The Marketing Executives Networking Group (MENG) meeting earlier this month featured speaker Michael Margolis of Thirsty-Fish. Margolis gave a riveting presentation on brand storytelling that night and has allowed the CPC to delve into his brain even more.

Michael Margolis is the President and founder of THIRSTY-FISH, and advocates widely on the power of Brand Storytelling and strategic change. You can find his blog and latest musings at http://www.popanthropology.com.

CPC: At the MENG meeting, you presented the audience with the Brand Story Matrix. Can you explain the concept and strategy behind this?

MM: Brand Storytelling is a vocabulary for describing the increasingly symbolic and psychic contribution of brands within modern culture. Think of the role that BMW, Apple, Patagonia, and countless other brands play in our lives. They have become meaningful props in the personal narratives of who we are (or sometimes who we aspire to be).  

The Brand Story Matrix is about looking at a company through the lens of past, present, and future — or in more metaphoric terms, (1) Origins, (2) Identity, and (3) Aspirations.  Each metaphor frames how a brand’s stakeholders (customers, employees, investors, etc) find meaning in the larger story…

Origins speak to sources of authenticity. This might include a charismatic founder or the raw materials from which you create your products. Think Marriott, Moleskine, and Hewlett-Packard, the list goes on…they each carry a legitimacy that is rooted in the past.

Identity is about personality and values. This means taking a stand and being clear to the world about what you believe in. Whole Foods and Zappos are just two of many companies with manifestos that not only guide the strategy, but transform their customers into true believers.

Aspirations reflect a brand’s contribution to society. Starbucks, Blackberry, Ben & Jerry’s – each brand redefines consumer expectations because they change how we behave. We’re all competing against these memorable brand-driven experiences, even if you’re in a completely different industry.  

CPC: In what ways are marketers taking advantage of Brand Storytelling? Is it an effective tool for any marketing initiative?

MM: Marketers are just beginning to scratch the surface regarding the implications of Brand Storytelling. You might see a lot of advertising agencies that give the concept credence, but most of these brand stories live and die within the 30-second format or creative campaign. Brand Storytelling holds much deeper and wider implications for how a business operates. 

You also see a lot of marketing traction in the areas of digital storytelling, branded entertainment, and trans-media storytelling. This is where the narrative freedom of the Internet is most dramatically changing the patterns of story consumption and production.

Here is the true benchmark of Brand Storytelling. Its not so much about your stories regarding the brand, it’s the stories that people tell about you – and even further, the stories they tell themselves (about what your brand means to them). The Internet is a powerful looking glass into the future of the narrative web. The implications of this paradigm shift are profound.

 
CPC: How did the idea of using storytelling as a marketing concept develop?

MM: Storytelling has always been at the essence of marketing. People don’t really buy a product or a service, they buy the story that’s attached to it.

For me personally, I came to this hard lesson early on in my career. Right out of college, I helped found and launch two separate nonprofits — at the intersection of business and social issues. One worked on Digital Divide workforce issues and the other was a technology platform for volunteerism. In both cases, the real struggle wasn’t so much raising money or getting attention. Instead, it was about introducing new ideas, and overcoming the existing beliefs that would prevent the story from taking hold.

That is how I came to discover storytelling as the leading x-factor for any leader, entrepreneur, or change agent to master. Especially in these unique times when so many long-standing business stories need to be redefined.

CPC: Can you name some organizations that have recreated their brand vision using storytelling? How are the effects of Brand Storytelling tracked?

MM: For the past seven years, we’ve applied the notion of Brand Storytelling across a wide spectrum of organizations from Fortune 500 companies to leading associations and mid-cap companies. And it’s always more than just a brand or marketing exercise.

With smaller companies, you can create a Brand Story blueprint relatively quickly that is then used as a strategic compass for adapting to change. This cascades into business development, customer service, research development, and internal culture initiatives. We’ve seen this take hold for many companies, including a 60-year old psychological test publishing firm in a rather old-school industry. 

With larger organizations, that sort of shift is a more complex process – so you start with a specific division or strategic initiative. In the case of NASA, we used the principles of Brand Storytelling to help preserve a $20 MM science education program at the risk of being cancelled. For Ernst & Young, the same principles were used to increase the adoption of their corporate extranet across local offices worldwide. It really just depends on the business drivers of the client, and where storytelling can have bottom-line impact.

Our efforts are usually tracked by the business results themselves. At a more discreet level, you can use various instruments to gauge current brand story perceptions (what stories are being told) and how those shift over time.

CPC: How does the following quote, taken from Thirsty-Fish’s Favorite Story Quotes, explain how a unique narrative can help a brand identify with its’ audience: “We all live in suspense, from day to day, from hour to hour; in other words, we are the hero of our own story”? –Mary McCarthy (author)MM: The greatest freedom of this era is the ability to construct and shape our personal narratives. Just look at the explosion of social media – blogging, the twitterverse, and the emerging semantic web. What a thrill! The future of the Internet is really about making sense and meaning of a world buckling forward at warp speed drive.

On the flip side, we’re all suffering from information overload and attention deficit. That’s why we need new, and more sophisticated, filters for processing content. And as much as technology is an enabler, at the end of the day, it’s our human ability to weave stories that brings meaning to our lives.

The brands that put the customer at the center of the universe are increasingly the winners. Go a step further, and invite your customers to actually narrate the story (customization, co-creation, user-generated content, etc…). Consumers tend to identify these brands as enablers they couldn’t live without. Imagine for a moment life without Google…

CPC: What are some marketing trends that you believe we’ll see a lot of in the next year?MM: 1. Narrative Non-fiction – You might be familiar with the “New Journalism” — a style that by definition is built upon strong editorial viewpoints, intimate portraits, and narrative coherence. This style is tailor made for the Internet Era and the rise of branded entertainment. The really good blogs are already modeling this style. They’ve distilled a style of reporting that represents the future of marketing communications – honest, irreverent, and curated. Big brand marketers stand to benefit by embracing this style across other media touch-points and channels.

2. Truth – Represents the holy grail of communications at the moment. The old stories are no longer holding credence, which is why we are experiencing such a crisis of confidence across society. This crisis represents a much deeper chasm then just fixing the banks and the government.  The implications for marketers are a greater demand for transparency and authenticity. People want to know they’re getting the real deal. It’s your job to prove it. Storytelling, when done right is the pathway into greater relevance. But be careful, you’re always at the mercy of your audience. So it better be good. 

3. Experiences – While consumers might be getting fickle with their purchasing habits (how many more sweaters do I really need?), they are still in the habit of collecting experiences. Notice the categories that are staying strong in this recession – leisure, travel, sporting, etc…They are all tactile experiences that often transcend commoditization. Many retail brands will look to experiences as a way to better define their brand value and escape the downward spiral of discount pricing.