CHAPTER 4

The Brand Narrative Manifesto

It will be no longer enough to produce a useful product. A story or legend must be built into it, a story that embodies values beyond utility. What is happening now is that the story that shapes our feelings about a product has become an enormous part of what we buy when we buy a product.

—Rolf Jenson, The Futurist

Let us now go deeper and really explore and think about why people buy things and the specific stories that play a role in the decisions that consumers are constantly making. Why do we choose to buy what we buy? What really drives those decisions and what role does narrative play in such decisions?

Let me try to answer some of those questions now. First of all, most people blame marketing for something it isn’t responsible for at all. They say things like “Our marketing isn’t bringing in any sales.” Well, marketing isn’t charged with bringing in sales. The sales function is responsible for making sales. The purpose of marketing is to support sales by, first and foremost, communicating differentiation and compelling storytelling, building brand presence, and creating opportunities for the sales function to close deals.

There is an age-old formula for this called AICP. Every person goes through this process when making a purchase.

Awareness.

Interest.

Consideration.

Purchase.

Differentiation is vital. I often do this simple test with new clients: I’ll take their ad, brochure, or any literature, and place their competitor’s logo over theirs. Then, if the claims on the literature also apply and are valid for the competition, it’s clear that they are not sufficiently differentiated. And if a company is not sufficiently differentiated, a potential sales prospect really has nothing of value to use when they are making a purchasing choice.

A brand narrative manifesto

If you ask people why they chose a certain product, service, candidate, or team, they might try to give you a sensible, logical rationale.

“It was cheaper.”

“It looked better.”

“She has the right qualifications to lead this city.”

“They’ve got a top-notch coach.”

But the real reasons people make those kinds of choices go beyond these answers. For many of the products and services consumers buy, as well as for many of the things they buy into, other more subtle rationales are at work.

The days of differentiating a product or brand by function and/or price are over. You can’t merely say, “We’re different because we’re a little cheaper,” or “We’re better because we look at our special organic molecules.” That kind of copy just doesn’t cut it with the consumer who has seen it all and heard it all.

Take an old friend of mine who was a farmer in the Deep South. He is an inveterate Coca-Cola drinker and wouldn’t drink Pepsi even if it was half the price of Coke. When I asked him about this preference, he told me, “Pepsi’ll give you stomach problems. I know people who’ve gotten stomach cancer from drinking it.”

I then offered him a Mountain Dew. And he said, “No, sir. You can’t trick me. That’s a Pepsi product and I won’t touch it.”

So what exactly is going on here? I have to admit, I was a bit confused by this at first. But then I looked at his history. He’s a Georgia native who grew up 80 miles from Atlanta, home of Coca-Cola. He was raised in an environment where nobody drank Pepsi. All of his fondest childhood memories have a bottle or can of Coke in them. All of his family reunions feature only one kind of soft drink; take a guess at what it might be. You got it: Coke!

If you think about it, people buy things for emotional benefits, for security, to express themselves, to feel good, to show how unique they are, to feel connected with others, and for many other essentially subconscious reasons. But all these add up to one real reason: People buy things to give their life greater meaning.

Many intangible factors—such as memories, the rumored or real behavior of the company that produces the product, the fact-based or erroneous opinions of others, even the consumer’s true or false conceptions about the product—all end up having a huge impact on what that person purchases and on brand loyalty.

Remember all the ruckus about Nike hiring children in foreign lands to make their sneakers? Even though it’s been years since Nike rectified this, I know people who, today, still won’t buy any Nike products.

Emotional differentiation

A brand with a price advantage can simply be undercut. A brand with a performance advantage can be outflanked by technological development. But a brand with an emotional difference can potentially command a premium forever.

—Don Cowley, Understanding Brands

In a media-saturated world where the average consumer is bombarded with thousands of messages a day, how do you create an authentic emotional response, especially when consumers are so jaded, busy, and overwhelmed?

Think of it this way: If products are things without emotions, then the brand is the emotional beating heart of the product. It is only through stories, through brand narratives, that it is possible to create an emotional relationship between people and brands, thereby connecting them. This is what I like to call “emotional differentiation.”

In other words, people buy things because of the emotional meaning or advantage that thing provides them. Tell a good story about your brand that provides a compelling emotional feeling and guess what they will do when they have to choose between products in the supermarket aisle.

In essence, an engaging brand narrative will circumvent our defenses and slip through to reach the deepest parts of ourselves. So, if you can create well-executed, on-target brand narratives, you will have tremendous power. You can foster word of mouth, brand loyalty, and maybe even brand advocacy.

Please note: Emotional differentiation is significant in any brand narrative, but it tends to be more prevalent with brands that are in well-known and crowded markets. In other words, if you are introducing the first MP3 player on the market, then you need to tell a knowledge-based story that gives the consumer tremendous information about the functions (and benefits) of the product.

However, if you are introducing a new MP3 player 10 years after they have saturated the market, you need not tell people about the functions of an MP3 player. In that case, you need only to emotionally differentiate how your new MP3 player stands apart from all the others out there. Consumers already know what MP3 players do. Now, they only need to know how yours is different.

Here’s another example. If you are introducing the first cola in the marketplace, you need to let people know about the taste and qualities of a cola-flavored soft drink. However, if, as is the case today, people already know everything they need to know about what a cola is, you need only to differentiate this product emotionally.

Think about it. What is Coke advertising today? The brand’s ads don’t deal with Coke’s flavor or its price point; instead, they seem to focus on happiness. And Pepsi is also not talking about price or taste, but instead seems focused on the energy of youth. So I think it’s fair to argue that Coke is attempting to own the emotion of happiness while Pepsi is attempting to own the youth-oriented emotions.

And now, one more story

I have a friend whose wife loves jewelry. She really loves jewelry. And, fortunately for him, it’s not the gold and diamond kind but the silver and semi-precious gem kind, which is less expensive.

A few years ago, he discovered a wholesale, discount semi-precious gem and silver jewelry store in Manhattan that carries the exact kind of pieces she loves. So he knew what to do every time her birthday or their anniversary came around.

Of all the gifts he’d gotten her there, her all-time favorite was a silver link chain bracelet set with at least 20 large, raw ruby-red gemstones. Every time she wore it, she got a big kick out of seeing all the deep, dark scarlet stones sparkle on her wrist.

All was good in their world until she came home from work one day only to discover that one of the gemstones had fallen out of its setting. Gone! Vanished! Lost forever!

Because her husband had purchased it for her, he was enlisted to hand-deliver it back to the jeweler and get it fit with a new matching stone. He did as instructed upon his next trip to the Big Apple.

Time passed. Life went on, and in the daily fray, they forgot about the bracelet. Then, a week before he had a meeting scheduled in Manhattan, he turned to her and said, “You know, I’ve got a meeting in the city. If you want me to pick up your ruby bracelet, I can.”

She instantly responded, “Yes, definitely. If you don’t mind.”

He called the jeweler and told him, “I’ll be in the city in a few days, and my wife wants me to pick up her favorite bracelet.”

After a brief silence, the jeweler said, “Sir, I think I returned that to you.”

“Oh no, my wife said you still have it.”

There was a long pause. Finally, the jeweler answered, “Well, um, I could be wrong. Let me look. Maybe my repair guy still has it.”

This was not good. My friend did not have a receipt, and he could tell the jeweler had no idea where the bracelet was. He pushed the jeweler further by asking, “Well, I’m only going to be in the city for one day, and my wife is dying to get the bracelet back. So, if I take a cab over there, will you definitely have it ready for me?”

“Yes, of course, sir,” the jeweler said. “Don’t worry about it. I promise it will be here when you come by.”

The following week my friend dropped by the jewelry store. When he walked in, the jeweler smiled and handed him the bracelet. My friend flew home that night and gave it to his wife.

She was thrilled. She couldn’t even tell which ruby was the one he had replaced. Before she went to sleep that night, she wanted to store it somewhere safe, so she went to put it in her jewelry box only to find that her repaired ruby bracelet was already there, hidden under another bracelet in the back of the box!

Yes, a few months earlier, their jeweler had indeed sent it back to her. My friend’s wife had received it, and in order to ensure it was safe, she had immediately put it in her jewelry box and forgotten all about it.

My friend and his wife both felt pretty stupid. He immediately called the jeweler and apologized profusely. The next morning, my friend FedExed the duplicate bracelet back to the jeweler.

The jeweler admitted he knew from the moment my friend had called him that he had already fixed and returned the bracelet. But when my friend insisted he hadn’t, the jeweler had made a new one for him without charging him, just to make sure he didn’t lose a good customer.

My friend was blown away by this level of customer service, and from that moment on, he was a customer for life. And you better believe that when he talks about shopping in New York City, he always tells this story about the little shop with its amazing customer service!

And if you don’t believe this story, just go to AF Jewelry on Broadway and 29th Street in New York City and ask for Wahid!

Activating passion on a mass scale

This tale of the ruby-red bracelet is a good example of how stories work, of how, in a consumer service industry, you can create faithful ambassadors for your brand. Engage people with extraordinary customer service, get them to start telling the world stories about your fantastic customer care, and just sit back and watch as customers convert to fans.

And, if you keep it up, within a few years you should have a cadre of loyal, passionate “sneezers” (my favorite term for brand ambassadors), who broadcast your brand’s virtue to the world.

But what’s really going on here under the surface? How do you explain and define my friend’s conversion from customer to crusader? I would argue that the answer is this: Passion emanates from a positive interaction. The memorable emotive experience gives birth to the faithful ambassador who enthusiastically spreads the story about your brand to the world. A positive experience is transformed by a person into a positive story and, once told, that story spreads like wildfire in the form of good word of mouth. Think of it as the word of mouth form of viral videos. And no advertising dollars were spent in the process. Yep, it’s every store-owner’s dream.

And, in these days of diminishing product differentiation and of customers with little time and desire to sift through mountains of information to select the best product, this emotional bond can separate one brand from another and build long-term loyalty.

In essence, sometimes consumers buy your product not because of what you do, but because of why and how you do it. In other words, they buy because of your story.

How does all this translate to both large and small companies? It’s essentially the same thing. In order to create a cult-like passion for their company and their products on a national level, every company, big or small, must create a brand narrative. And this company story should include product stories that share the same essential core message and theme.

How brand narratives work

Powerful, persuasive narratives are transformational. They are emotionally compelling. They are road maps for human growth and change. We are moved by the metamorphosis of the character in the narrative. As a result, we vicariously grow, learn, and change along with them.

This is what stories do. This is why we are drawn to them. This is why we remember them. Stories structure information into a coherent whole. In this era of PowerPoint, it is still stories that stay with us. It is their underlying values and our emotive response to those values that we, as consumers, retain. We remember a film that made us cry or a TV show that made us laugh. For example, as a teenager, I spent many a night watching reruns of The Honeymooners with my father and the two us laughing at Art Carney and Jackie Gleason. We shared our love for that show and those characters and, in doing so, it brought us closer together.

Stories work because in listening to or watching a well-told story, we are not outsiders. We are drawn in. In a brilliant play, we cross the threshold of the stage and become the hero. In a great novel, we dive into the text and become the protagonist. In an excellent film, we jump through the screen and disappear into the scene. In a good ad, we are transported from our reality into the brand’s reality.

Narratives have a vicarious power. This has been demonstrated in a series of recent neurocognitive studies about the nature of brain chemistry. The research shows that in terms of chemical reactions in the brain, there’s no difference between riding a roller coaster that goes out of control and watching a movie about someone who rides a roller coaster that goes out of control. In both situations, the same chemical response occurs in the amygdala in the temporal cortex. The brain doesn’t have the ability to differentiate between virtual and actual.

Mirror neurons and you

This concept is further reinforced by the idea of “mirror neurons,” which was first postulated by Dr. Giacomo Rizzolatti. Mirror neurons allow us to mentally mirror, or duplicate, the actions of others. This concept becomes even clearer when we think about how children learn. They watch, hear, and mimic. They are able to do this because of the mirror neurons in the brain that fire based upon certain exterior cues.

What does this mean in terms of storytelling? Well, if you think about it, reading about or hearing a story or watching it on screen can activate the mirror neurons. When this happens, we will have an empathetic response, and if what we are hearing or watching is compelling, we will feel a bond or connection with the story and the elements within the story.

Go to a movie theater and, instead of watching the movie itself, watch the audience watch the movie. If you do, you will see mirror neurons in action. Movies have been constructed to take advantage of this human dependency on mirror neurons. We respond physically to images on screen as if they are real. As a species, we evolved this way to help us survive. It is tied into the evolutionary benefit of compassion. If we feel for others, we will help them and, as a result, we will continue the species. (Obviously, we also do things to hinder the species, but that is a longer conversation.)

As a social species, mirroring probably aided survival in a few different ways. First, it helped develop coordinated action among groups. Like a child that mimics a parent, an apprentice can mimic his master and learn a craft. Wouldn’t a species benefit from learning from other successful members of that species? If the brain is constructed with a neural pathway that allows for easy imitation, doesn’t this aid in learning?

So, you are sitting in a movie theater watching people watching the film on screen. What do they do? Well, when characters cry on screen, what happens in the theater? And what about laughter? During an action scene, do people tense up or relax? There is even an imitating of facial expressions that occurs.

In Jeffrey Zacks’s excellent book on mirroring and the movies, Flicker: Your Brain on Movies, he cites an interesting study: “In one study conducted at the University of Indiana in the 1960s, researchers asked people to listen to jokes either alone or in groups. The group audiences laughed more. Interestingly, they didn’t rate the jokes as any funnier; perhaps they laughed more not because they thought the jokes were any funnier, but as a direct result of seeing or hearing their fellow audience members yukking it up.”

This explains things like laugh tracks and why funny movies seem funnier in a theater filled with laughing people versus an empty theater. If your video is working well with audiences, it will trigger their mirror neurons and you will be making a real connection with your desired audience, one that will stay with them for longer than the 20 or 30 seconds the spot takes to run. In the workshops that I provide, the executives I work with have a chance to see this in action. They write stories and test them on each other, measuring and re-adjusting their stories so as to gauge what resonates, as well as what is retained and what isn’t.

In other words, new systems of meaning can be created through emotional brand narratives. Thankfully, one of the most opportune repercussions of our new media-saturated society is that there are tons of opportunities for storytellers, and even consumers themselves, to create new stories that can be shared across the total brand communication platform. With an understanding of mirror neurons, of the human tendency toward empathy and sociability, we should be able to see the rise of new “tribal” formations.

A vicarious leap to a new emotional era

These days, in many product categories, there isn’t a vast difference between products. Most skin care creams do essentially the same thing. Is one box of laundry detergent really that much different than another?

Product differentiation is hard to achieve, let alone sustain. As a result, marketing has been forced to move beyond functional differentiation to an era of emotional differentiation. Marketers must touch the emotions of consumers; they must find a new place in the consumers’ hearts.

In this era of emotions, values-based differentiation makes story central, because this is exactly what narratives can do and have done for millennia. Basically, brand narratives work by activating emotions and communicating values.

Instead of hitting us on the head with a message, stories convey information by teaching and entertaining. They work best when they are edu-tainment!

If a national brand can’t interact directly with consumers as a result of their size, the brand can at least interact vicariously with consumers via stories, via brand narratives created for traditional and nontraditional media outlets. Any company creating a brand or further developing an established brand can determine the values with which they want to be aligned.

Companies can communicate those specific values through carefully constructed, highly engaging brand narratives and then deliver them to consumers via a variety of forms of media.

In the same way that my friend’s jeweler created a deep emotional bond with my friend through extraordinary customer service, a brand has the opportunity to build an emotional bond with millions of consumers through its extraordinary brand narratives. This, then, is my clarion call for compelling, engaging brand narratives.

From preference to passion

When you learn how to tell moving, personal brand stories and to tell them so well that you consistently evoke the desired emotive response, you can achieve the same thing as the New York City jeweler did when he turned my friend into a customer for life. And you can do it on a mass scale.

You can create passionate customers who, when they see your brand, will remember a story they saw that your brand told on the Internet, in print, or on TV. Then, they might also remember a personal story dealing with how they interacted with your brand. For instance, do you remember your favorite brand of candy or ice cream as a kid?

Let’s say your brand is Breyers Ice Cream Company. Your loyal customers might remember being a child and having their mothers serve them a bowl of your ice cream to help them feel better, thus aligning your brand with a positive, nurturing emotive memory. As a result, the consumers’ own stories become intertwined with the Breyers’ brand narratives, and you move from being an impersonal corporate brand to a close, personal ally.

So think deeply about the brand narratives that already exist with consumers as well as the brand narratives that are being created every day. Much can be learned from both, and both also have tremendous potential power.

Because storytelling can be taught, we can and should try to master the rules and tools that will allow us to make compelling narratives. We can then use those rules and tools to create emotionally engaging stories. And then we can broadcast those narratives to consumers via traditional and new media to provide them with the emotive experiences that lead to brand passion.

Through the power of stories, we can make the leap from preference to passion—and maybe even to love.

Now, let’s talk to Katja Bressette, consumer researcher, psychologist, and consultant about her take on brand narratives:

RK: What role do you see storytelling playing in branding and marketing today?

KB: It is essential. A brand or a product needs to tell a compelling, engaging story in order to be heard, to resonate, to have an impact. It is so important because storytelling is a powerful way humans make sense of the world, convey information, learn, and connect with others (this includes people and brands).

RK: How do you create, cultivate, and sustain life long relationships with customers via digital narratives across all forms of media?

KB: Life long is ambitious in this day and age! First, you have to deeply understand your customers and understand the frames that impact what they hear and how they act. These frames could be archetypes; they could be the Deep Metaphors Jerry Zaltman has made so prominent; they could be another framework based in psychology, behavioral sciences, etc. Using this as a foundation, you can create narratives in and for various formats and media that activate and tap into these guiding frames. And you have to account for change—in the marketplace, in consumers’ minds, brands. Nothing is forever, not even the deepest framework and certainly not the different kinds of media and devices.

RK: It is said that it is not just about storytelling anymore, but about timeless, ever-evolving brand narratives that you must create and control. Do you agree and, if so, can you comment?

KB: Of course. Brand narratives must evolve and change (and they do, whether marketers want to or not); the market, consumers, brands, products evolve. External factors impact all four, such as an economic downturn (which can have a huge impact on consumer narratives), political changes, world events, new technologies or brands (for example, think what Tesla is doing to the automotive industry and their narratives), cohort changes/development (Boomers are still very much running the show, but for how much longer?), etc.

Can you ever completely control all aspects of these narratives? I do not think so. However, marketer-created frames/stories/meaning blend with those of consumers and, together, you co-create the narrative as it exists in consumers’ minds. For that reason, you cannot control, but you can understand consumers’ frames and the resulting co-creation with your story, and out of that develop and create ongoing, compelling narratives. You can even include consumers in that process and, in doing so, further the agenda of your own narratives.

RK: Marketing used to be about creating a myth and selling it; now it is about finding a truth and sharing it. We are moving from storytelling to brand narratives. So what exactly are brand narratives?

KB: For me, brand narratives represent a move away from the “broadcasting” model of marketing (a brand/product sends out a story/myth/meaning and expects consumers to be passive receivers who can just be injected with that story) to a digital/interactive model of constant co-creation. Brand narratives are a two-way street and the narrative includes both consumer and brand stories/meaning/myths.

Experiences are very important in brand narratives. Narratives are the result of not just communication efforts but, perhaps even more so, experiences with a brand or product. Therefore, inspiring consumers to have experiences with a brand or product or utilizing experiences they are already having is very powerful. Kleenex Canada’s Share the Care is a beautiful example.

RK: Do you have a specific process in which you craft brand narratives that you would be willing to share with readers?

KB: I mainly utilize online mobile ethnography, mixed with other proven tools to uncover consumers’ stories, frames, meaning, and behavior patterns. For example, I might include a psychological assessment to uncover consumers’ core personality and characteristics, projective exercises to uncover brand and consumer archetypes, and, of course, mobile ethnography. The videos and images created by consumers give an incredibly powerful and compelling view into their minds and, with that, the stories and myths around a brand/product/experience. And they provide a springboard from which to probe more deeply into their experiences, emotions, beliefs, and specific stories. Out of this, I create the consumer story, which includes guiding frames (for example, archetypes or simple models), behavior patterns, guiding emotions, consumer personality, etc. In the implications section, I make suggestions for resonating brand narratives and brand experiences. Experiences, after all, lead to stories: stories in our minds and stories we tell others. And if the experiences and stories are positive, they can indeed lead to lifelong loyalty. Think about your favorite brands or products. I am sure there is a great story behind your love for/connection to them.

—Katja E. Bressette, MBA, MSW, founder/owner of Beacon Insight Group