What StoryBrand Gets Wrong | Brand Positioning & Being The Guide
StoryBrand Framework | Doesn’t Tell the Whole Story
Are you familiar with the StoryBrand framework for marketing?
If not, here’s the basics:
It’s a framework for crafting your marketing message by using the hero’s journey.
Your customer is the Hero on the journey.
You (the business) are The Guide.
It puts the customer at the center of the story as you guide them through their purchase.
So what’s wrong with that?
You're not always The Guide.
And if you’re not...it’s damaging to position yourself that way.
Before I rag on them too much, let me make a full confession: I love StoryBrand and have learned a ton from them. Attending Donald Miller’s workshop basically changed my life.
But as I’ve continued on in my marketing career, I realized their framework doesn’t work for every company. They’re making positioning too simple by telling everyone to do it the same way.
So, today, I’m going to break down the good and bad about StoryBrand.
Let’s start with the pros of using StoryBrand…
Why StoryBrand is Great | Story Structure & Empathy
First off, StoryBrand introduces you to story structure. Instead of just winging it with your messaging, you learn there are actual mechanics and designs to stories. By learning that underlying architecture, you can systematize storytelling and apply that structure to your entire organization's identity.
Wondering what those mechanics for storytelling are?
They’ve boiled it down to the SB7 Framework.
SB7 Framework
A Character (Your customer, the Hero)
With a Problem
Meets a Guide (You, the Business)
Who Provides a Plan
Calling Them to Action
Helping Them Avoid Failure
Ending with Success
This very specific framework positions the business as The Guide and the customer as The Hero. So, it recommends that as a business, you should be guiding your customer, not becoming the hero of the story.
What’s great about this?
It’s a tool for empathy. It helps you understand this: “You aren’t the most important person in the room. Your customer is.” Same thing applies to interactions with your employees or other colleagues. In the business world, the most important person in the room is the one you’re serving.
It also guides you to frame your business from the customer’s perspective. The SB7 framework deters you from being struck with what I’ve been calling “The Disease,” which is the inability to see your organization from the outside in. David C. Baker has an amazing metaphor to illustrate this conundrum. In his metaphor, you (the business) are trapped inside a pickle jar. The label for your business is on the outside, but you can’t read the label because you’re trapped in the pickle jar. No matter how hard you try, you just can’t properly speak to your customer or explain who you are. You have The Disease.
What does having The Disease look like in reality? Extreme jargon. A culture no one gets except you. An inability to explain what you do to people outside or your tiny sphere. I mean...when’s the last time you Googled your own company? Try that now. Try to see your company from the outside in.
The StoryBrand framework solves this debacle by teaching you how to see your company from your customer's perspective. You see your customer as The Hero of the story.
By using the SB7 framework, you start to tell a story. You have a hero...which is your customer. They want something. As they’re on a journey to reach this ultimate end state, they encounter a problem. Along comes a guide who gives them a plan and calls them to action. By implementing that plan, it's either going to result in success or failure...and in that character's ultimate transformation.
SB7 challenges you to think about this: What does my customer want? Then it provides a framework to dive into the full depth of the customer's problem.
For example, if you’re selling a camera, the customer’s need isn’t merely for a camera to take pictures or film something. Purchasing a camera actually reflects upon their identity. The camera is a badge that says “I’m a professional filmmaker.” And as you think about that, you realize why the customer got into videography in the first place: they wanted to be Steven Spielberg. Now you speak to the customer from that place.
You understand everyone is on this journey, they're living within a story and you’re playing a secondary role in that story. You're not the hero, they're the hero. And that’s awesome!
The fact that it's giving you a framework to challenge yourself to think about your customers from that perspective is great. However, it's not unique.
None of what they're doing is unique.
It’s basically a combination of two frameworks:
The Copywriting Framework: Problem-Agitation-Solution (PAS)
Joseph Campbell’s Monomyth: 12 Step Hero Journey
It’s taking the established hero’s journey, shortening it, then adding some “marketing magic” from PAS.
You also hear this type of language in other places, like UX and lean design. They often speak in terms like “understand your customer’s story” or “what’s your customer’s journey?” By thinking about the path your customer is on and how they interact with your company, you start to see it from their perspective. If you’re building a hospital clinic, you’re considering what type of situation the patient is in, their goals, and their journey toward health. You aren’t simply building a clinic to treat ailments. You're building a path to engage with patients as they achieve their health dreams.
So to boil it down…StoryBrand is awesome because it forces you to play a secondary role by seeing your customer as The Hero. Their buying experience places them at the center. Everything you do revolves around serving them and making sure they feel like the hero in their story.
At least that’s what we hope StoryBrand accomplishes.
But what if that’s not happening?
What could go wrong?
What if you aren’t The Guide?
Now, I will unpack the dangers of StoryBrand...
Risk of Our Pride | Wise Wizard, Not Lowly Hero
The first danger: Even though it's a framework designed to keep our pride in check...it may not actually accomplish this.
We humans are naturally prideful beings and prideful creatures. It’s our drive to be important.
Think about your own story. Your driving desire is to get from one level to the next. Basically, we’re all trying to become more important. As Seth Godin has stated: much of our decision making is guided by status.
Let me tell a story on myself. I recently bought a new microphone. And how did I make this decision? Because the microphone looked cool. Sure, it had good specs, sound and reviews...but looking cool clearly swayed my decision.
And what does the phrase “look cool” mean? It’s a status. By comparing this microphone to the other ones I’ve had, I knew this one was cooler. There’s a tier of status. And by buying this microphone, I was climbing further up the cool ladder. That’s me admitting I’m prideful. I make pride-driven decisions. We all do.
By training you to put your customer as the center of the story, StoryBrand could be helping you reduce your pride by focusing on serving your customer. But they don’t directly address it. Instead they simply tell you: You’re The Guide. Which might make you think: This person needs me.
You’re not King Arthur. You’re not some wobbly little squire.. You’re Merlin, the wise wizard. Arthur can’t become king until he interacts with you.
See how that could get to your head a little bit? All we've done is transferred the pride back to ourselves. We see our main character as lowly, in need of our help. Guides don’t change. They aren’t on a transformational journey. So you see yourself as having all the knowledge base required to help this person of lack - your customer.
See the circular logic we’ve created? Instead of actually achieving empathy, understanding, and seeing our customer as more important than ourselves...we actually see them as lower than ourselves. We see them as needy. And we’re even more special because we are Merlin with all the answers.
Risk of Bad Positioning | The Guide Archetype Doesn’t Fit Every Business
The second downside is this: Not every business should be positioning themselves as The Guide.
So, what exactly does being The Guide mean? And who should position themselves this way?
The Guide is the mentor archetype. This individual can bring about massive character transformation and provide the keys to your dreams. That’s a lot to deliver. And not everyone does that. Some classic examples include Obi-Wan Kenboi, Dumbledore, and Yoda.
What kind of businesses are The Guide? A counselor, therapist, or life coach. They are coaching you through life or guiding your emotional health. The customer forms a relationship with these providers because they literally want life counsel about the trajectory of their life. Only a very select few industries actually add that much value and bring that level of transformation to a person.
What about relationship-based consultative businesses that guide your decision for a particular area? This includes many B2B companies. These are guiding but not The Guide. They are helpful and provide varying degrees of transformation, but for them to claim and assert that they can provide significant, life-altering transformation is dangerous. Because if they do that, they’re just selling snake oil. It could damage the entire brand and make them sound arrogant.
And then lastly, there are commodities, like grocery stores and gas stations. These are transactional businesses. It would never make sense to position yourself as The Guide or guiding someone.
So that’s my beef with StoryBrand. They’ve provided a great foundation, but it doesn’t tell the full story.
So what do you need to do to position yourself correctly?
Know your role.
Know Your Role | Understand Character & Plot Archetypes
Instead of just saying you’re The Guide, you need to go even deeper into your customer’s story.
Think about these things:
What problem are they facing?
How does the problem relate to their overall journey?
What story are they within?
What role do they see themselves playing within that story?
What role do they see your company playing in that story?
All these questions lead us into thinking about story archetypes. From StoryBrand, you already understand there is a consistent framework for storytelling called story structure. There’s a reason why certain stories work and others fail. Certain conditions must be met in order to have a great story.
Then as we dive even deeper, you learn there is more than one type of flavor of a hero’s journey. Christopher Booker identified seven basic plots in his book which we call archetypes. He believes we tell these same seven stories over and over again.
And he’s not the only one to unmask story structure. Kurt Vonnegut has this entertaining routine where he draws story shapes and ends up with about six of them. There was even a study that mapped out the emotional arcs of stories by analyzing positive and negative words throughout numerous novels. Guess how many story arcs they identified. Six!
Together, these all confirm we are continuously telling about six to seven stories over and over.
And what are these specific stories?
They’re essentially just different flavors of the hero journey. Archetypes. Here are the ones identified by Booker:
Overcoming the Monster
Rags to Riches
The Quest
Voyage and Return
Comedy
Tragedy
Rebirth
These frameworks are incredibly helpful for learning how to speak properly to your customer.
Here are the 3 Archetypes you need to know to properly speak to your customer:
Marketplace Plot: What story is your customer in? How do you meet?
Customer’s Hero: What role are they playing in that story?
Brand Character: Who are you to them in this story?
Let me break it down for you. First, identify your meta narrative which is your Marketplace Story (Not sure how to do that? Read here). Then figure out which archetype your customer is in this story. Are they overcoming a monster like Luke Skywalker in Star War? Or on a voyage and return like Bilbo in The Hobbit?
This helps you understand how your customer sees themself and what they’re actually going through. Do they feel like Cinderella...trapped in a situation where they aren’t getting the respect they deserve? Are they just waiting for a fairy godmother to come along and impart some magical wisdom to help them get to the ball?
Or do they see themselves as James Bond? Are they looking for someone to provide some really cool tools and show them how they work so they can go back to fighting the villain?
After you understand how your customer sees themself and what they’re looking for, you are ready for the next step: How do they see you inside of this story?
Let’s think about James Bond again. What archetype is he in? Answer: overcoming the monster. But how would he want you to show up? Should you be Q? Or M? Or Moneypenny? What role does he need? What character are you in his story?
Here are some questions to consider:
What’s the significance of your product or service to your customer along their journey?
Based on that, how should you show up? How do you mirror the story back to them?
You must really discern who your customer needs you to be.
Are they looking for Ron Beasley? Perhaps they need a cheerful, friendly helper.
Or are they waiting for Dumbledore to show up? They need an all-knowing guide.
Not every business can be The Guide because not everyone has the character archetype of the mentor. Your character archetype might be the every man, healer, or caretaker among other.
Conclusion | Study Stories
So start studying stories, archetypes and your customer. Think about who your customer is and how they need you to show up for them.
StoryBrand is a great start, but just be mindful that it can bite you if you position yourself as The Guide and you're not actually providing that significant transformational value to your customer.
You don't want to overinflate the importance of the product or service you're providing for your customer. Don’t present your solution as this end all to be all...if it’s not.
Be authentic to who you are. Understand your customer. Know their story. Then choose how you need to show up to meet them. Perhaps you are The Guide...but maybe you aren’t.
Ultimately you want to protect how your customer feels and the experience they’re having. Speaking to them appropriately is one of the best ways you can do that.
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