19 Nov Brand: it’s the story people tell themselves about you

Brand isn’t the story you tell others…it’s the story others tell themselves about you.

Communicating what your brand stands for, and how interacting with your brand will benefit others, is powerful. But even more powerful is helping people create the story for themselves. Whether a small business with hundreds or thousands of customers, or a large business with millions or tens of millions of customers, a marketer’s job to help shape the story people tell themselves, and others, about your brand.

Treehouse

Treehouse is a provider of online, self-paced, technical education. However, founder and CEO Ryan Carson spends most of his time not promoting their library of courses, but rather how Treehouse helps people overcome the burdens of traditional education or no education at all. He paints a picture of self-empowerment, independence, and confidence to achieve your goals through affordable and convenient online education. Here are a couple of example’s from Ryan’s Instagram:

With Ryan’s message of how a traditional education isn’t right for everyone, and doesn’t necessarily set you up for the job, and life, you want, he allows you to start telling yourself a story of what Treehouse can offer you. You start seeing yourself learning in your spare time, keeping yourself out of debt, acquiring marketable skills in less time so you can start leading the life you want. It’s not about the story Treehouse tells you, but rather the story Treehouse helps you tell yourself.

Field Notes

Hey, let’s start a notebook company!

In a time of computers, tablets, smartphones, and electronic gadgets and gizmos aplenty, who thinks of starting a notebook company? Well, Aaron Draplin and Jim Coudal did when they came up with Field Notes.

The success of Field Notes isn’t a story about notebooks. Notebooks are a commodity at best and, in the electronic age, seen as obsolete at worst. But Field Notes, from the moment you interact with the brand or open one of its notebooks, is arming you with everything you need to tell yourself a story.

Limited editions, useful quips inside the back covers, use of high-quality materials, aspirational videos of new designs, how new ones are nice but broken-in is even better. Just look at how they inspire others to create cases and accessories for the brand.

Fans of Field Notes are telling themselves a story. A story about how they’ll feel carrying around a Field Notes notebook, breaking one in, filling one up, showing off the cool cover, and being part of a “club.” It’s truly a brand built on the stories people tell themselves.

Getting out of the way…

What Treehouse and Field Notes have in common is they tap into something primal, then get out of the way. They offer the product, service, and inspiration. But they also tap into people’s aspirations and show them a path to having what they want through an interaction with the brand. By showing that path and letting people craft their own story, there is nothing to “sell.”

People sell themselves by using the brand to create the story that makes them feel how they want to feel. Giving people the power to do that, and share those stories with others, is a much more powerful and effective form of marketing than anything a brand could generate on its own.