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Great brands: Storytellers or story enhancers?

Elevator pitches, 30-second spots, viral videos, strategic PR, the brand called "you."  Today’s commonly accepted view is that great brands are great at telling us their interesting stories.  That’s a misguided view. In reality, we use our interaction with brands—their sceneries, props, set decorations, scripts, and actors—to construct our own stories, ones that we want to tell about ourselves. And since we define ourselves both according to what we identify with and what we reject, and given the abundance of marketplace choice, we now choose interactions which we feel will produce the best story possible. And we reject the others.

When you're being interesting, you're really doing it to enhance their stories, not yours? For example, as one particular story goes, each morning in the 1950s, noted advertising man David Ogilvy would stroll through New York City’s Central Park on his way to his office. One beautiful April morning, he witnessed a man begging beside a sign that read, “I am blind.”  By evidence of the man’s near empty cup, he was not doing very well. So, Ogilvy removed a marker from his briefcase and changed the sign to read, “It is spring and I am blind.” After that small change, the money poured in.

Now, our simplistic, cause-and-effect way of viewing that story is that Ogilvy changed the message, thus making it more persuasive.  In fact, what Ogilvy did was much more subtle and powerful. Ogilvy changed the prop: he made it different, desirable, real, and interesting. And, by doing so, he influenced the scene and enhanced the story creation of every passerby. By strategically adding those three simple words — “It is spring” — he brought life to the scene, encouraged empathy in the actors, and helped them create a story about themselves: a story that made them feel good about themselves and their actions.

That is what strategically building a strong brand is all about today. Sure it’s about being different and creating desire and preference. But it’s also about evoking compassion, passion and pride. It’s a philosophy that both bonds people to your brand and one that gets you, and your people, up in the morning!  As the American author and critic Mary McCarthy made clear, “We all live in suspense, from day to day, from hour to hour; in other words, we are the hero of our own story."  Whose story have you enhanced lately?

Posted May 5, 2009
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