The 6 Cs Of Meaningful Marketing

Jim Signorelli Founder & CEO ESW Partners

Since the beginning of language, stories have helped us understand human nature. By helping us identify with characters during their quests to achieve certain goals, stories teach important lessons about who we are and what lies within our own potential. But this teaching is done through implication, not explanation. Stories don’t tell us how to think or what to value. Rather, they provide a welcomed freedom to self select the truths we read into them. This is why they can be immensely powerful.

In many ways, stories provide a great example for brands to follow. Brands, like stories, also contain truths. But whose truth is it? It is one thing for brands to push their meanings on us, and quite another to help us reach our own conclusions. Too much advertising tells us how to see things or what we should believe is important. As a result, we are often inundated with facts that can be argued and opinions that are self-serving. It is hard to form a willing relationship with anyone, let alone a brand, that tries too hard to convince us of its own importance. 

To help brands become more story-like, the “StoryBranding” process I devised provides a template to aid communications planning. The brand is substituted for the main character, who is described as having functional capabilities and is additionally infused with values and beliefs that resonate with audiences. In all cases, the brand’s ultimate goal, apart from increasing sales and profits, is to influence a relationship with the prospect. Attempts to force a relationship impede progress. Once the relationship is formed, it becomes the foundation for an enduring loyalty. Achieving this goal is sometimes evidenced by customers who proudly display the brand’s logo on apparel, car bumper-stickers, or, in extreme cases, body tattoos.

As is the case with stories, there are obstacles in the brand’s path toward its goal. These must be identified and dealt with before the desired relationship is achieved. Working with this model, there are six steps that should be taken to apply its usefulness to a particular brand. I call them the 6 Cs. Following is a brief explanation of each step and how to apply it to your own brand.

Step 1: Collect The Back Story
We start by digging up the back story. In traditional marketing parlance, this is often referred to as the situation analysis. This provides the background necessary to explain the problem that must be solved for the brand. Every back story is different but usually consists of any and all information relevant to the story about to be written. This includes an assessment of the brand’s culture as well as problems and opportunities it faces in the marketplace.

Step 2: Characterize The Brand
One of the key challenges of the StoryBranding planning process is to identify the brand’s persona. Traditional planning methods start by focusing on the prospect. In contrast, the StoryBranding process starts with an investigation of the brand first and with the help of management. Specifically, it begins with a thorough understanding of the brand’s value and belief system. Since this is sometimes difficult for management to articulate, we use a number of techniques, including archetypal analysis, to help everyone see the brand more as a person than a thing. While looking for belief markers, it is equally important to determine whether the brand is evidencing what it stands for and not just providing lip service.

Besides trying to understand the brand’s strengths, it is equally important to understand the brand’s limitations. Too often, we see brands trying to take advantage of opportunities that are far outside the realm of what is believable and consistent with consumer expectations. At other times, we see brands upholding values that their products and/or operational behaviors can’t possibly support. Imagine, for example, White Castle suddenly adopting a position around healthful eating, or Motel 6 trying to associate itself with the value of luxury. These are extreme examples of reaching outside the realm of the prospect’s expectations, but the point is that brand identities, once formed, have certain guardrails. Go outside of these guardrails and the risk of failure increases.

Next Page: Figuring out unfulfilled functional and emotional needs.