Telling Stories: Your Brand is About You
During a recent seminar presentation, I asked my audience if they could tell me
what their 'story' was. They responded, as I hoped, giving me a broad series of
answers. In essence, their story was any (and all) of the following:
The Brand Story
The Brand Experience
The Company Story
The Company History
The Company Mission & Guiding Principles
Their Personal History
Their Personal Guiding Principles
Each has value. Each plays a role in creating and maintaining a brand. The best
brands combine all of these stories, condensing their essence into a singular
enterprise. Given the colossal amount of 'junk' noise filling our world and
assaulting our consciousness, a brand needs this kind of single minded focus to
break through and hit our brain's sweet spot, the amygdala. The amygdala is the
center of all things sensual. Consider it Brand Nirvana or Shangri-la, for it is
here that we make most of our buying decisions, particularly those around
discretionary and impulse products and services. Brands embedded in the amygdala
provide a guest a short cut. It reduces anxiety and evokes pleasure. When
marketers speak of unaided awareness, it is in the amygdala that such awareness
resides.
So how do we get our brand to the Promised Land? By crafting our brand story in
the multitude of ways I mentioned.
The Brand Story:
This is the story that imagines the world in which our brand exists, filled with
emotion and sensual details of consumers enjoying the benefits of the brand. It
depicts the target consumer in his or her environment, describing who they are
and why they feel what they do. If the brand is a service, this story shares how
the consumer's life has been enhanced. The best brands use this story to paint
the picture of the quality they are actually selling, rather than the mundane
facts of the product or service itself. Harley Davidson is selling the open road
and the brother & sisters who ride on it together. Of course, it just happens
that they are using a Harley. But, that's not the point: it's the open road and
the trip that matters.
The Brand Experience:
Here the actual experience with the brand becomes important. What is the ideal
guest or consumer experience you want to craft? This is the story you write to
ensure that every single second and square inch of the experience is
orchestrated. For many, this step is ignored and done so at their peril. Take a
look at the Chipotle website to see how a great brand experience is described.
The Company Story
This is separate from Mission or Guiding Principles, because it puts a human
face on your enterprise. It often depicts what need existed that the company
felt compelled to answer. It often talks about the company attitude toward
product quality or service standards. A good example of this is how LL Bean
outlines what they're about, with particular emphasis on their pledge of
absolute consumer satisfaction — no questions asked. You send any item back and
it will be replaced or credited. They go the extra mile, so that I can send back
boots, already worn, because they just didn't fit right and get a new pair. It
transcends a particular item or line and states how they intend to behave.
The Company History
This is exactly as it seems. What are the historical, salient facts of your
enterprise? When did you get into business? With whom? What's the company
legacy? Who have you followed? Answers to all these questions establish
bonafides that allow consumers to believe in your brand claims. In this age of
deep, abiding cynicism, everything you can do to give me reasons to believe is
worth exploring.
The Company Mission & Guiding Principles
Most missions are worthless. Now, I say that with all due respect for the
gazillion hours, gallons of executive sweat and ungodly amounts of company money
poured into the exercise. Why? Because most missions are bloodless and end up in
a book somewhere, not in action with your associates and guests. If you can't
say your mission to someone else, without crib notes, then you have a lousy
mission statement. What should your Mission Statement be? A simple statement of
the world you envision as a result of your product or services use. The Guiding
Principles too should be equally direct and memorable. What are you about? What
makes you tick? What do you really care about? Take all the hallowed qualities
like "QUALITY" or "EXCEPTIONAL SERVICE" and rewrite them so they sound like you.
"QUALITY" can become, "I want to do it right, every time". "EXCEPTIONAL SERVICE"
may translate into, "You are my guest in my home and I intend to make it a
wonderful visit". It sickens me to see how much dry, passionless prose is
written under the twin banners of Mission and Guiding Principles. Please, make
it simple, heart felt and authentic.
Personal History
Personal history has particular meaning for your associates, because they want
to know what gets you out of bed in the morning. Not the tired homilies that you
read in annual reports, but the actual stories that made you the person you have
become and formed the behaviors that drive you. People want to follow a person
not a list of generalized personal qualities. When you ask if someone walks the
talk, it helps that the talk comes from a real past not a fake present.
Personal Guiding Principles:
This is an extension of the previous item, but helps associates, in particular
understand why you 'do what you do' and why you want them to model the same
behaviors. When you gather associates for a meeting, it makes a world of
difference for it to have one of your Guiding Principles as the meeting context.
As example, one of my Guiding Principles is WIN-WIN. I look to create that and
share that quality with every audience and client. Whatever the scenario, I want
start with and return to the point, "Is everybody winning here?" and if not,
what am I going to do about it?
So there you have it. Stories have multiple meanings and functions in defining
and fueling your brand. Don't skimp. Tell your story. All of them.
Author's Contact:
Richard K. Hendrie
Chief Experience Officer
Remarkable Branding, Inc
Contact:
rick@remarkablebranding.com or +1-617-335-1011
Go to www.remarkablebranding.com
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