NORTHERN PLANNER

It’s a dreadful Spice Girls track but also a great approach to strategy, because usually you’ll find that not only do people have two stories that need resolving, so do brands.

John Yorke’s Into The Woods is worth a read if you work in marketing and/or brand communications. It’s a brilliant book on storytelling, but not the usual Pixar structure or any other model that everyone else uses.

If it was that easy, not only would every movie you’ve seen, or book you’ve read, be sublime, so would every pitch you’ve given or received.

I’d wager they were not.

Even Pixar, with a model that get’s trotted out in every second workshop are not immune to duds.

The first problem with everyone developing stories the same way as everyone else, is it all looks the same.

The second problem is that all YOUR stuff ends up looking exactly the same. Consistency is a must, but spend a sec looking at real popular culture and it’s complex, messy, with multiple threads and plot lines. That’s what you’re up against. Simplify can be a false god.

The biggest problem is, no process or structure automatically produces great work, it depends on people, imagination and persistence.

That said, Yorke’s book has a simple truth to why some stories strike a chord in culture and some don’t, and it can help

At the heart of truly great stories are actually two narratives. The one a central figure tells themselves, and the one the world tells that the central figure hasn’t seen. A simple tension between how the figure sees the world and how the world is, or could be. The driving force of the story is the journey the character goes on to realize the world’s story instead of theirs.

It’s Scrooge’s epiphany that life is for sharing not taking. It’s Neo realizing he’s the one. It’s even Wile E Coyote trapped into the belief he will capture road runner when of course the world knows this isn’t possible.

I used to think the gold in this was finding a so called insight, Instead of leaning into the usual audience tensions, it’s more provocative and uncovers more original work to expose a motivating gap between the audience thinks they are and where they could be. I’ve often found it useful to admire your target audience, it’s a different disciple to be their cheerleader.

Like Ikea’s Wonderful Everyday helping us see it’s actually the small everyday things that make us happy, not the big stuff we usually repeat and remember.

Like Cadbury reminds us that while it’s easy to see people as mean spirited and divisive if you just look at the new and social media, everyday kindness if everywhere if you just look.

I’d go further, we all feel we have little agency, but Cadbury tells us the smallest act of kindness can make a massive difference. We can all matter.

However, Cadbury shows something I think there is something even more potent.

They were believing the rubbish about the brand being about joy, when they has just struck lucky with a drumming Gorilla. They had forgotten their own philanthropic history – generous brand at every level.

(warning, this case study, like most, will be post rationalized, it will have been much messier)

So yes, look at the the way a business (or brand) sees itself and the way the world sees it. Or the way a brand sees its potential and the real potential it could grasp. Find the gap and pour magic in.

Because today, most planners and strategist have lost the habit of really seeing both a business and the people they serve.

So have many clients.

Where they should see life, they see a category.

Where they could see a community or person, they see a datapoint.

Or just get Claude to look.

They forget that white synthetic research can get you an answer, the art is looking yourself to realize you were asking the wrong question.

Most people do not really care about the brand or even the category. This can be really dispiriting until you realize both are usually part of something bigger, or attached to something more interesting, or could fit with something in a way no one could see before.

But the first act has to be to look in a different way, not find evidence that supports your worldview, your first hunch or how you think you can disrupt the category.

I often thought that while Just Do It was brilliant, it was just a true picture of how people relate to sport that no one else had the courage to look for, or simply work with. The uncomfortable truth that sport is a way for normal people to escape real life for a while.

But everyone talks about Nike when they don’t really know. So….

One the best pieces of work I was involved in was for IRN BRU sponsoring the Commonwealth Games. Few brands would have been willing to lean into the simple truth that Scottish fans are heroic supporters despite the fact they very rarely win at anything.

So yes, if you’re a strategist looking to retain value against AI or something, start looking for the gap between how a brand sees itself and how the world sees it. Find the magic in that gap.

If you’re brand, lay off the Kool Aid, find the truth in how you’re really used, when you use and why. Find your place, then turn that into something irresistible.

Make two stories become one.