In a world bursting with content, the temptation for any brand storyteller is to give in to the machines. To leave it all to AI and the algorithms and succumb to the temptations of volume. Say lots. Say anything. Just keep talking. But that’s not how you become an articulate company.
Content is important of course but the journey to becoming articulate starts way before anything is seen. In this article, we outline the steps we recommend to enable a brand to tell their story, their way, and to their agenda, as an articulate company.
Defining articulate
Let’s start though with a definition, in case you haven’t seen this before. We define an articulate brand is one capable of sustaining stimulating conversations:
- Sustaining – capable of developing and telling a story in various formats over a range of timeframes.
- Stimulating – revealing, relevant and compelling for those receiving the story, from internal stakeholders through to customers and even investors.
- Conversations – a story that people continue to lean into and interact with. In fact, those interactions cue changes in the story and even for the brand itself.
You don’t get there by talking about whatever has your attention as a brand in the moment. Compelling narrative is structured, not just scheduled. Our approach cues from the over-riding strategy, systematically working from there to find a story worth telling.
The 8 steps to becoming more articulate
1. Strategic narrative
Start with your business plan. Retell your strategic intentions as an engaging story that everyone in your organisation will understand. Transforming data points, market insights and operational and financial goals into a narrative not only makes your intentions more accessible, it enables you to identify a sequence for sharing your direction.
2. Points of view
Use the strategic narrative and the definitions of purpose, vision and values in your brand dna to identify the specific places where your brand’s view of the world differs from expectations, industry norms and the accepted wisdom of your competitors. You should look to have 3 – 5 of these. Write them out as short and powerful opinions.
3. Own your viewpoints
Put strong and distinctive names to these proprietary ideas. We call these Idea Prints because they serve to identify you clearly in the marketplace. You may want to group several ideas together under one name. Less is more here – ideally, you are looking to own a single, powerful idea that crystallises your distinctive beliefs.
4. Story goals
Now that you have a guiding narrative driven by a compelling idea, capture why you are telling this story, what success looks like and where you will bring the story to life and when. The latter is critical. We recommend having specific market cues for when you communicate – both planned and unplanned. This may seem counter-intuitive given the pressures to keep outputting material, but we find it brings discipline and focus to how brands communicate.
5. Messaging framework
Te purpose of a messaging framework is to substantiate your proprietary viewpoint(s). Develop a set of pillars to sit under your distinctive idea(s) You can use the pillars to answer questions like: why would we believe you?; why would we choose you?; why should we stay engaged? Then add proof points underneath each pillar that offer more detail. Write these in the form of customer-oriented messages.
6. Audience framework
If you don’t have this already, break out all the audiences for your story, external and internal. Assign personas based not just in all the usual ways but around receptiveness to your Idea Print.
7. Language ecosystem
Once you have an overarching story and an Idea Print that identifies you in your space, it’s important to put a voice to how you bring your story to life. Too often, brands underplay the importance of this step. They come up with five or so words that describe the tone and leave it at that. Essentially, they throw one tone at any and every communication. But larger companies in particular need to speak to multiple audiences and those audiences can have very different tonal expectations. We recommend a more nuanced approach that sets an overall tone for the brand and then remixes that tone from its most formal to its least formal expressions using the audience framework to ensure the brand speaks best to each stakeholder.
8. Storylines
You now have everything you need to develop and schedule individual storylines for each of your audiences. The groundwork above will ensure that each storyline is attuned to your goals and the needs of each audience, that it uses the right tone and that the storyline unfolds in ways that audience finds fascinating. There are all sorts of ways to write a storyline. You can use the sales funnel to walk an audience through from awareness to commitment. Or base your storyline on product releases or market developments. You can build a storyworld. There are only two rules: stay consistent with your brand; and always be fascinating.
It’s worth becoming an Articulate Company
Articulate companies are more visible, have more engaged audiences, better control of their brand narrative and effective ways to use their chosen channels to their advantage. Their communications are more focused and planned and therefore more efficient, meaning they are not just spontaneously allocating resources to random content assignments.
The response to busyness is not just to start and figure it out as you go, because all that does is put you on a treadmill. Gaining attention is relatively easy. But holding the right levels of attention and building that awareness out into brand interest and even loyalty, that’s a different thing altogether.
If you’re looking to become a more articulate company, Long Arc is our storytelling workshop. It’s an opportunity to appraise what your story is and the best ways for you to articulate it. More on how we can help here.