Narrative Positioning | Identifying Your Brand Story, Mission & Vision Statements

Aug 30

What’s the mission statement of your favorite company?

What’s the mission statement of YOUR company?

If you’re like me, then your brain is an empty vacuum right now. Nothing is showing up because these statements aren’t sticky.

Let me offer you an alternative, a way to create messaging for your company that will stick: Narrative positioning.

If you’re ready to permanently disband your mission statement committee and rip those silly corporate phrases off the walls...then keep reading.

Your positioning is about to get…authentic.

Are We Memorable? | Stories + Emotion > Memorize Statements

So, you can’t remember the mission statement of your favorite company...but do you know how it makes you feel?

Of course you do.

You immediately feel something when you think of a brand.

Try this with me. Think of these brands: Disney, Apple, Amazon, Nike.

You felt something, right? That’s branding. That’s an impression you can actually feel. That’s what you want your customers to experience when they think about your company.

Your customers will never remember your mission statement, but they’ll always remember how they felt when they experienced your brand. That’s what you want to lean into.

How can you help internalize those feelings to grow a stronger affinity for your brand?

Use storytelling. Leverage the messaging vehicle of a story to transfer your brand to your audience.

That will create meaning. That will stay with someone. That’s powerful.

Brand = Identity | Your Organization as a Person

Are you ready to start using storytelling to position your brand, but not sure where to start?

Let’s begin with defining your brand story. It has two different levels: The Macro Story and Microstories. The Macro Story is the overarching narrative you’re telling, so we’ll start with that one.

To unpack your Macro Story, let’s think about how your customers interact with your brand. Let’s humanize it.

Try this with me: Think about your brand like a person. It has a personality, identity and reputation.

When you meet someone, they’re usually introduced with a short story explanation of who they are. Something like...“Hey Mike..Meet John...He is the guy who loves mountain biking and has biked all over the country.”

What do you people say about your company when they introduce it to someone? That’s your reputation from your customer’s viewpoint. That’s the first part of your Macro Story which we call your Marketplace Story

After you meet someone, they get a chance to tell the story from their point of view. “Hey Mike..nice to meet you...Yes, I love mountain biking. It was something my dad taught me. I lost him last year, but promised to achieve our goal of biking in all 50 states. I even got a GoPro to capture all the memories and am hoping to get my son into it as well.”

Now, you’re heard the story from their own point of view. Your company does the exact same thing. You explain why you do what you do through your Authentic Purpose. It’s your point of view. This is your origin story and your chance to show why you solve the problem you do.

So, what about the Microstories? Once you have your Macro Story solidified, you add in Microstories to amplify that main story. They’re snippets that point back to your larger story. It could be a customer testimonial or short impact video.

If you need recap, here a quick summary:

Macro Story: Direct communication of your meta-narrative or brand story. Includes two parts:
- Marketplace Story
- Authentic Purpose
Microstories: Loosely connected, thematically related anecdotes.

Okay, so now you’ve got the definitions for the Macro Story and Microstories. Let’s do some work.

Defining the Macro Story

Marketplace Story

Remember, this is what other people are saying about your business. It’s your reputation. You can influence this, but it’s not controlled by you. It’s the story spoken in your customer’s language.

How can you figure out what your customers say about you? Seems like an obvious answer...uhhh listen to your customers?! But it can be harder than it sounds.

A great starting place to identify your Marketplace Story is to do Donald Miller’s StoryBrand framework. It’s a fantastic tool to help you understand how to place yourself in your customer’s shoes and start seeing your organization as a secondary character within your customer’s hero’s journey.

Authentic Purpose

This is what you say about yourself. Are you familiar with Simon Sinek’s Start with Why? Use that. Think about why you do the things you do. Why was your company founded? Why do you solve this problem in a particular way? Don’t make this stuff up. Talk to the founder if you need to.

Once you have done the hard work of defining your Macro Story, the Microstories will fall into place. Think: What is happening in our company that demonstrates our larger story? A story about how you solve a problem for your customer? A profile on an employee who exemplifies your values?

Stories = Logic + Emotion | What Are You Trying to Prove?

Now that you’ve defined the two parts of your brand story, let’s think about how you will tell them in a story framework.

First, I must explain what a story is.

Think about a story as a logical argument that leverages emotion to make sure it’s points land.

A logical argument makes sense. It doesn’t run wild. It uses emotion to make sure the points hit the audience just right. And while the story is doing all that work, it’s actually an enjoyable experience for the audience. You’re not just activating their minds — they’re enjoying the process of learning.

A story is proving something to the audience. Think back to your childhood. Remember fairy tales, fables, or even The Little Engine that Could? They were all designed to teach a lesson.

Even though you’re an adult now, stories still behave the same way.

Stories teach a lesson.

And what do we call that lesson?

The controlling idea.

Think about the controlling idea as a hypothesis or thesis statement. It’s the central theme and is ultimately: the attitudes, beliefs, and position the storyteller has about the topic of the story. The story itself serves to reinforce the controlling idea and ultimately prove that controlling idea to the audience.

So, how does this apply to telling your brand story?

You must identify the controlling idea for both your Marketplace Story and your Authentic Purpose. Then design a logical argument for each so that way they land with your audience. They resonate. They’re internalized. They’re felt.

The information is there to reinforce the point you’re making, not necessarily to be remembered.

Because you’re trying to communicate a feeling.

Yes, you could try to get them to remember your actual message. But that’s gonna take a whole lot of work, not to mention MONEY, to guarantee that will happen.

It’s much less effort to make sure that the feeling lands.

Marketplace Story| Controlling Idea = Value Proposition

Okay, let’s get down to business.

What’s the controlling idea of your Marketplace Story?

Answer: It’s your value proposition.

Yep, that’s it. It’s really that simple.

Remember, the Marketplace Story is told from the outside in. It’s your customer’s point-of-view. It’s what they’re concerned about. What matters to them is this: How you came along and helped solve that problem and how they felt from that engagement.

If you haven’t taken the time to identify your value proposition before, let me offer some help. It can be tricky to do this so I came up with a framework to help you start thinking through it (See Figure 2 below).

After you identify your customer’s need, your solution, and the delight they will experience, you’ll be able to craft your value proposition.

Here an example of a value proposition for a sleep training company: We help tired moms sleep train their infants so they can enjoy being a mom again.

Go ahead and take some time to write out your value proposition now.

Now before we go on, let me remind you why you just wrote the value proposition statement. It’s not to craft this statement and hammer it into the mind of your audience. Instead, it’s a statement of belief your entire story will support and prove. Because people may not remember the actual words you used, but they will remember how you made them feel.

Alright, if you’ve got your value proposition figured out (i.e. your Marketplace Story), it’s time to move on to your Authentic Purpose.

Authentic Purpose Story | Controlling Idea = Mission Statement

Okay, let’s not complicate this.

Your Authentic Purpose...is your authentic purpose. It is your actual origin story or actual reason for why you do what you do. It’s not something a committee labored over or an online mission statement tool generated. It’s the actual reason why you’re doing what you’re doing.

Good news! You don’t have to do any extra leg work here. This system is not “awesome we figured out our Marketplace Story...ok great...now let’s start over with a blank canvas and go onto the Authentic Purpose story.” No, these things are building off each other. They're entangled with one another.

So in order to determine your mission statement, you start with the value proposition you just wrote.

Step 1: Think about these questions:

Why are you doing what you’re doing in the marketplace?
What’s your reason for doing that?

And there you have your original reason

Step 2: Then you ask why again.

This will naturally lead to achieving some sort of future vision for your company.

Let’s do an example together: think about Tesla.

Why are they making electric cars?

In their own words: “Tesla was founded in 2003 by a group of engineers who wanted to prove that people didn’t need to compromise to drive electric – that electric vehicles can be better, quicker and more fun to drive than gasoline cars.”

And why do they do that?

“To accelerate the world’s transition to sustainable energy.”

That’s a future state.

Does this line of questioning sound familiar to you? It’s based on The Five Why’s that’s used in the lean system of thought. But instead of using all five, we’re just sticking to two, because you really just need two to get that necessary information for this statement. Unless it becomes difficult, then you can resort to all five.

To summarize:

Step 1: Ask WHY once. Your answer = your value proposition = your original reason for existing

Step 2: Ask WHY again. Your answer = philosophical/future vision of where you’re going = the impact you’re actually trying to make on either this group of people or society at large.

Narrative Positioning | Why Authenticity Matters

Now that you have both parts of your Macro Story, you have something genuine. It’s not some statement you’ve crafted in a vacuum that has nothing to do with your company.

It’s a statement of belief.

You believe in what you do because you’re heading to an actual future state.

And now you’re building a story that supports and proves your belief statement.

Your mission is actual and active. Your company does exist for a real, authentic purpose. You don’t need to hide behind corporate jargon. Just state who you really are.

Because authenticity is everything. And we notice when it’s missing.

Basically, if you craft an inauthentic statement...you’re a liar. You’re creating dissonance between what your organization actually does and what you say about yourself.

Why would you do that?

Why would you do something that makes people think: “I can’t trust them?” That’s a risk you take when you avoid crafting an authentic message with narrative positioning.

Narrative positioning is freeing. It allows you to release yourself from focusing on one specific statement and hoping people can remember it. Instead, you can build upon a statement of belief and go about proving that through all your marketing. You can provide something of meaning to your customers. Something that is felt.

That’s why you use story as the vehicle to shape meaning for your brand. It’s how we process meaning and put information together.

It’s how we form our own identity.

So it’s just natural that you would form your company’s identity through a story as well.

Disclaimer: We are a participant in Amazon Associates, affiliate advertising programs. By using the Amazon links above, at no additional cost to you, we are able to earn a small commission to help us continue to create content like this.

Bryce McNabb