A Brand Story

In a remote valley in Southern France, three explorers discovered a hidden treasure. It was a perfectly sealed cave and three explorers witnessed one of the mankind’s greatest discoveries: The oldest human-painted images crafting back to 32.000 years ago. The drawings had images of animals like rhinos, cave lions, bears and giant deer species. It is believed that the hunters living in that region painted these pictures and they tried to show their hunting observations and experiences.

Humans have an urge to tell stories to share their experiences. The same thing happened even 32.000 years ago with these oldest paintings.

So first thing to learn is that everything starts with a story…

You need to come up with a story for your product / service before kicking-off any marketing activity. The good thing is that a good story does not only help with marketing but it helps you with;

Company Culture – With your story, you underline the values of your company and start setting up the company culture.

Talent Acquisition – Once you set your story and establish a company culture, you start getting the interest from people to join your company. This way you start acquiring talents for your team. Remember that at the early stage of your company, talent acquisition will be one of your challenges so your marketing story will help you with this challenge as well.

Fundraising – When you start acquiring talent with an established company culture, you will see the improvement in the business results. When you have good business results, the investors will start approaching your company. During investor meetings, your marketing story will act as the opening element for your pitch.

As a summary, a marketing story does not only help with marketing but with other three aspects for your business as well.

However coming up with a story is not an easy challenge. As like the writer’s dilemma, you can easily get stuck in the creation of the story. No need to wait for the muse to come. I will recommend a good starting tool that you can easily apply.

Let’s revisit The Golden Circle from Week 1.

This approach, created by Simon Sinek, looks at ‘Why, How, What’. Simon Sinek says that people are inspired by a sense of purpose (or ‘Why’), and that this should come first when communicating, before ‘How’ and ‘What’. Sinek calls this triad the golden circle, a diagram of a bullseye with ‘Why’  in the innermost circle, surrounded by a ring labeled ‘How’ enclosed in a ring labeled ‘What’.  As a starting point, you can start discussing with your team why you are doing your product / service, the passion behind it. Then you can decide how you are doing it concluded by what you are doing.

Let’s take the example of Nike and analyze their Why-How-What

Why: to equip the very best athletes – and anyone striving to be- in the world.

How: By having the best athletes in the world use and endorse your products over and over. What: 99% of all wannabe sports enthusiasts think they’ll be ‘just like Kobe’ in the shoes

Take time with your team members (or by yourself if you are a solo entrepreneur) to give a though about your Why-How-What.

When you have it ready, you will have the basis of your marketing story. Marketing story will be the basis of your identity, branding and positioning as well.

As Seth Godin quotes ‘Marketing is no longer about the stuff you make, but about the stories you tell’ – So make a good story!