There are plenty of storytelling models out there that break down the elements of how to tell a good story. Before getting into the weeds of the hero’s journey, antagonists, twists, issues overcome, etc.—which is where too many people and good brand stories go astray—it might help to consider two simple vectors that frame the types of stories being told: Tell and Make stories.

In this post, we will focus on Tell stories and cover Make stories in the next post.

Tell Stories

Tell stories are historical in nature because they address things that happened along the company’s journey to the present. They come in a variety of forms, often starting with a company or brand origin story and growing from there. Because they deal with the past, Tell stories are typically editorialized to get those unseemly rough spots out of the narrative. And they can be revisionist in the sense that history is often rewritten by those who come later, scrubbed of things we might find offensive, and enhanced to make them more exciting.

Something to keep in mind with marketing writing is that it is not generally held to the same standards that journalism once was. So, many narratives can seem more like historical fiction than a biographical telling of the events as they happened. For the most part, this is fine.

Origin Stories

All companies and brands have an origin story, whether they choose to leverage it or not, which is why they are so common. A classic example is Hewlett Packard getting its start in a Palo Alto garage in 1939. Or maybe you’re an Apple fan and can recite the details of how Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak created a new way to think about the personal computer.

Have a Cup of Pequod

The Starbucks logo has gone through a number of evolutions since its origin in 1971 to match the growth and personality of the brand.

Origin stories can be short and to the point or longer, epic tales. Most brands opt for brevity. Consider Starbucks. The Starbucks origin story includes the brand almost being named Pequod, the whaling ship in Moby Dick, until clearer heads prevailed and the name of the first mate in the Moby Dick tale (Starbuck) won the day. Howard Schultz joined the brand about 11 years after it was founded and was inspired to bring a little bit of Italy’s classic coffeehouse warmth to Seattle. With this new position in place, Starbucks grew to become a household name and coffee aficionado must-have all around the world.

It’s a nice, clean, simple story. As it should be. If you want all the sordid details of the naming struggles and times before Schultz joined, his trips overseas to find the perfect experience, Schultz starting his own Il Giornale brand before merging the two companies together to form what became the model of today’s Starbucks, etc., find a biography, curl up with a nice cup of coffee and read away.

Shoes for Good

The TOMS name is derived from Blake Mycoskie’s concept of Shoes for Tomorrow. Shorten Tomorrow, add an S, and you get TOMS. Tomorrow’s Shoes.

The TOMS brand was founded in 2006 by Blake Mycoskie, pioneering, as the company website says, “the One for One® model—giving away one pair of shoes for every pair sold, supporting larger health, education, and community development programs through strategic partnerships.” The first shoes were based on the Argentinian Alpargata designs. Consumers caught wind of the concept, embraced the idea and the shoes, and the TOMS brand was off and running.

We could go on with dozens of brands such as Tesla, Purple, Dollar Shave Club, Airbnb, Warby Parker, Netflix, GoPro, Yeti, and many more.

The importance of origin stories is that they provide a cultural foundation for the brand. They help ground the company on what happened in the early days and remind people of the inspiration, determination, and hard work that helped get the company started—even if the company changes course over time and produces things far outside of their origin.

One additional thought to point out here is that origin stories are often updated over the life of the brand. Some details that might have seemed relevant or important in one generation can fall out of fashion for the next generation. When that happens, the story gets tweaked and everybody keeps moving.

Key EventS

Key events are important aspects of every brand narrative. As you might expect, they capture the key moments that happened in the life of the brand. They can be good, great, bad, or catastrophic. They are almost never the forgettable chatter that makes up the noise of everyday life.

For clarity, when key events happen in real-time they are “Make” stories instead of “Tell” stories. We’ll talk more about that in the next post. Sometimes brands celebrate their moments when they happen. Sometimes the moments take a little while to come together well enough to get the story right.

For Mondelez International, maker of the Oreo cookie brand, a key event came during the 2013 Super Bowl game being played in New Orleans. For those who don’t remember the details, the Mercedes Benz Superdome, where the game was hosted, experienced a 34-minute power outage. Like many brands, the Oreo team was already prepared for social media interactions with fans during the game. But what do you do when the power goes out?

Oreo used Twitter and Instagram to remind fans, “you can still dunk in the dark.” While everyone else screamed about the inconvenience of the blackout, Oreo found its groove and its voice. Social media loved the play. They gained 8,000 Twitter followers that night and another 34,000 Instagram followers, with somewhere near 16,000 photos posted from fans.

Obviously, this was a huge Make story in the moment. As the days and weeks passed, more details were added, statistics updated, and sources cited. It’s in the passing of time that it became a Tell story.

Brand Trivia

More often than not, there is a wide range of interesting bits of information that find life in the narrative arc because the stories that get told at parties slip out and become part of the lore. This is the trivia that not only makes for great games, but also keeps the brand story alive in the culture.

What Motivates You?

Nike’s logo and the story behind it are well-known in branding lore. The story behind the equally iconic tagline is less well known but just as interesting.

Sometimes it’s hard to know which version of the story is true. For example, the official version of how Nike’s iconic Just Do It tagline came to be has been shared by Dan Wieden who wrote the line and was a co-founder of Wieden and Kennedy, the agency behind the work. In a Creative Review article, Wieden says “In reviewing the work the night before the client presentation, I felt we needed a tagline to give some unity to the work, one that spoke to the hardest hardcore athletes as well as those talking up a morning walk.” The article goes on to say, “Wieden drew on a surprising source for inspiration. In Doug Pray’s 2009 documentary about advertising, Art & Copy, he confesses that the idea for the line was sparked by the last words of convicted murderer Gary Gilmore, who said “Let’s do it!” to the firing squad before his execution.”

It’s an amazing tale with a deep and inspiring source. But there are other versions of the story as well.

In a presentation in the mid-1990s, art director David Jenkins, who was the other half of the creative team working on that night before the client presentation shared the story from a different view. As he told the story, he and Wieden were frustrated by their inability to nail the last details of the campaign they’d be showing the next morning, including the tagline both agreed they needed. Well into the long night, they took a break, visited the bar next door for a drink, some food, and a chance to clear their minds, and got back to the work with Jenkins on the layouts and Wieden on the tagline. After a short while an irritated Wieden showed up with an idea. “What if we say something like ‘Just get off your a** and do it?’” he supposedly asked partly in frustration and partly in jest. Jenkins replied with something along the lines of, “I don’t think that will fly.” Wieden walked off grumbling under his breath that he agreed. A short while later Wieden returned with a piece of paper with three words written on it. He held it up and asked, “What if it’s ‘Just Do It’?” Jenkins said they both smiled and knew they had something good. How good was to be determined later.

Which version do you believe? Does it matter? One version gets cleaned up and goes into the history books, creative journals, and company websites. The other gets shared amongst friends. That’s what happens with Tell stories. They get told to others, the edges get polished, and the versions that seem to be best received go into the archives for future generations.

Connecting WITH the Past

Something that gets overlooked in brand storytelling is the ability to use Tell stories to connect the dots in the brand’s past, make sense of some random events, and rationalize or explain away behaviors.

More Than Just Bubble Wrap

Sealed Air Corporation gets its name from the company’s original product: Bubble Wrap. The name is a literal interpretation of air sealed in plastic. The company is now a global leader in packaging and food protection.

While working with Sealed Air Corporation in the mid-2000s for a major corporate rebrand and turnaround, the newly appointed CEO was challenged with finding the language to help Wall Street understand why a traditional packaging company with a division focused on food protection would purchase a large industrial cleaning chemical company. The acquisition had been made by the previous CEO, doubled the size of the company and the debt, and investors were hammering the company because of it. Our team dug into the archives and found a line from Sealed Air’s 1973 Annual Report (well before the acquisition in question) that said, “selection of packaging products which are more efficient are a positive step toward meeting all three sides of a crucial triangle: Energy, Environment, and Economy.” Three sides of a crucial triangle matched the three companies and the direction the new CEO was trying to go and gave us a hook we could use to tie the story together. It had been there all along but nobody knew it was there.

It became a classic Tell story and was very effective in helping investors see that though the company had lost its way for a while, it was back on course and on a trajectory to change the game. The company made significant changes, investors bought in, and the stock price tripled in value in just over 15 months.

Connecting with the present

As we’ve discussed, Tell stories are great for covering the start of the company, significant events, capturing bits of trivia and insider information, and helping rationalize things that happened in the past and are only now coming into clarity. Most companies are bad at capturing the events as they happen, which is why Tell stories are often written and revised by the people who come afterward. It’s a natural flow. The important part is to capture the stories. Keep them alive. They are critical to each brand and company and should be woven into the fabric of the culture.

In our next post, we will break down Make stories and why it’s so important to make something of the catalyst moments as they happen.

What about you? Have any great Tell stories to share?

If you would like some help in telling your brand stories, let’s talk.