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What do a $17 billion retailer, a Grammy award winning singer, and a shoe store have in common? The answer is narrative.
Narratives are meaningful, remarkable storylines that contextualize your values. They create “hero moments,” in order to establish a sense of your identity.
You need one. Here’s how to find yours...
In 1885, John Spedan Lewis was on his way to work at his family’s successful business in London. But he was thrown from his horse and had to spend six months recuperating in hospital. It was during that stay that he envisioned a business where the interests of the employees were aligned with those of the business and both benefited equally from the arrangement, which continues to this day. But this is no hippy-dippy kumbaya story: The John Lewis Partnership is the UK’s most successful retailer, with $17 billion revenue.
Blake Mycoskie spent months doing volunteering work in Buenos Aires, witnessing homeless children go about barefoot. On getting back home, he started TOMS Shoes, the company that donates a pair of shoes to an impoverished child with every purchase made by a customer.
Justin Vernon and his new indie-folk band, Bon Iver, became successful after their first album was written in a cabin in Northern Wisconsin after a heart-breaking relationship split. The story is recounted by fans every time the album or any of its songs come up.
Video: Bon Iver—For Emma
All three businesses are market leaders in their fields. They combine a strong sense of identity with a clear mission in the world—and that comes through in everything they do.
Each of their respective narratives:
• shape how they sound in social media,
• affect the way they develop,
• encourage grass-roots advocacy, and
• make them smarter in connecting with customers.
It’s so effective, but the obvious question is this:
Why Doesn’t Everyone Find Their Narrative?
Companies with a clear sense of their own narrative usually have a clearly defined sense of their mission (i.e., who they are and what they want to do).
That leads them to be agile and responsive, adapting quickly to a changing customer base. But a narrative can also work against you.
For example, Enron—a company whose bankruptcy in 2001 made it a byword for systematic corporate fraud on a massive scale—stated in its Vision & Values corporate documents that, as a “global corporate citizen,'' the company intends to conduct itself in accord with four values: Respect, Integrity, Communication and Excellence.
The hype became a smokescreen behind which corporate executives hid from investors, from employees, and from the world. Also, Enron’s self-deceit became a case study of just how low a corporation’s moral compass can sink, when the narrative it projects isn’t authentic.
So How Do You Stay True?
The question of how you remain authentic came up last year at SXSW in Austin, Texas.
John Hagel, author of The Power of Pull, gave a presentation titled, “Moving from Story to Narrative,” identifying an authentic narrative as a means of establishing identity, rapport and empathy in your marketing.
How? Ultimately there are three steps—ironically, they all come from the field of fiction:
1. Show, Don’t Tell
Telling people what you do and who you are is top down, one way and preachy.
This is the Enron approach. It doesn’t allow for engagement or interaction, and it doesn’t lead to a sense of shared values.
You need to decide what your audience really cares about. It requires finding the halfway points to meet that audience.
Telling always presents the point of view of the teller. But showing requires thought. Showing provides evidence, which telling can never hope to produce.
2. Create A Narrative That’s More Than Just A Story
While these two may sound identical, they differ in one key respect: A story has an ending.
A story leaves its audience with nowhere else to go. But a narrative is constantly evolving. Because it’s both open-ended and participatory it becomes a shared environment where both a brand and its audience can flourish.
Coca-Cola’s happiness marketing is a narrative, rather than a story. TOMS Shoes’ world-changing approach to doing business is also a narrative that makes a participant out of every customer.
3. Motivate Action
The best narratives are true, memorable and create strong followings.
They encourage action. They make it easy for people to feel part of something greater, because everyone really believes in them.
They activate the best parts of us.
The Bottom Line
Narrative helps create a cohesive identity for your brand.
It helps you find an audience and group it into a community. It makes your message relevant and memorable through personalization.
In short: A narrative allows you to be yourself, and to find others who believe in you.
This works whether you’re a corporate entity or a heartbroken singer/songwriter. All it requires to work its magic is the truth.
Rich Karlgaard, publisher of Forbes and author of The Soft Edge, has examined a variety of enduring companies and found that they have one thing in common: All of them live their values, which alongside great strategy and execution, allow them to fuel growth and weather hard times. He identifies Trust, Smarts, Teamwork, Taste, and Story as the five variables that make up this “soft edge.” Comment below, and follow David Amerland (Google+) @DavidAmerland (Twitter).
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Image credit: John Lewis Partnership (public domain)
