Brand management and Innovation are two complementary and interwoven business activities and companies are well-served to manage them with the same team.

For large companies, a brand is a very valuable asset. It helps customers recognise you, easily understand what you stand for, and it simplifies the customer’s purchase decisions. Managing this important asset of the business falls on the marketing team, generally speaking.

A brand however also needs product and service innovation, in order to keep up with changing consumer needs and category dynamics as well as generate growth. This aspect, however, is not always/exclusively managed by the marketing team.

I would strongly argue that the marketing team should have the lead role in both activities (brand and innovation management), as coordination of these functions can make the brand stronger and more effectively and efficiently communicated.

Covering the same needs

Both activities have in common that they address customer needs, though in different and complementary ways. When thinking of customer needs, we often distinguish three layers:

• Emotional needs
• Social/identity needs
• Functional needs

The brand is very important when addressing emotional and social/identity needs, though it will also extend into the coverage of functional needs.

On the other hand, when it comes to product / service innovation, we often focus on the functional needs that the new product / service addresses, but there is a strong argument that we need to understand the emotional needs very well in order to ensure that we connect with potential customers.

The Marketing team should be the voice of the customer within a company and they should have the best understanding of what their functional and non-functional needs are. Hence, they should be best suited to lead both functions, brand management and innovation management.

Mutual impact

Moreover, the functions actually influence one another quite substantially: A brand’s positioning influences in which areas you can innovate, and at the same time innovations have an influence on how a brand is perceived.

According to Al Ries and Laura Ries in The 12 immutable laws of branding, one of the key aspects of a strong brand is its focussed nature. Using the same brand for a wide variety of solutions may weaken your brand. On the flip side, launching a new innovation under the same brand is easier in the short term than launching it under a new brand.

This very delicate relationship is difficult enough to manage within the same team, but even more difficult when spread out throughout the organisation.

So, yes, in conclusion, the marketing team should play a central role in both activities.

The storyteller sets the vision, values and agenda of an entire generation that is to come.

- Steve Jobs

Stories are a vehicle that humans have used for ages to transfer “information” from generation to generation. Our minds have adapted to this powerful formula for understanding and remembering.

I am curious about how it works and how people/businesses can use it to be more effective communicators. I have read some books now related to the subject, which I shall mention at the end of this post, and I just wished to share some of the findings.

Elements that make up a good story

1. The story needs to be identifiable or relatable. Something that the audience can understand or connect with.
2. All great stories tell the story of a five-second moment in a person’s life. This is also the purpose and pinnacle of the story and therefore the end point.
   • Understand the essence of the message you wish to get across. The opposite is then the beginning.
3. The change from the beginning to the end creates the arc of the story, and the human mind is drawn to such a transformation story.
4. Every moment of the story should be a scene which is placed in a physical location, which is were the action, dialogue and internal monologues take place.
5. A story needs to have stakes, which gives the audience a reason to want to know the next part.
6. Stories need to move dynamically between scenes. Surprise and humour can add dynamism and emotional connection with the story and help keep the audience on the edge of their seat.
7. Lastly, be efficient with language. Anything that does not support or bring clarity to the message, should be left out. Also, use natural, spoken language.

These are the parts of the story - the copy, if you will - but nowadays a story is often accompanied by images (or made up of it completely). Related to this, there is an interesting point that is made in the book Understanding Comics: more abstract images of individuals (as opposed to realistic) can feel more relatable, as it could be anyone (including you) rather than someone specific (not you). Additionally, more abstract imagery can also help place the focus on the message.

Possible implications for brands

• Do not make the mistake of making your brand or company the main character in the story: it should be your customer. Centre your message on how you can help them.
• Identify who the potential customer is and what problem (external and internal) you can help them with. Be sure to focus! Connecting with internal problems results in a greater motivator.
• Your brand is positioned as the “Guide” in the story and it helps the customer achieve their transformation. A brand must communicate Empathy and Authority in order to position itself as a Guide.
• Customers trust a guide who has a plan(s). These plans either clarify how somebody can do business with you, (a process plan), or they remove the sense of risk somebody might have (an agreement plan).
• Your story should “push” your customer to take action otherwise they won’t: direct call-to-action (conversion) or a transitional call-to-action (nurturing).
• Loss aversion is a greater motivator of buying decisions than potential gains. Therefore, make it clear both what life looks like when they buy your product/service as well as what happens if they don’t.

Last, but certainly not least, brands that connect with customers on a deeper level (irresistible brands?), tend to have higher market share, according to Kantar. And what brand doesn’t want that.

This story narrative works for attracting customers, but it can also help transform the company culture by avoiding the Narrative Void (a vacant space that occurs inside the organization when there’s no story to keep everyone aligned).

Wrap up

Without a doubt, these books make a great argument for the power of good story telling and give very concrete suggestions of how to use it. My points above are summarised to the extreme, but I hope you find something useful in it.

And if you want to chat about it, feel free to hit my up on Twitter or Mastodon.

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The books are:

• Storyworthy: Engage, Teach, Persuade, and Change Your Life through the Power of Storytelling (link to GoodReads) by Matthew Dicks
• Building a Story Brand: Clarify your message so customers will listen (link to GoodReads) by Donald Miller
• Understanding Comics: The invisible art (Link to GoodReads) by Scott McCloud

Signal has just designed a pretty brilliant marketing campaign for themselves, showing why people should potentially care about the privacy message that Signal so strongly pivots their product around and probably having the foresight that the campaign could lead to free PR.

If you don’t know Signal, it is a messenger app/service that prioritises privacy and wants none of your data (link to their web site).

Signal designed a marketing campaign on Instagram, where they created individualised ads incorporating some of the information that Facebook (Instagram’s parent company) has about the specific individual.

Facebook, though, didn’t like the campaign and quickly disabled the ad account that Signal has, stopping a campaign they were apparently uncomfortable with.

Well, this already smart ad campaign, will now benefit from some interesting free PR. Very smart, all together. In the source link, you will find the Signal blog post with some additional info.

Just for your interest, a few other examples of the ads:

Source (Signal blog): The Instagram ads Facebook won’t show you