Use “Tell” Stories to Capture Your Brand’s History

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.

Made for Dunking

According to Mondelez International, factories in 18 countries around the world produce 40 billion Oreo cookies every year. That’s enough to circle the earth five times.

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.

Understanding the Narrative Chain for Brand Storytelling

If you’ve been watching the Bud Light conversation in recent weeks you’ve gotten a master’s class example of how brand storytelling isn’t always under the control of the brand. At least in the ways people like to believe it is. Social media has only accelerated the public’s ability to derail the grand schemes of brand managers all over the world.

There are lots of ways to talk about storytelling and the principles of what makes a good story: protagonist, antagonist, hero, tragedy or issue to overcome, twist, outcome, etc. Those are all extremely valuable and it’s good to understand what it takes to create an epic story. But far too many brand storytelling models put the brand squarely at the helm. As we’ve seen lately, it’s not that simple.

Brand storytelling doesn’t follow a linear path. It never has. A linear model doesn’t allow for the chaos that comes with dealing with real, living, breathing humans and constantly changing markets. It certainly doesn’t take social media into consideration.

The Brand Narrative Arc Isn’t Linear

Brand storytelling doesn’t follow a linear model. Because all of the variables are not controlled by the brand.

If you’re not careful, you could fall into the trap with some narrative arc models that, though they account for some issues with the brand, often do so with the issues in the rearview. As if the challenges the brand has faced in the past will somehow predict what the brand will face in the future.

Instead, look at brand storytelling as a narrative chain made up of many stories in “S” curves.

The Opening Stage

At the beginning of every brand story, the brand is in complete control. This is the story the brand intends to bring to the market and use to attract audiences. It’s the new baby ready to be presented to the world.

The Narrative Phase Begins

At the beginning of every brand narrative, the brand is in complete control. This is the story the brand intends to bring to the market to attract audiences.

The Swell Stage

Next, the brand enters into the Swell stage or stages. Sometimes these are guided by the brand. Think of Dove’s Real Beauty campaign. The brand chose to go against the tropes of the beauty category and celebrate real women in all shapes, sizes, colors, and personalities. The campaign was embraced by consumers, the press, investors, and has allowed Dove to enjoy a steady wave of positive press and sales.

The Swell

During the Swell, the narrative builds whether by design or reaction.

What Bud Light is experiencing is the other side of the Swell, when the brand loses control of the narrative by contrasting forces. This isn’t unique to AB InBev.

For those old enough to remember, and for those who want to know the story, J&J and Tylenol went through a horrendously negative Swell event in the 1980s.

A brief recap of the events: In 1982 Chicago, people started dying of cyanide poisoning. Random people with no connection with each other. Except that officials quickly discovered someone was lacing Tylenol with cyanide. It induced panic in the community to the degree that police and rescue vehicles were driving through neighborhoods announcing to people to get rid of their Tylenol. 

In all, seven people died. J&J had a crisis on their hands and decided to just pull all Tylenol products from shelves. ALL of it, since they didn’t want anyone else to die, and no one could be sure what products were affected.

That someone would put poison in a consumer product was well beyond anything J&J could have predicted. It was out of the brand’s control. What came next was where the brilliance happened.

J&J went to work and took control of a shocking event and a little while later reintroduced the world to Tylenol. But to make sure people knew this edition of Tylenol was significantly better and safer, they launched new innovations including sealed boxes, tamper-proof bottles with a shrink-wrapped outer barrier, and a foil seal glued to the top of the bottle. All of these are commonplace today but were huge innovations at the time. They were great examples of a brand guiding the story through the downside of a Swell event.

J&J’s response ended the Swell stage for this event. It didn’t end the overarching narrative, and that’s the important part of how to think of the narrative chain. Brands don’t have control over everything that happens in the Swell, but they do have a responsibility to manage it. J&J chose to pull all products and rethink their approach. Yes, it took a while, but they also took control of the situation.

Some stories, like Dove’s Real Beauty, catch the right cultural wave and enjoy a long, healthy, positive ride. Their Swell has been stretched for years, with most of those years under the control of the brand.

For other brands, the misery is self-inflicted which makes it harder to overcome. Examples include Volkswagen’s rigged emissions testing scandal and Samsung’s exploding Galaxy 7 batteries, but there are dozens of others we could talk about.

At some point the story changes. When that happens, we conclude that narrative story phase and start a new one.

Closing the Swell

The Swell stage may go quickly or last for years. When the story changes, that marks the conclusion of that narrative phase.

Writing the Next Chapter

Thankfully, every brand gets chances to start a new story. Depending on the circumstances, it may start off with “we screwed up, we apologize, and we’ve changed.” In the case of Tylenol, J&J effectively said, “we didn’t start this and could have never seen it coming, but we are changing to try to ensure this can never happen again.”

If the brand fails badly enough, the narrative may shift to the new owners who see the value in the brand and have a chance to tell audiences “the previous owners stumbled and we’re fixing those issues.”

The True NarraTive Chain

The total brand narrative isn’t one, long, continuous story. It is made up of dozens and sometimes hundreds of stories.

Linking the stories

Over time, brands link a wide range of stories, some very positive and others not so much. It’s the natural result of ongoing brand building. And it’s a reminder of why shepherding brands is so important at the executive level. It doesn’t take much these days to turn your once-loyal audiences against you and find yourself rebuilding your brand. In the end you worry about what you can control and adjust to things you can’t.

If you would like help building your brand story, let’s talk.

Brand Storytelling: The art of conversation

They say great conversationalists are first really great listeners.

The communications master Dale Carnegie put it this way: “If you aspire to be a good conversationalist, be an attentive listener. To be interesting, be interested. Ask questions that other persons will enjoy answering. Encourage them to talk about themselves and their accomplishments. Remember that the people you are talking to are a hundred times more interested in themselves and their wants and problems than they are in you and your problems.”

Keep in mind that Mr. Carnegie wrote these words in the mid-1930s. This is not new material. The not-so-subtle jab at the general populace is this: we love to talk about ourselves. We love to talk about what we’ve done, who we’ve seen, the hurdles we’ve crossed and triumphs we’ve realized. If we’re not careful, we can talk about how amazing we are and leave our guest completely out of the discussion.

Brands do this all the time. Agencies do this all the time. All this chest thumping and self promoting leaves consumers and customers on the outside looking in … if they even stay around long enough to keep looking.

So how can brands master the art of conversation in their storytelling?

Stop talking about you

As a young copywriter I was taught to talk about the benefits of each product feature because the benefit is what the consumer/customer is actually looking for. It’s the solution provided by the feature.

But many companies want to talk about their accomplishments, size, scale, equipment … features. This is a TELL approach, as in, “let me tell you about me.” It almost makes sense. After months and years of product and brand development, people want to get credit for their hard work. The problem is that no one wants to listen to you talk about you.

Start listening to them

I have a friend named Karen who is amazing at this. Karen is the kind of person who circles a room meeting people and comes back within a few minutes knowing personal details on every single person. People open up to her and share their inner thoughts, goals, and challenges as if she’s the therapist they never knew they needed. It’s magical to see in person.

So what’s her secret? Karen asks great questions and doesn’t interject her own stories while other people are talking. People open up to her because she is genuinely interested in them. If the other person doesn’t ask about Karen, she’s fine to leave those details out.

Obviously brands can’t work a room in their daily communication. But they can spend a lot more time listening to the wants and needs of their customers. Those wants and needs often show up as frustrations.

In an earlier post I talked about Command™ Brand hanging solutions. The brand had tried for years to talk about the superiority of their technology over other options but consumers didn’t care. It was the better mousetrap no one wanted. But in research consumers talked about their frustrations with punching holes in walls and having to repair them, about not being able to move things around, about wanting to hang some things for the holidays and take them down later without making it a big deal. Those frustrations opened up new opportunities for the brand. By repositioning the brand as “Damage-Free Hanging Solutions” that can let you change the position of your hanging as quickly and easily as you change your mind, the Command™ Brand found audiences who couldn’t live without the brand.

Be nice. Be real.

You might think that being nice should be a given in brand storytelling, but it’s not. Brands should choose their tone of voice and brand personality with purpose, teach the fundamentals to everyone who interacts with customers, and reinforce the principles on a regular basis.

When helping organizations launch or rebrand, we spend a healthy amount of time on brand personality and how that will come to life in the marketplace. That may include call center scripts, ad copy guidelines, online content guidelines, etc. Everyone on the brand team must be clear how the brand communicates and what tone of voice is supported. Wendy’s might be able to get away with snarky tweets, but your brand might not. And you should know before you damage the brand.

Let them be the hero

Dale Carnegie said people “are a hundred times more interested in themselves and their wants and problems than they are in you and your problems.” Essentially, we’re all fascinated by ourselves. Think you’re different? Find a group photo you’re in and see who you look for first. Yup. You look for you first. We all do. Then we look at our friends and enemies (hoping they look horrible in the shot), and filter out everyone else as visual noise.

In the brand storytelling world, we must let the customer be the hero. The brand’s position is to help solve their issues and take their pain away. That means helping them be better cooks, better at lawn management, better at home repair, cleaning, office work, workouts, weight management, and many more.

Brands exist to help make the world a better place. They do that by enabling and empowering their customers to take on new challenges and be amazing in their efforts. That means the customer is the hero.

No, really, it’s all about them

We’re only focusing on four steps to brand conversations here because it shouldn’t be that complicated:

1. Stop talking about you

2. Start listening to them

3. Be nice. Be real.

4. Let them be the hero

There are times when brands need to cover details about themselves, but more often than not, the focus should be on the customers and how the brand can help solve their challenges.

If you’re in the market for storytelling help, let’s chat to see how we can support you.

Brand Storytelling: When in doubt, be Q

One of the most common mistakes in brand storytelling is making the brand the hero. It’s an easy mistake to make. Companies work hard on their brands and products, dig to understand what differentiates the brand from its competitors, how it connects with target consumers, etc. After all that work, one naturally wants the brand to get all the credit.

But that would be a mistake.

No, most consumers/customers don’t think of themselves as James Bond. They see themselves living life and facing a wide range of challenges that get in the way of their ultimate goals. When I say wide range, I mean it stretches from cleaning floors and bathrooms, to shaving and grooming, to financial products, to medical devices. People aren’t looking for a brand or product to come in and take over. They are looking for help solving their challenges so they can go on with their lives. This means that the brand needs to act less like James Bond and more like his problem-solving counterpart, Q.

Let’s look at a couple examples:

1.    Cleaning products: Many consumers know Mr. Clean for his handsome good looks, confident smile, and cleaning strength. It would be easy to position Mr. Clean as the guy who comes to the rescue and does all the hard work, but that’s not how consumers see it. When it comes to removing rings around the bathtub, it isn’t Mr. Clean who rolls up his sleeves and scrubs away. That’s mom’s (and dad’s) job. Mr. Clean has permission to be the guy who helps make her job easier by giving her the best solution to cut through grime. He is Q to her James Bond.

2.    Hanging solutions: 3M’s Command brand is an incredibly convenient way to hang just about anything around the house. The adhesive strips apply easily and remove just as quickly once you’re done. This is a classic Q solution. The frustration consumers faced before Command strips showed up was having to punch a hole in the wall to hang something, which required tools, the willingness to damage a wall, and the need to patch a hole if you missed the first time or changed your mind. James Bond in this case was trying to make her space more functional and beautiful but was frustrated by the hole in the wall problem. Then came Q with “damage-free hanging solutions”. Now Bond could change the location of a hanging as quickly and easily as changing her mind.

The model holds true across endless categories. In banking, the financial products offered are tools that enable consumers to succeed. In the kitchen the disposer is the magical device that enables homeowners to clean up in a hurry. In surgical devices, the devices are specialized tools that enable surgeons to perform amazing feats in the operating room. In heavy industry, the valve actuators enable the engineers to route their chemicals to create products that will solve industrial-sized issues.

One CEO of a large multi-national company we worked with liked to say that everything his company did was to help their customers win. He understood that even though his company made some incredible products, the reason his customers bought those products from him was because his entire company functioned as Q. Their job was to deliver amazing solutions that enabled their customers to be the heros.

That’s exactly the right way to think about your brand.

James Bond is always on the run, always getting himself into unexpected situations in his quest to save the planet from the evil of the hour. He desperately needs someone looking out for him and creating solutions Bond doesn’t even know he needs yet. When brands get their position and story right, consumers and customers embrace the brand as part of the family. When the brand tries to be the hero, they compete with the consumer and are more likely than not to suffer a painful demise or, worse, languish in the world of the irrelevant.

When in doubt, be Q.