Tell Your Story
Brand self-sabotage is preventable
3-min communications coaching moment by Troy Dominy, Aerial Film Producer & Brand Strategist
“Those who tell the stories rule society.”
Plato nailed it. A story well told, not only captivates us but also compels us to buy. So know this: before your brand can rule, before people will buy what you’re selling in 2021, modern customers, like the ancients, are audiences first.
Audiences.
From your brand, they need writing, film, design, music, radio, shadow puppets…any original content that carries your “why” out the door, and on the regular.
High-flying brands will eventually experience engine failure if their leaders struggle to tell the story along the way. Lack of vision maintenance is a silent saboteur causing brand flameout and an emergency landing…or worse.
“But Troy, people know our story. Look at our success.”
A coordinated multimedia strategy is the modern method for maintaining a well-oiled story engine. Telling your story is brand maintenance. Yes, that means your brand needs to form a media division, hire specialists, or step aside. Some brand stories need a strategy; some need design; some need cameras on the ground; some need cameras in the air, and so on. From 20 years of doing this myself across the for-profit and nonprofit landscapes, here’s my list of what I’ll call the “Seven Saboteurs of Story” that I’ve actually encountered which may be active among your team right now:
Not knowing how to tell your story, or what about your organization is story-worthy.
Resisting modern multimedia platforms, practices, and opportunities to break boundaries with your story.
Not scheduling time and resources to tell your story. Executive-level visionaries tend to get entangled with too much “doing.” In that state, you’ll miss another’s perspective that could have been the missing piece.
Resting solely on your own tastes and likes, and not the customers’, resulting in a jamming of founder/owner-centric storylines. If you will, a square peg into a round hole instead of seeking to understand actual user behaviors.
Missing the value in…killing it! Telling your story really well across multimedia formats and from all angles. Including…not your angle.
Unknowingly telling only part of it (or the wrong story altogether) so you miss out on the true leverage and value of your product. And so does the world.
Not understanding your own story, so your company produces messaging and visuals that aren’t aligned...with anything. Fire, ready, aim! Then you hire the wrong people and at the wrong time to push your hot mess out the door. “We just need something out there.”
If you’re not in any of those camps, well, congratulations on having a fully coordinated multimedia strategy with numbers trending up and to the right.
But if you’re on the list, you’re on the clock.
Audiences tend to leave the theater when the story ends.
Time to tell your story?