It seems to have become popular to talk about brand in terms of a story.
Let’s be as clear as possible with this, a brand is not a story – if it was then it’s created using William Burroughs ‘Cut Up Method’.
What have you got against stories?
Nothing, it is just that they don’t fit with how we need to consider brand. A story is linear and singular. There is a beginning, middle, and end, which every reader will experience in the same order. But is that really how we remember stories?
Think of your favourite story. Do you remember it word for word? Or do you actually remember the key moments in the story?
A story isn’t memorable in its entirety, but in a series of moments which create the key points of the narrative. So a great story is actually one which has a series of memorable moments which when experienced in series create a narrative.
Great – so why shouldn’t we consider brand as story?
Why a story is a poor example to use is that as brand leaders we have little control over the order in which people experience these memorable moments. There is no singular or linear thread to how people experience the memorable moments which shape the brand. People will experience these moments in different orders and at different times.
So what do we mean by memorable moments?
A memorable moment might be seeing a logo, viewing a website, dealing with a member of staff, seeing an advert, hearing a piece of audio, talking to a friend, seeing a tweet, being in a shop, seeing the price of a product, etc etc etc. These are all moments we might experience which relate to the brand, some of which we will remember if they have been designed well to appeal to us as a target audience.
The two key points from this are:
• there is no linear and singular order in which people will experience these memorable moments
• there must be an overarching strategy from which to shape every memorable moment for people to experience, so that they create a coherent brand regardless of the order in which they are experienced.
It is this accumulation of the experience of memorable moments that continually shapes a brand.
But what about William Burroughs?
Well, if you insist on creating your brand as a story then be aware that people will probably not read it in the order in which you had written it. William Burroughs’ ‘Cut Up Method’ consisted of him writing a page and then cutting it into pieces, rearranging the pieces, and this new order was the new story. Although a fantastic technique for encouraging creative thinking and new ways of seeing something, it’s probably not the best way to shape a brand if you want people to be able to make sense of it.
Unless you want your brand to be a Cut Up brand, then forget about stories.