How your favorite brands are shaping your story
Go to the profile of Tabarak Khan
Tabarak Khan
Feb 18
Ever wonder how brands tell stories?
I used to think that a brand’s story referred to the story about the founding of the brand. Airbnb came about because its founders could not afford the rent payments for their loft apartment. Warby Parker came into existence after a graduate student lost his expensive pair of eyeglasses on a trip. When we hear stories of founders who stumbled upon their business idea because of a real problem, we see authenticity in their story.
Turns out that while the founding stories serve to create momentum, brands tell stories not by telling but showing. Just like show and tell rule that most story-writers follow, brands show while customers tell themselves a story about the brand. Warby Parker didn’t just create more affordable eyewear, it created a shopping experience to talk about. It’s free home try-ons and more recently, its AR try-on app, address an internal problem — the commitment conundrum. Customers tell themselves the story that they were right all along — there should be no guilt in taking the time to choose the right frame, because doing so doesn’t mean they are indecisive.
We are Wired to Stories
We tell more stories than we realize, especially the ones we tell ourselves. We tell stories that
dictate our choice of breakfast
justify waking up late
settle internal conflicts
justify a stance
rationalize choices
and countless more…
There is a story we tell ourselves when we gravitate towards a brand. This story is influenced by what the brand tells us to tell ourselves. The landscape of the narrative is unlimited — it can talk about how the brand solves a problem, while daring to venture inside ours heads by alluding to internal problems or goals. In his book Building a Story Brand, Don Miller wisely notes that companies tend to sell solutions to external problems, but people buy solutions to internal problems.
Companies tend to sell solutions to external problems, but people buy solutions to internal problems (Don Miller, Building a Story Brand)
Don Miller explains that humans are constantly scanning their environment for information that helps them survive. Processing lots of information takes up calories, which is why breaking information into stories helps the brain conserve its processing power. Brands emit signals and our brains create stories from those signals. We can’t help it. The human brain likes to think that it is in control and we try to find patterns everywhere — even in chaos. Therefore, it is up to the brand to frame its offerings in ways that help customers tell a story.
Kodiak Cakes is currently the top-selling pancake brand in Target; and it is making pancakes popular among diet-conscious millennials.
This is how Kodiak cakes frames its story:
Way back when, lumberjacks and pioneers relied on food packed with protein and essential nutrients from whole grains to get them through long days on the frontier. Though most of us have traded in our axes for laptops, we still crave nourishing food.
Instead of giving out plain facts, such as ‘100% whole grain with added protein’, Kodiak creates a narrative about the modern frontier being no less demanding than that of the lumberjacks or pioneers. A customer who cannot spend enough times outdoors because of his demanding office job would purchase the product because he bought the story. Kodiak succeeds because it is easy for customers to accept the brand’s narrative as their own.
The Worldview is a Window
In his book All Marketers are Liars, Seth Godin explains that customers prefer brands that make them feel good about themselves. These are the brands that embrace the customer’s worldview and reinforce it. Godin defines the customer’s worldview as a collection of the customer’s beliefs, biases and preferences. No matter what the demographics or income levels are, if customers share the worldview that your brand is targeting, you will have their attention.
Customers prefer brands that make them feel good about themselves (Seth Godin, All Marketers are Liars)
As humans we also seek consistency in a story. Lack of consistency is the reason for the uproar, for example, when customers alleged that the Honest Company wasn’t being very honest about the ingredients in its baby products. It was accused of using ingredients like henoxyethanol and methylisothiazolinone, which are also present in other products in the market. However, these synthetic ingredients caused trouble specifically for the Honest Company because their presence wasn’t consistent with the story of its founder’s quest to find alternative baby products that were void of petrochemicals and synthetic fragrances.
Customers bought the Honest Beauty story because it reinforced their worldview about being educated about the ingredients in their baby’s laundry detergent. Making an informed choice about complicated ingredients not just reinforced their belief about being responsible parents, but also made them feel like they were taking a stand against harmful chemicals. By buying the product, they bought a story about themselves. On actually investigating the ingredients, the story lost its flow and created conflict. What followed were lawsuits and bad press.
Brands that succeed in story telling are the ones that place their message into a customer’s worldview with minimal resistance from the customer. This message does not necessarily have to be limited to the story around the early days of the company. Amazon started with selling books on the internet, but today we associate the brand with convenience. Amazon helps customers become more efficient versions of themselves. Customers prefer the brand because it reinforces their belief that their time is more valuable than the money spent on faster shipping and smart speakers. Customers buy the story that it is the smart thing to do to make technology work for them.
The Story’s Protagonist
Who is the hero of the brand’s story? Is it the brand or the customer? Miller gives the example of Jay-Z’s company Tidal, which was founded to eliminate the middlemen in the music industry so that musicians could pocket more of the profits from their music. Tidal was touted to be a failure, mainly because the customer was not the protagonist in the story.
Miller specifies that a brand needs to frame its story such that the customer is the hero of the story, while the brand is the guide that helps the customer win. Not only did Tidal fail to make the customer the hero of its story, it didn’t even stay true to its promise of creating a platform for equitable distribution of profits for musicians. Tidal faces millions in lawsuits over charges that it artificially inflated numbers for some artists leading to increased payouts for them. An inconsistent story falls flat.
The Customer is the Hero of the Story (Don Miller)
It is of utmost importance that customers feel like the hero of their own stories. In its early days Amazon used state sales tax avoidance as a strategy to compete on price with local retailers. It used a loophole, which has since been overturned, that an online retailer without physical presence in a state did not have to collect state sales taxes. Customers benefited because they did not have to pay the state sales tax. It made them feel savvy — the customer was the winner.
Contrast this to the public anger over promised tax breaks that forced Amazon to cancel plans to expand its office campus in New York. People were angry because, while they judiciously pay federal taxes on their hard earned money, Amazon will pay $0 in federal taxes for 2018 despite $11 billion in profits. This bit doesn’t gel well with the previous story that Amazon’s tax avoidance strategies served to help customers save money. Customers felt that, as heroes of their own stories, they needed to take action against the company. This certainly wasn’t how Amazon intended for the story to take shape, but it shouldn’t be a surprise considering that the story wasn’t framed in a way that made the customer emerge as the hero.
The Worldview is Multidimensional
A customer’s worldview has many facets. What appeals to one aspect of the worldview can be shadowed by another aspect depending on how the customer prioritizes each aspect. While the federal tax controversy doesn’t help, Amazon has other loose ends, which if not addressed, could open up gaps for competitors to exploit. From fake product reviews to counterfeit products Amazon has a growing ‘authenticity’ problem. If a competitor manages to create a story that appeals to customers who place a high value on authenticity, Amazon could potentially lose some customers.
Stories Define Us
Stories both influence and are influenced by our worldview. We gravitate towards stories that make us feel good. The world is a complex place, and stories help us feel in control of the information overload that comes our way. Brands make themselves relevant by creating stories that find a nook in our worldview and click into it. We are looking for solutions to our external and internal problems. Brands succeed in their storytelling when they help enrich our stories.
