Building a StoryBrand: Clarify Your Message So Customers Will Listen

by Donald Miller

human beings are constantly scanning their environment (even advertising) for information that is going to help them meet their primitive need to survive.

The first mistake brands make is they fail to focus on the aspects of their offer that will help people survive and thrive.

All great stories are about survival—either physical, emotional, relational, or spiritual.

we discard millions of unnecessary facts every day.

The second mistake brands make is they cause their customers to burn too many calories in an effort to understand their offer.

Business has a fierce, insidious enemy that, if not identified and combated, will contort our company into an unrecognizable mess.

Noise

Here is nearly every story you see or hear in a nutshell: A CHARACTER who wants something encounters a PROBLEM before they can get it. At the peak of their despair, a GUIDE steps into their lives, gives them a PLAN, and CALLS THEM TO ACTION. That action helps them avoid FAILURE and ends in a SUCCESS.

Alfred Hitchcock defined a good story as “life with the dull parts taken out.”

Nancy Duarte has done extensive research on how to create powerful presentations. The strategy she recommends to her clients is simple: when giving a speech, position yourself as Yoda and your audience as Luke Skywalker.

Desperate, King George VI solicits the help of Lionel Logue, a dramatist turned speech therapist, who gives him a plan, coaches him to competency, and helps him transform into a powerful orator. This is the same service Obi-Wan (and Yoda) offers Luke Skywalker in Star Wars,

In stories, characters don’t take action on their own. They must be challenged.

Human beings take action when their story challenges them to do so.

Can this brand really help me get what I want?

focus on one simple desire and

As I reviewed his marketing material, I noticed he was making a critical mistake: in defining what his customer wanted, he was vague.

In business, if we don’t communicate clearly, we shrink.

Define a desire for your customer, and the story you’re inviting customers into will have a powerful hook.

Screenwriters and novelists know the stronger, more evil, more dastardly the villain, the more sympathy we will have for the hero and the more the audience will want them to win in the end. This translates into audience engagement.

we’re selling time-management software, for instance, we might vilify the idea of distractions.

Now that I’ve pointed out the technique of vilifying our customers’ challenges, you’ll see it in television commercials all the time.

Is there a villain in your customers’ story? Of course there is. What is the chief source of conflict that your products and services defeat?

Companies tend to sell solutions to external problems, but people buy solutions to internal problems.

The only reason our customers buy from us is because the external problem we solve is frustrating them in some way.

If we can identify that frustration, put it into words, and offer to resolve it along with the original external problem, something special happens.

A philosophical problem can best be talked about using terms like ought and shouldn’t.

When these three levels of problems are resolved in one shot, the audience experiences a sense of pleasure and relief, causing them to love the story. This scene is often called the “climactic” or “obligatory” scene,

Externaol internal philosophical problems by Climatic scene

TESLA MOTOR CARS: Villain: Gas guzzling, inferior technology External: I need a car. Internal: I want to be an early adopter of new technology. Philosophical: My choice of car ought to help save the environment.

A large problem most of our clients face is they want to include three villains and seven external problems and four internal problems, and so on. But, as I’ve already mentioned, stories are best when they are simple and clear.

Is there a single villain your brand stands against?

In their multimillion-dollar rollout, the artists stood shoulder to shoulder at a press conference to explain their mission.

If only Jay Z, in other ways a virtual genius, had understood the age-old rules of story, he might have avoided walking into a field of land mines.

The public became nauseated listening to a row of famous, multimillionaire musicians guilt-trip them into paying more for their music.

Always position your customer as the hero and your brand as the guide. Always. If you don’t, you will die.

Those who realize the epic story of life is not about them but actually about the people around them somehow win in the end. It’s counterintuitive, but it’s true.

When we empathize with our customers’ dilemma, we create a bond of trust.