Great brands have great stories. But a great story doesn’t automatically create a great brand. For years we’ve told ourselves a story about what story is and how it works: develop a product; build a story around that product to give it value; sell that product at a greater degree of profit. We’ve allowed ourselves to believe that stories are the lynchpin of competition and that the best storytellers will win. But that in itself is another of those brand story myths.

Ultimately consumers don’t buy a story. They listen to a story. They are influenced by a story. But what they buy is a truth that directs their behaviour, captured in a story.

You don’t succeed just because you have a story. It’s a brand myth to believe that anything with a Hero’s Journey structure is automatically interesting. You succeed when you have a story that inspires people to buy your brand. The most beautiful, uplifting story in the world won’t cut it commercially if it doesn’t achieve competitive connection – if it doesn’t provide customers with reasons to connect with your brand at the expense of someone else’s.

The second reality check is this: If you can’t tell it, then you don’t have it. So many brands don’t tell their story in a way that feels like it is unfolding. Their story is not obvious enough.

Stories may influence behaviours. But only when powerful and distinctive motives drive the stories. In other words, only when, as Rajant Meshram says, it has “ground truth”. And only when the experience customers receive then lives up to the story they allowed themselves to buy into.

Otherwise, it’s a fairy tale.

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Photo by photo nic on Unsplash