that sets the story and its drama in motion. The controlling idea is the underlying idea that the story expresses. The genre is the type of story (love story, comedy, action thriller, etc.) and the characteristics are what makes the brand and its story different from other brands and their stories.

Today, I want to focus on the controlling idea. The controlling idea for Colombo is a seemingly bumbling detective who is smarter than the criminal and therefore solves the case and arrests the criminal.  Every episode of Colombo expresses this controlling idea.

Clay indicated that the controlling idea for a business might be how one’s life changes in a positive and meaningful way after using that business’ product(s).  This is also the approach that some ads take.

I think this expression of a business’ controlling idea is something every brand manager should think about whether he or she crafts his or her brand’s story or not. How does your brand change people’s lives in positive and meaningful ways? If you cannot answer this question off the top of your mind, you have some work to do.

I highly recommend Clay and his work. If you want an introduction to him, I am happy to do so.

Here is a previous brand storytelling blog post. And here is another one.

I wish you great success in determining how your brand changes people’s lives in positive and meaningful ways and I wish you great success in crafting and telling your brand’s story.

What is Your Brand Delivering?

Storytelling

Brands tell stories. They create myths. They engage people. They entertain people.  What story does your brand tell? Is it engaging? Does it create an emotional connection to the brand?

Experience

What experience does your brand deliver? Does in connect with people through one or more of the five senses – touch, smell, sight, sound and taste? What feelings does it evoke? Does it calm people? Does it exhilarate them? Does it make them laugh?

Values

Brands often stand for something. They embrace a set of values.  What does your brand stand for? What values does it embrace? Does your brand express the values of its intended customers? Can they wear the brand as a badge of their values? Can they use the brand as a self-expression vehicle?

Personality

Brands have specific personalities. What personality does you brand have? Is it trustworthy? Is it reliable? Is it friendly? Is it smart? Is it innovative? Is it entertaining? Is it compassionate? Is it rugged? Is it stylish? Is it quirky? What personality should your brand have?

Service

How does your brand serve its customers? Does it have a service ethic? Does it strive to anticipate customer needs and exceed customer expectations?  Does it try to surprise and delight its customers?

Archetype

What is your brand’s archetype? What drives it to behave as it does? What is its primary motivation? Does it like to guide others? Is it trying to save the world? Does it like to achieve? Is it a nurturer? Is its motivation to create the next big thing? What drives it to be the brand what it is?

Personification

In what ways does your brand take on human qualities? As listed above, does it have a specific personality and does it hold certain values? Is it trustworthy? Does it make promises to its customers? Does it connect emotionally with its customers?

Promise

Finally, what is your brand’s promise? What does it promise to its customers? Does it promise unique and compelling benefits or shared values? Does it consistently deliver on those promises? If it fails to deliver on one of its promises, does it recover from that failure and even turn the failure into a victory?

Summary

This then is what a brand does.  It tells stories. It creates experiences. It holds a specific set of values and it shares those values with its customers. It makes promises. It delivers on those promises.  It provides services to its customers. It has an archetype and a personality.  And it can do all of this because it is the personification of an organization and its products and services.

Great Brand Stories

People talk about creating great brand stories so I thought I would provide you with examples of some brands that I believe tell their stories well:

• Kletterwerks
• Burt's Bees
• Trader Joe's
• Patagonia
• Ben & Jerry's
• Newman's Own
• Life is Good
• Bully Hill Vineyards

Brand Storytelling

In his book The Dream Society, Rolf Jensen makes the case for a shift from an information society to a dream society in which imagination and storytelling become the primary drivers of value. He identifies six emerging emotion-based markets:

1. Adventure
2. Community (togetherness, friendship, and love)
3. Providing and receiving care
4. Self-expression (“Who am I?”)
5. Peace of mind
6. Standing for something (convictions)

Many brands like to tell stories that demonstrate their values or their legendary service. Every brand story requires the following elements:

• Core values that underpin the story
• Moral of the story (central premise)
• Hero (protagonist)
• Villain (antagonist)
• Plot (tension/conflict/resolution)
• “Aha” moment
• Transformation

Here are two other storytelling frameworks that you might find useful.

Mark Lightowler uses a storytelling map that includes the following nine elements:

1. Story setup (the background information the audience needs to know)
2. Protagonist (the hero)
3. Conflict (what stands in the way of the journey’s completion)
4. Outer motivation (protagonist’s motivation)
5. Deep issues (the deeper issues addressed by the story)
6. Opportunity (the protagonist’s inward reward for overcoming the conflict)
7. Arc (how the protagonist grows or changes inwardly over the course of the story)
8. Empathy (what causes the audience to empathize with the protagonist)
9. Tension (the unspoken feeling feeding the conflict)

According to Chris Vogler, the hero’s journey consists of the following steps:

1. The ordinary world
2. The call to adventure
3. Refusal of the call
4. Meeting with the mentor
5. Crossing the first threshold
6. Tests, allies, enemies
7. Approach to the inmost cave
8. The ordeal
9. Reward
10. The road back
11. The resurrection
12. Return with the elixir

Reprinted from Brand Aid, second edition, available here.

Heritage and Nostalgia

Baby boomers and other older cohort groups have witnessed many changes in their lifetimes and have many fond memories, some going all the way back to their childhood. I remember summers on Black Lake with friends motoring around the lake, exploring new tributaries and claiming uninhabited islands as our own. I remember the smell of homemade bread rising in my childhood kitchen. I remember playing with my Heathkit fifty-in-one electronics kit, my chemistry set, my microscope and my magic kit. I also remember all of the pranks I used to purchase and use - fly in the ice cube, whoopee cushion, disappearing ink, fake dog poop, fake vomit, hand buzzers, exhaust pipe noisemakers and gum that turns a person's mouth black. Remember playing Monopoly or Life or Twister? Or how about Pac-Man?

Brands can tap into heritage, fond memories and nostalgia. They can trigger memories or feelings of carefree childhood, life in simpler times and the good ol' days. Coca-Cola's bottle shape harkens back to its original bottle shape. Many old fashioned candies are in great demand by some consumers - Necco Wafers, Mary Jane, candy bead necklaces, wax candy (colored syrup in a wax bottle) and PEZ. Genesee Brewery recently introduced product names and packaging that harken back to its original beer brands. 

Are there ways for your brand to tap into its heritage to create a strong sense of nostalgia? 

Brands and Storytelling

Recently, I was drawn in again by a street person’s story. It is not the first time. If the story is good enough, it tugs on your heartstrings. While, as a marketer, I am always leery of being taken in by total fiction, at the same time, if the story is good enough, it doesn’t even matter if it is true. It has entertained me. I give the person some money. Several times a week my wife and I get phone calls from various not-for-profit and political organizations asking for contributions. Again, there are stories. What will happen if they don’t get enough money. What will happen if they do. The telephone solicitors are scripted to paint a compelling picture with words. Don’t religious leaders do the same thing? How many of Jesus’ parables are recounted in the Bible? And there are Hindu and Buddhist and Native American and Taoist and Sufi and Hebrew parables and stories. I can’t think of a religion or a culture that doesn’t have its stories. I even hear stories from people who want to sell me investments, stories of people getting rich. They paint a picture of how I will significantly increase my net worth too if I invest in what they are selling. And how about the stories told by places? Come to our country or city or resort and have this type of experience.

Brands tell stories about their history and their heritage and their founders. They also tell stories about their heroic and other admirable deeds. Many brands like to tell stories that demonstrate their values or their legendary service.

• Every brand story requires the following elements:
• Moral of the story (central premise)
• Hero (protagonist)
• Villain (antagonist)
• Plot (tension/conflict/resolution)
• “Ah ha” moment
• Transformation

Further, you should have answered these questions before you write your brand’s story:

• What is the brand’s archetype?
• What is the brand’s personality?
• What is admirable or endearing about the brand?
• What is the context or need that makes this story relevant?
• Where should we tell this story? Using which media?

Storytelling is a strong selling tool. Every brand should have its stories. The stories should be engaging, entertaining, admirable, endearing and even purchase motivating. Does your brand have a story to tell? If your target customers heard it, would they love your brand even more?

(c) 2014 by Brad VanAuken, excerpted from Brand Aid, second edition, to be published in December