Building a StoryBrand: Clarify Your Message So Customers Will Listen

by Donald Miller

Recently a high-end resort hired us to help them clarify their message. Like many companies, they were experiencing an identity crisis. Their marketing collateral featured images of their restaurant, front desk, and staff. It all looked nice, but unless they were trying to sell their buildings, they weren’t exactly inviting customers into a story. What their customers wanted most, actually, was a luxurious, restful experience. After StoryBranding their resort, they changed the text on their website from long stories about themselves (which positioned them as the hero) to images of a warm bath, plush towels and robes, someone getting a massage in the spa, and a looping clip of a back-porch rocking chair against the backdrop of trees blowing in the wind along a golf course. They replaced the text on their main page with short and powerful copy: “Find the luxury and rest you’ve been looking for.” That became the mantra for the entire staff. This phrase was posted on their office walls, and to this day you can stop any team member from the sous chef to the groundskeeper and they will tell you their customers are looking for two things: luxury and rest. Defining exactly what their customer wanted brought clarity and camaraderie to the staff. Each member of the staff then understood his or her role in the story they were inviting their customers to engage in.