
Erik Saelens

# The Story Wars

## How brand stories beat advertising tales!

### A Storytelling tool for Triple-A brands®

People first trust people.

Then they trust stories.

Then they trust brands.

\- Erik Saelens, author -

The Story Wars

May the story be with you!

\- Susan Verhagen, editor -

**The Story Wars**

**by Erik Saelens**

**published by Brandhome at Smashwords**

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**copyright 2014 Brandhome**

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**All content in this book is copyrighted and protected by applicable copyright laws. Nothing may be published, reproduced, copied, modified, uploaded, transmitted, posted, transferred or distributed in any way without the prior written consent of Brandhome publishing.**

## FOREWORD

Advertising is losing its edge. We are experiencing a transformation in consumers that is giving brands a hard time getting through to them. Communication, for so long the prerogative of companies and brands, has suddenly become something we are all having a go at. The rapid progress of smartphone technology, tablet computers, apps, mobile connectivity and so on, has turned all of us into great communicators... and we are LOVING it. We tweet and retweet, we like and dislike, we share, send and receive, we post our thoughts and ideas, we spread words, pictures and videos every day, any day, nearly 24/7 a day.

The days of passively soaking up all kinds of brand messages and blindly believing them for what they are worth, are over. 'They' don't have to tell us what to believe anymore, because we are very capable of finding things out for ourselves, thank you! Our smartphones, computers and tablets allow us to go out and see through any brand promise in minutes. If we are interested in something we now start looking around for information from sources we trust by nature: family, friends, colleagues, easily reached by mail, chat, WhatsApp, Facebook, Twitter. We add what they tell us to our own search, to what we have found out ourselves on the internet about what may be behind the promise. Or we search for and then visit websites that compare brands, companies and products to get a better picture. What we come across, we share with others and on and on it goes.

Today's consumers don't take anything for granted anymore, because no one has to anymore. For brands there is a rapidly growing need to adapt to that and become Triple-A brands®. Brands need to have more than a promise. Brands need to have a story. A story that is true, real, authentic and is directing every move. The question now is not: How are we going to create the right image? The question now is: How are we going to make people trust us? Authenticity, Accountability and Activation are the three crucial elements any brand will have to work at to stand a chance in this open and transparent society, where the power of knowledge has shifted into the consumer's hands. Brands cannot afford to hide behind a pretty image, they have to be solid and true to their word.

I already have written and published other books about how to become and behave like a Triple-A brand® (www.tripleabrands.com and www.tripleaindex.com), based on Brandhome's long experience as a brand communication agency. For some time now, we have been advising brands to change the script, to become more than a brand in fact. Authenticity, Accountability and Activation should for any serious brand be seen as the pillars for a new kind of communicative bridge building between brand and consumers. The need to tell a story instead of selling a promise demands a new approach to brand communication and even to brand behavior as a whole.

We are on the verge of the Story War. Brands have to be ready to enter a new battleground where true and authentic brand stories will be winning it from traditional advertising tales. And the new weapon of choice is storytelling. It will be a new source of communication, a new kind of marketing tool even, that is rooted in the identity of the brand or the company behind it. The brand story will not just be worked at to get to the traditional brand image or brand proposition. Instead, the brand story will be the guide for extensive storytelling to reach out to people, to customers and potential customers alike.

My colleagues and I have effectively applied storytelling for clients as part of our Brandhome method®, following the 5 steps that make up a thorough and effective storytelling approach: storymining, storylining, storytelling, storyselling and storybuying. Those steps are the building blocks for the continuous effort that is needed to really connect with consumers and turn them into loyal followers of your company or brand. In this book I will take you through the 5 steps and show you when and how to apply them. I will explain why it is essential for Triple-A brands® to work with these steps, as they form a secure guideline for authentic, identity based communication. I will show you why storytelling, the oldest form of communication between people, will be the newest form of communication again. I will have a look at and explain to you the Why, What and How that will have to be discovered by brands to develop a well defined and manageable brand story and to get their storytelling going. And I will take you through the way to actively start storytelling and how to keep your story alive to earn and build the trust from people that any brand will need to win the Story War.

With this book I am not pretending to supply the definitive answer to branding in today's sharing society. However, the message cannot be clearer: there is a Story War starting out there and there will be no hiding place for any story-less brand, big or small, b2c or b2b.

Join the story war with the right weapons. Start thinking about the brand story you will need to tell and how you are going to tell it. I hope my story here will contribute to that in some way. Happy reading.

Erik O.W.A. SAELENS

founder & executive strategic director Brandhome

## 1. Branding in a sharing society

"Waaaaaazzzzzzzuuuupppppp?!"

In 2006 Budweiser scored a big hit worldwide with a TV campaign (www.youtube.com/watch?v=W16qzZ7J5YQ) based around this simple conversation starter. Friends phoning each other just to see how things were, how they were doing, what they were doing, which happened to be nothing much: 'watching the game, having a Bud' - that was the (very) basic idea. The phrase and especially the cool and crazy way it was pronounced made it an incredibly popular campaign, that attracted a big following on the internet and lots of individually produced follow-ups.

In hindsight, you could argue that we unknowingly got a sneak peek at the future we actually experience today, everyday, all around us: a world where sharing our lives with others has become the core of our existence. It has culminated in the application that is currently used by some 450 million people, who are sharing around 50 billion messages daily: WhatsApp. As a close translation of Budweiser's Waaazzzuuuuupppp it could not have been a better chosen brand name. WhatsApp is the pinnacle of sharing power that has transformed the way millions of people communicate. Being able to do this for free is of course one of the reasons for its popularity. WhatsApp has wrecked and is still wrecking the business models of mobile operators all around the world. They have seen their expensive mobile phone networks being abandoned by millions of people who prefer WhatsApp for free rather than using whatever they used to phone and text at a cost.

Sharing experiences are taking place on a wider scale than ever before in the history of mankind, not just thanks to free of charge applications like WhatsApp. Our natural love for sharing what we do, hear and feel have also been propelled forward by all those other types of social media that have been developed in the last decade. They have broken down the last doors to freedom, the freedom to express ourselves - something that has been part of our DNA from the very first moment we started roaming the earth as human beings.

Recently, on the wall of a cave near Nerja, Spain, drawings were discovered that are believed to be the very first ever made by human beings. The drawings are estimated to be around 43.000 years old. Mankind has come a long way since then, but when it comes to what we care about as human beings, nothing has changed. The urge to express ourselves is still as strong as it was back then. We like to let people know what we know. We like to listen to what other people have to tell us. We are eager to hear stories that either bring us news, teach us something or simply entertain us. It is storytelling that has made it possible for mankind to make progress. It is storytelling that has been the carrier by which new knowledge, vision, science, solutions, technology and ideals were spread around in ever wider circles of people in a world that grew bigger and bigger.

Story is the most powerful weapon on earth

When Martin Luther King told the story of his dream, his story truly marked the beginning of the work toward equality that still progresses today. The moment John F. Kennedy told the American people about the dream to put a man on the moon, that dream was set in motion and realised. However, at the same time, let us not forget, the stories of Adolf Hitler and Mao Zedong. They were also able to touch a nerve in hundreds of millions of people. They created a blind following that enabled them to execute their plans, igniting some of the most horrible events the world has ever experienced.

The power of storytelling is that the right story, told at the right time, by the right people can spark something off like nothing else can. We are social creatures and as such we will always want to be part of a whole group. Although there is undoubtedly a lot of individuality in every one of us, in the end we flourish most when we are amongst people who share the same ideas, feelings or goals. We feel a strong urge to bond with like-minded people. The sense of belonging makes us all look for others who we can connect with. What it comes down to is: we want to share the same big story. We want to be fans amongst fans, friends amongst friends, supporters of the same club - the same brand.

Ever since brands have started to play an intricate role in our lives, we have grown to like them in general, love or hate some of them in particular or be indifferent to them. Individually every one of us has his own set of favourite brands, depending on the kind of person he is and the kind of lifestyle he leads. Until now a lot, if not most, of the choices we make that involve brands are influenced by not much more than plain and simple advertising. Creating the right image on the basis of sharp positioning has been the key-element in traditional brand strategy for such a long time now that it has become a habit that seems hard to kick. Although even global brands are increasingly crossing the bridge to online communication - not as an alternative, but as an extension of traditional media - there are still a surprising number of brands that hold on to a strategy of sending their messages to their projected target audiences. Casting the wide net of good old offline advertising does still have its advantages for global brands. One globally broadcast commercial, for instance, is still hard to beat in terms of pure cost effectiveness. The average time we spend watching TV is reaching record highs. Although, in general, people like to complain about commercial breaks and 'stupid' commercials, they rush in by the tens of millions to watch an amazing commercial that runs wild on YouTube. Secretly, people love commercials and there is no doubt whatsoever that they happily let their shopping lists and preferences be influenced by them.

But, social creatures as we are, we have begun to watch television in a way that is increasingly different from even a short time ago. More and more, we have begun to gather around the TV with family and friends, our smartphone and our tablet. Some 80% of smartphone owners and 81% of tablet owners use them in front of the television. In effect, TV-watching has become a moment of sharing, in a big way. It has taken on the role the campfire had in prehistoric times. Comments we used to save up to share at the office the day after the TV-night ('Did you see that ridiculous show last night?'), we now share right there in front of the TV with each other and with anyone out there watching the same thing. Sharing our feelings on TV-shows and commercials has become an extra form of entertainment. There is nothing like tweeting an annoyed comment about something you see or hear and getting a like-minded tweet from people on Twitter you don't even know. That fact has taken watching and consuming media to another level, far more than following the programs interactively on your second screen. As interesting as that aspect of second screen use may be, it cannot compete with the emotion that online 'comment sharing' brings. It adds more intensity to a game of football to react on Twitter about exciting events on the pitch or just to celebrate a goal with other fans online. It is much more satisfying to follow a new dramatic development in an episode of a broadly popular soap with your friends on WhatsApp than just watching it alone from behind a bowl of crisps. It is great to experience a live global event like the opening ceremony of the Olympics on television while sharing online what you see, think and feel, as it shows you, too, are witness to this historic occasion.

Now that we have the means to share anything we want liberally, we are certainly not holding back on that front. There is a new truth to consider for brands worldwide: the sharing society is here and there is no time to lose thinking about what that means for your brand. There is a fundamental new question to be asked about any brand's ability to connect with people on the emotional level. What's the brand story? This is the single most important question for any brand management to ask because that same question is being asked by the very people a brand would love to be friends with. Image and personality are no longer the utmost important drivers for brand preference. People are looking beyond that. People are looking for something more meaningful inside the brand. They are looking for authenticity, integrity, honesty and accountability. They are interested to know how 'their' brands are acting towards increasingly relevant issues like durability (What are you doing to prevent further pollution of the planet?) or production (Are these products handmade by Bengali children in dangerous factories or by normally paid workers under safe working conditions?). Yes, people still buy into a happy, glamorous, funny, shiny, sporty or otherwise enticing brand image. But where they used to stop asking questions there, they are now actively looking for clues about what is behind the facade. They flock onto websites that compare all aspects of a brand or product. They post questions on Twitter and Facebook to find out what friends or others can say about their experience with a brand, product or company. They follow discussions on the internet and take in the facts and opinions they find on the website of consumer organisations.

Now, that on its own shouldn't make brands nervous - as long as they have a story to tell that really goes beyond superficial image. Do they have what it takes to profit from the sharing society, this new era we have entered? Are they up for scrutiny by consumers looking for authentic brands? Are they prepared to get actively involved in a dialogue with their customers? Are they confident they have a story that can inspire customers to become fans and that can be shared around the world? Do they have the true content that is key to any story?

In the sharing society everything is different for brands than it ever was before. For any brand, the time to send out the image-enhancing message and wait for the results has definitively ended. This is storytelling time. The sharing society is waiting for your brand to show its true heart. The people in the sharing society are eyeing your brand for emotions they can really relate to, they can honestly connect with. They want your brand to reach out and interact on a level that is several levels down from the pink clouds of advertised image; they want your brand to show interest in who they are, what they like and what they hate - just like friends do.

The new truth is: they want your brand's story, not your brand's tales. The basics of storytelling cannot be anything different than a story that is authentic, accountable and activating. A brand story that provides all of that will succeed in relating to people. A brand tale is, quite literally, a different story altogether. People can smell and tell the difference between a tale and a story. Which is why any brand that decides to tell a tale will fail to make the connection it seeks with any target audience.

The new face of branding

Can we forget everything we have ever learned about branding? Should we throw every book on branding out of the window, just because we have entered this crazy new era where the whole world is choosing brands based on online word of mouth? Is advertising, as we know it, really, truly skidding towards the edge of existence? Are we on a crossroad of branding principles here or do we have to get used to some sort of dual carriageway where advertising and storytelling are running next to each other to get our brands to where we want them?

The fact is that one of the key principles of marketing is getting the answer right on the question: what do people want? Well, they certainly don't want any company or any brand to send a one-way message anymore. Brands can still try, but they will meet an increasingly indifferent audience. Brands can double their budgets, but they will still not get through the way they did so easily in the years before this new era. Content rules - if there is anything to be learned from today's consumer and their use of media, it is that. Content rules. There is no way of getting around the fact that the new consumer is incredibly hard to reach where it matters most: at the right emotional level, the level where human beings can be touched to become loyal fans of brands instead of indifferent 'brand hopping' consumers. The sea of social media, internet forums, and online communities has become a hotbed of influentials sharing any comments, opinions and the like on any subject. It is the key reason why the superficial tales that are characteristic for traditional advertising have lost a lot of attention value. They are not getting through to people as they used to. A privately made webcam video of a laughing baby can go viral around the world, being shared by millions of viewers on YouTube while a million dollar TV commercial, broadcast around the world, hardly creates a ripple of attention. The competition for attention and attraction is just that much harder.

As a marketer, to brand your brand successfully today, you will have to turn your attention to what is the true story behind the brand. Every brand that wants to compete and stay relevant in the market should be telling a story that goes far beyond image and superficial proposition. In today's markets stories are more essential to a brand's success than ever before because, as part of oral tradition, they compress a product narrative to become the heart of the brand's DNA. As important as a captivating design, great looking stores or attractive packaging, it is by stories that people decide whether or not to like your brand and trust your brand for a longer period of time.

Before, people liked brands most of all for the image and the way that image matched and reflected the personality of their users. That principle is still valid but is not all-important anymore. There is a growing number of people looking for a true relationship with a brand, something that goes deeper than just the image that it radiates. Today, it is less about brands that show who you are and more about brands that reflect what you think. The trend towards authenticity, accountability and durability is making people turn to brands for more than just a promise. They want more relevance, they want more meaning, and they want to feel that the brand they can support shares their outlook on life. As unforgiving as people are becoming for brands that keep behaving and talking as if consumers are indeed just consumers instead of human beings, they are all the more receptive to brands that make a visible effort to understand them and relate to them. That is what makes brand stories the new face of branding. Brand stories leave an indelible mark on people that can last for years to come, continue to grow, and deepen the relationship. Your brand needs a story to be a competitor. And to remain a competitor your brand needs a story that is able to deliver enough content to continue to be liked and most of all shared by large numbers of people.

Is your brand story worth sharing?

The sharing aspect is becoming extremely essential; there is no question about it. Sharing is bonding and it has become one of the most important communication drivers of our modern society. For example, without the simple way people can share what they feel, see, experience and witness, there may not have been an 'Arabian spring' in Tunisia and Egypt. People turned out on the streets in increasingly larger numbers day after day, spurred on by waves of tweets, chats and live smartphone pictures. And would the Occupy movement have grown as big and as fast worldwide without the simplicity by which like-minded people were able to bond on social media and call upon each other to assemble on Wall Street to make their voices heard? In this digital social media age stories spread like wildfire the moment they touch a nerve within the right group of people. Just one individual with a strong opinion and a reasonably large following on Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr or Pinterest is all it takes to spark an event that could easily grow into something that affects us all.

True, social unrest and long felt despair unleash strong social media waves. We can't compare a brand story with a fight against oppression or poverty or youth unemployment. Or can we? Well, to use a phrase that was quickly shared around the world some years ago: Yes We Can.

There is no reason, no reason at all, why the story behind a brand would not be able to travel around the world just as fast as the story about an uprising or an idealistic protest movement. A compelling story is a compelling story. A story that touches people will be met with sympathy and enthusiasm - especially if it is the story that shows some aspect of a brand. It is baffling to see that there are still so many marketers that have a hard time accepting that. Many argue that the buyers of their brands or products just aren't interested in some emotional story as they are solely buying the product out of rational motives. Others mention that their buyers are from an older generation that is just not into social media and therefore it wouldn't make sense to try and get a brand story out there. Still others doubt whether a brand story can even make a difference at all set against the trusted strategy of outspending the competition with traditional advertising.

They are hiding behind the wrong reasons. Already there are too many examples of brand stories that have captured the attention and imagination of hundreds of millions of people around the world. The brands that believe in the power of digital storytelling have managed to successfully create emotional bonds with consumers by offering them a chance to immerse themselves in the brand story. One great example: the amazing Red Bull sponsored jump from the edge of space by Felix Baumgartner. Not only could we watch it and witness it live, but we could also interact with others watching the jump in real time and on social media. And we did, massively. With this event, Red Bull managed to create content and experience with audiences that inspired emotion. They created a perfect story matching their brand values. They created synergy between the extreme event and the company's existing marketing message. It hit the brand message spot on: 'Red Bull gives you wings.' This all happened without one single product mention, but consumers instantly got the brand and what it was about. A stunt became a story and created a feat of storytelling that was unprecedented. Just imagine surpassing the cumulated attention for this storytelling campaign - because that was indeed what it was - by any form of traditional advertising. There is just no way that could have been done, not even by the greatest commercial ever produced.

Such is the power of storytelling that it will change the face of branding, as we know it. There is no point in trying to deny the effectiveness or hide behind a mindset that storytelling is 'some long term, time consuming form of soft selling content', as we have heard people call it. Instead, every brand that will survive and flourish in the sharing society that has only just begun to take shape will have to embrace storytelling as the backbone of its communication strategy.

## 2. Tell a story, not a tale

We sat in a cave, clad in animal hides, huddling around a fire. At a certain point in time someone, somehow, found out how to spark a fire. After that, someone figured out how to keep the fire alive day and night and even how to travel distances with the fire. Fire brought people together, bringing warmth, safety and light in those very cold and very dark ages. Around the fires in the caves and around the fires in small camps all over the land the first stories were told. Primitive sounds became language, hand signs became the images that made clear what those first words couldn't do, the first drawings on the cave walls left stories for others to see and to show them where to go to hunt for food.

Storytelling is as old as mankind. What we know today we know from what we have been told by someone else. Storytelling has been the backbone of knowledge ever since those very first days man opened his mouth and started telling whatever primitive story it was. After that moment the rest is, quite literally, history. See how 'story' is embedded in that word. Up and until (and even long after) the first words were written on parchment rolls and later paper, it was all word of mouth that brought stories from person to person, from people to people, from one part of the world to the other. Where people went, stories went. Stories of where they came from, what they saw, who they met, what went on in the world, who was born, who died, which battle was fought where and between whom and what for. Religion for the most part was spread by word of mouth alone. It is hard for us digital citizens of today to imagine that it once worked like that; that for a long, long time history came to us just by being told in story after story.

Stories have always been our connection with each other and with the world. In the beginning of time and through the dark ages stories got around on foot. People travelled and met others. Their stories turned those total strangers into people who took their time to listen to each other, get into a conversation, and strike up a bond between them, even if it was for a short time. Stories and experiences were exchanged and when people parted company they took their new stories with them, spreading them to new strangers; and so it went on and on, day after day, year after year, century after century. What has changed? Nothing. Nothing at all about the stories. It is just the speed with which stories are spread today. But they are still stories, there is still storytelling between people, there is still no stronger bond than between two people exchanging a story and sharing the same feeling about what it tells them. The printed form, the broadcasted form and the online form enlarged the scale of storytelling; they didn't change the core. Stagecoach nor carrier pigeon nor telex nor radio nor television nor postal services nor fax nor e-mail nor an sms nor a Ping have changed the effect of a shared message. Everything is a story and thus every exchange between us is storytelling. Simple reasoning? Maybe. But the simple truth is that we still receive our knowledge by being told something by someone else. It is storytelling when our neighbour tells us that the old man across the street at number 11 has suddenly died. It is storytelling if the IMF sends out the message that the economy will grow more than expected this year. It is storytelling if we receive word that there has been a newborn baby in our family. Story told, knowledge exchanged, news shared. That is the gist of storytelling and that is what it will forever be, as long as the human race exists.

The dressed up story called tale

"Don't lie to me." Everyone must have heard that at least once in his life from mother or father or both. It is one of the best lessons in life any parent can hand out for free. Alas, as we all know, it is far from easy to learn that lesson. Life throws us too many occasions where a little lie makes for the easiest way out of something we don't want to take the blame for. We know we shouldn't lie about anything, but we do from time to time. What we use most is the 'little white lie', the lie that doesn't seem to harm anybody and feels like the most practical solution to solve a problem. The irony is that deep down we do know better than that. A lie is a lie, no matter its size. Telling a lie and pretending that it isn't such a big deal, really, is in fact our way of lying to ourselves.

And now we have entered an era where the lies, the little white ones as well as the big bold ones, have become very much part of the fabric of our information society. It seems nothing is holding back media, brands and people from all walks of life to try and deceive us with stories that turn out to be false or only partly true. The storm of information that comes our way every single day is making us spin. Not just because of its overload, but because we are starting to doubts the truth behind all those news items, e-mail messages and unusual tweets. From the moment we glance at our iPad at breakfast we don't really know if what we see there is fact or fiction. At least, that is how it is starting to feel for an increasing number of people. It is not as if they are not believing anything anymore, far from it. But it is a given that we have to be careful who and what to believe. Big (and true) stories about the NSA poking around in everybody's smartphones, the continuing warnings about phishing and hacking and crafty letters from Nigeria informing us about huge sums of money that are waiting for us: all that doesn't help to improve our trust in what we encounter in terms of information.

What is true and what is tale? Although it seems like a question that is typical for our time, in fact it is not. The Tale has been the deceiving little sister of Story and wherever Story went, Tale kept her company. Tale was told in exactly the same fashion as a Story and it sounded exactly the same too. Back in the days of stories by the fire and in taverns, when they were spread around by travellers from far and strange places, there was no telling if what people heard had really happened or if it was a product of fantasy. Most people still were ignorant and uneducated, they were apt to believe there were indeed dragons and monsters, ghosts, gods and angels, and that there were all kinds of strange and unexplained miracles that had happened and could be happening to them at any given moment. What was told well was beyond doubt. Whatever story was made up, as long as it was told with conviction and emotion, people would believe it like they would any other story. Back then there was simply no way to tell the difference between story and tale.

Today there is a way to tell a tale apart form a story, but it hasn't become any easier. Ironically, as intelligent, well-educated, literate, cosmopolitan and media savvy we are now, we are still spun a lot of tales that seem hard not to believe. We have even invented a new word for the tale: a hoax. A new branch to the family tree of storytelling and it grows apples so shiny it is hard to resist taking a bite. Most of the time they turn out to have an annoying aftertaste, though. Then the truth comes out and we realise what we have here is a clever tale, made up for the sole purpose of luring us away from true stories and attracting as much attention as possible for a product introduction or brand promotion. Thankfully, a truly great and effective brand hoax is scarce, but once in a while one or two succeed in taking us by surprise.

The bad news about most hoaxes that successfully whipped up a social media storm is that they were not invented by brands themselves but often proved to be the work of outsiders, pranksters who either hacked Twitter accounts or created fake replies from companies. At times funny, but most of the time not so funny at all and damaging for the credibility of the brands who were the victim of those practical jokes 2.0. It is of course just as much part of the internet that it provides tales, yarns, jokes and other forms of 'spin' with the same amount of freedom to take the stage as it welcomes authentic stories about brands and products. However, don't blame the internet or the social media for hoaxes and tales to pull our leg. Also, not even the people who invent the hoaxes, either a paid content creator or a practical joker, can be blamed for its efforts. It is us. We ourselves are at fault. Our hunger for stories has grown so big; we pounce on anything that is out of the ordinary or show a slight resemblance to exciting news or a crazy new development. We have fallen in love with media hypes: media, brands and the general public are happy to feed the fire of a healthy hype, in joint cooperation. And then there are the many brands that mistake short-term online goals ('as many impressions and likes as we can get') for long-term brand objectives. It all adds up to the outcome that we already may have reached the point where it gets hard to distinguish tales from stories and vice-versa.

This makes communication in the social and mobile era all the more difficult. If consumers continue to look for anything sensational, exciting and out of the ordinary, if websites chase after attention and traffic as quickly as possible, and if no one seems bothered by whether the most widely-shared information is even true or not - then one of the first casualties is trust.

If our world is increasingly flooded with news and information that is false, who or what can we trust? Our friends and social networks that spread the hoaxes? The news media that don't want to risk being left out of an interesting hype and go with the flow i.e. the easy broadcast of misinformation? The brands that hope to profit from the lust for instant gratification, entertainment and distraction for the masses and therefore brief their agencies to come up with potential hypes? There is no escaping the sad reality that it is the tale, the hoax, the joke that put sand in the works of authentic storytelling. Tales distort the distinction between fact and fiction. It may seem innocent enough to have a good laugh now and then because of some unfounded story about a brand or a company. But every time that happens it leaves another tiny dent in the feeling of trust we had - and still have - in the sincerity of media and brands.

That is something any brand should treat as a big worry and should avoid at all cost. Because after a while, as a brand, you will risk becoming that funny uncle who is always cracking jokes. The very moment he tries to say something meaningful for a change, nobody is inclined to take him seriously. Telling tales is a risky business to embed in any communication strategy, even if it is just for the cause of a short-term promotion or a creative rumor-around-the-brand effort. Even worse: having said that, it is not far-fetched to start asking the question whether or not traditional advertising is also fast becoming a form of tale telling. The fact is that, set against the authenticity of brand storytelling, orthodox advertising as we know it has an increasingly hard time connecting with people on all the right levels. And exactly that has become one of the key objectives behind modern brand communication.

We need true stories

From childhood on, stories have helped us make sense of the world. Although bedtime stories were still mostly fairy tales that made us go to sleep happily, not much later we were fed stories that taught us about life. Mum and dad told us stories about what we should do and what we never, ever should do. They told us stories to explain us all sorts of complicated things, like the reason why a hot iron would burn our fingers and why we really needed to eat our spinach because of the tiny things called vitamins in it. "Otherwise you will never become as strong as Superman". Great teachers told us stories about history, math, biology and about all those strange parts of the world and the people who lived there. Newspapers told us stories that helped us understand more about the world we lived in, so we could form our own opinions and make our own choices. All through our lives it is by story that we are shaped into the person that we eventually become. And it is by story that we are told why we should buy this product instead of that and why it would be better to trust this brand instead of that other one.

Stories work for us because we have grown up with them. Stories feed our desire to get a grip on our surroundings and lead our lives the way we feel is right for us. Stories hand us the arguments that help us explain our thoughts to other people and convince them to see our point. Stories inspire us to take action and rise up to what we feel is wrong or unjust. Stories can make us look at things differently in such a way that we decide to change our minds about our own opinions, our own lifestyle or about which direction the world we are part of should take. Stories provide clarity and insight in matters that would otherwise stay hidden in riddles or would never be able to get through to us. For instance, global warming was very much a scientific discussion that went over our heads. Until Al Gore came with his brash video, An Inconvenient Truth, that told us plain and simple about what would happen to us if we didn't start doing something about this problem. His story brought the scientific problem right to our front doors. It told us that global warming wasn't something that would maybe or maybe not cause some sort of change in the weather, but that it would for sure flood our world as we knew it and not in some distant future but in a very much foreseeable future. Al Gore's video was a dramatic story that worked on all levels: it gave us the rational facts, it showed us rationally what would happen and by doing so it touched us emotionally and bonded us all together in a newly found sense of urgency. And it could because it combined all the ingredients of good storytelling: it was based on facts, it was told with conviction, it was clear and understandable and it came across as absolutely authentic. This wasn't some sort of political statement or fashionable statement. An Inconvenient Truth showed Al Gore's honest (and 'authentic') worry about the planet and that honesty (and 'authenticity') was the key reason why we could so easily connect with what was told in and by the story.

It wasn't a tale. This was the truth, no question about it. This was the truth. We felt it deep inside us. And even if this particular truth was an inconvenient one, we knew right then and there that this was not some fantasy. There were critics who pointed out that the facts were distorted by overly dramatic images and there were scientists who started waving reports that would prove that global warning wasn't as threatening to mankind as Al Gore had shown it to be. But those comments fell on deaf ears because the story was simply too authentic and too honestly told to be ridiculed as being a tale. This was storytelling at its best. There is nothing as convincing as a story we can relate to. And all true stories have that in common, because we know authenticity the moment we see it, hear it and feel it. A tale is a different story. Although it can be a clever one, somehow, somewhere we have this small nagging feeling from the start that something is wrong, that something is amiss. Tales will always radiate a kind of 'too good to be true' factor, whereas true stories do not. We have learned to recognize that feeling because of our past as human beings. We have grown up with stories and storytelling. We have learned what is true and what is false. We have decided that truth is good and lies are false. As we are only human we forgive ourselves if we let a little lie slip from our mouths in our day-to-day lives. But we are not at all forgiving when we are spun a tale by brands out of sheer commercialism or opportunism. Because when they do that, we get the feeling they are not taking us seriously. And the truth is: they don't. Not taking us seriously is the biggest and potentially most costly mistake a brand can make.

The tales that ads have become

There is no denying that advertising is still able to perform the way marketers like it. As a means of establishing a brand and keeping it alive at the forefront of the awareness of its customers it has seen its possibilities to reach any audience and grow with every new internet driven initiative. Where before integrated communication meant encircling a firm TV campaign by print, outdoor, good old direct mail and in-store efforts, it is now a matter of priorities instead of necessities. For marketers, the online world has opened up a sweetshop of possibilities, ranging from flashy websites and web shops to bannering and sponsored content and from e-mail campaigning, apps and social media to personalized video messaging on anybody's smartphone. It has forced a shift in strategic thinking as well as the need to learn new crafts on the creative side. The new reality of online, digital and mobile communication has developed virtually overnight and it takes a lot of creative figuring out to get a grip on its possibilities. It is even now, some years further in what we can rightly call the online revolution, a matter of trial and error to find out what works best in terms of applied creativity. But, strategically, marketers have to work hard to adapt to the new manner of communication. The online possibilities haven't replaced the traditional advertising possibilities; they have come on top of it. Obviously, that promises way more chances to weave an intricate web of communication around a specific target audience and anyone can see that this is about a new kind of web altogether. The new online possibilities are everything the traditional possibilities weren't: interactive. The one-sided sending is over. Communication has really become communication. Today it is all about two-way traffic of message and response. Marketers have to get used to a mechanism that works faster than ever. Either you get a click-through on your online communication ads or you don't. Today's results are measured in clicks, likes and retweets. If your scores in that department are satisfying, it will give you some idea about how your brand is generally doing in the marketplace, as it is an indication of the state of awareness, brand preference, brand recognition and likeability.

One thing is for sure, with the added possibilities of online, digital and mobile communication, having a solid brand story is vitally important. The key question when planning and strategising a brand campaign has always been: What's our message? What are we going to tell our target audiences? What is that single most important proposition we want to get through to them? Answering that as sharply as possible has always been the main objective before getting to work to translate the outcome into a creative approach. With the new reality upon us it is fair to say that it is vitally important for any marketer to change his mindset on this subject. The key question cannot be 'What is our proposition?' anymore. It has to be replaced by: 'What's our story?' It is not saying the proposition has become obsolete as of today. There will always be brand and product propositions when it comes to going out into the marketplace and media. The difference is that, for brand management, the focus needs to be directed at the brand story that serves as the main driver for every action the brand will take on the path to success. Brands that lack a well rounded brand story will remain doing what they were doing before, which is thinking solely in terms of plain and simple advertising of the brand. That in itself doesn't look that harmful - if it wasn't for the mistake numerous brands make by looking at online as just an extra, cool new type of medium. A relatively cheap one too, compared to traditional media types and wow, look at how your brand can go viral with just one funny film on YouTube, made for next to nothing. Are we exaggerating here? No. It is indeed relatively cheap to start a campaign on the internet. It is enormously tempting to try and go for it in the short term. Just do it, literally. Go out with a nice enough offer or just a really creative idea and see if the public picks up on it and delivers the clicks and likes you hope to score. If it doesn't succeed, well it doesn't hurt that much does it?

Of course it hurts! It hurts right where your brand lives. This kind of old school advertising doesn't do anything for your brand. Not anymore. It doesn't add value to the overall brand's message nor does it add to the reputation of the brand. Maybe there will be some progress in terms of awareness, but that will always wear off the moment there is a lull in your advertising efforts. At the very least the brand may not be directly damaged, but if your brand, despite lots of successive advertising efforts, isn't going places then that is damaging too. The simple truth is that advertising, in the traditional sense of the word, will not be more effective just because you have started to apply it to new kinds of cool, new media. That kind of advertising will not cut it anymore. 'Ads', in a world where the consumers are no longer interested in messages that are just shot at them from a distance, will become the tales of today. Tales that will not get through. Tales that will be met with indifference. Tales that may reach the brain but not the heart. Tales that will only succeed in slightly rippling the surface of the consumer's interest because of its shallow short-term promise. Tales that won't be believed nor trusted.

With our fingers on our smartphones and tablets we are constantly looking for stories to share - because thanks to all these technological innovations we have now become a sharing society. If we come across something that we find interesting enough to WhatsApp about with friends, send on to our e-mail contacts, post on our Facebook wall or tweet about, we want to be sure it is not a hoax. The last thing you want is to be is the guy who sent half the world some stupid story that turned out to be completely false or put out there by some silly brand. In many circles it is even frowned upon sharing advertising as such or even commercially polluted news or information. And who wants to be unfollowed on Twitter?

The big lesson for brands to learn is how to frame advertising within a brand story. Brand story is key. Brand story is king. You need to find your brand story and you need to make sure it is authentic, accountable and activating enough to make it connect with your audiences in the short term as well as the long term. Today's media landscape resembles a forest filled with nests full of hungry little birds waiting to be fed stories. It is content that counts. Brands need to get their brand story as rich as possible to be able to feed their consumers with new stories on a regular basis. Their brand story must inform as well as inspire. They need their brand story to be able to charm as well as to sell. They need their brand story to build trust and attract new clients in the marketplace. They need their brand story to be able to connect with people and embrace them in a virtual community. All that and more. For most brand's marketing communication management this will mean daring to go back first to move ahead after. The brand story can be hidden anywhere, down at the very roots of the brand or in the mission and values of the parent company itself. It doesn't necessarily mean a dramatic turnaround or a 'hold the presses' moment, where everything is turned upside down. However, if your brand wants to make the best use of all the new storytelling possibilities of today's world, you will have to define or redefine the story that will inspire and activate people to share it. A story that will make them say: "I'll buy that!". And when that happens, you can be sure they will buy your brand too.

## 3. A brand story to believe in

Let's have a look at what Jan Koum, one of the founders of WhatsApp, wrote in January 2012: "We knew we could do what most people aim to do every day: avoid ads. No one wakes up excited to see more advertising, no one goes to sleep thinking about the ads they'll see tomorrow. We know people go to sleep excited about who they chatted with that day (and disappointed about who they didn't chat with). We want WhatsApp to be the product that keeps you awake and that you reach for in the morning. No one jumps up from a nap and runs to see an advertisement."

Avoid ads. That just about says it all! Those two words alone sum up the story of today. It's the story of a rising population that is walking away from the tales of advertising. With every new development on the internet, the mood of the world moves further and further from advertising tales. The introduction of social media made us realise again that communication between people was infinitely more fun, exciting and fulfilling, than falling for the fake interest of brands, doing their best to be sort of nice, but obviously always trying to sell us something. "Advertising has us chasing cars and clothes, working jobs we hate so we can buy shit we don't need", said Tyler Durden, played by Brad Pitt in the film Fight Club. What Durden said summed up the mood when the film was released in the late 90s. The simmering resentment against most (boring, annoying, irritating) advertising has now burst through the surface. It is no surprise that WhatsApp is such an enormous success, amassing 450 million members in a matter of a few years and still welcoming some 1 million new members every single day. Their brand story speaks out to everyone who wants nothing more (and nothing less) than be able to freely chat to anyone he likes, at any moment he likes and on any device he likes. For just a small monthly sum you step into an advertising free environment, totally committed to the great fun true communication has to offer: sharing each other's stories. Just recently, WhatsApp (32 employees in total) was acquired by Facebook for the staggering sum of 14 billion dollars, as it is part of Facebook's mission - and brand story - to make it as easy as possible for people to connect with each other.

It is another signal that unveils the trend in today's world: people are longing for true connections, first of all with others like them, but also with outside parties like brands that have something meaningful to tell them. It seems that a lot of people around the world are done with listening to and looking at messages that are randomly thrown at them. It is not that they don't want to buy anything anymore. They just want to buy 'shit they don't need'. The general buying pattern is showing a shift towards more meaningful, durable and responsibly made products and a growing preference for brands... with a story. Not just any story, but a story that you can relate to rationally as well as emotionally. What more and more people are looking for in brands today is a story they can believe in and that they are even happy to share with friends, family and followers. We can't stress enough that it is that very element of sharing a brand story that will decide the faith of a brand. This world has changed and will change further. A whole new generation is virtually sharing every little emotion and experience at any moment of the day. As if their lives depend on it, the first thing they do when they wake up is grab their smartphones and see what's up with their friends - what's the story, what's new, what's happened? And this goes on until they go to bed again. The addiction to their devices is not about the devices alone. It is an addiction to being part of their own world of stories. Their own stories about what they experience throughout the day, stories of friends and family that come in throughout the day and yes: also news stories and brand stories throughout the day. To them anything that can be shared is meaningful and everything that is meaningful can be shared. For a new generation this has become a life of storytelling. They may not be aware of it themselves, but in truth that is what has changed and it is a game changer that is not to be underestimated by anyone wanting to stay in touch with target audiences. No story, no connection. To brands, that is not just a threat, it is a promise.

Building your brand story

A brand story is not what you may expect. It is not just the story of the brand. Of course there is still the sum of trusted brand assets like brand positioning, brand personality, brand values, etc. Those remain important, but they are not the essential drivers behind the brand's storytelling. A brand story is in a certain way comparable to the story behind every human being. The story of a brand doesn't differ very much from a company story or a corporate story or, for that matter, the story of a human being. We are all individual persons and each and every one of us is his or her own story. It is helpful to start looking at your brand the same way and literally ask it: what's your story? Like when you meet a stranger for the very first time. You are not going to ask him: "Hey, what's your message?" And his first words to you will never be: "Boy have I got something great to sell you!"

So, what is your brand's answer to your question? "We want the whole world to chat freely without any ads to disturb them", like WhatsApp? "We want cars and driving to be as safe as possible", like Volvo? "We want people to just enjoy sports and feel like champions", like Nike? Examples that make the defining of your brand story look like the easiest exercise there is. But as with many other things the easiest outcomes are the hardest to come by. A brand story takes a lot of courage for a start and then some luck. The difficult part being that a brand story is in fact more an emotional exercise than a rational one. In the sense that it is founded on a deeply felt and absolutely true answer to the question we call The Big Why. It is the first part of the three steps that need to taken to build a meaningful brand story: Why, What, How.

The WHY: the soul and identity of the brand

It is the most important question of all, as the answer will define the future of your brand: Why are we here? What do you want your brand to be for people? What problem or problems do you want it to solve for them? What do you want it to add to their lives? What do you want it to mean to them? What do you want it to mean to the world? What is your brand's big mission in life, why is it really and truly here? This is the stadium in which you are actually into a lot of soul searching for the wellbeing of your brand. This is all about the soul of the brand. It is the spark that will spark a fire that people will want to come to, sit around and warm themselves. The 'why' of your brand is the foundation on which everything else will rest. how it will operate, what it will look like if it is a physical product, how it will talk, what it will do and what it will refrain from doing to secure its place in the world.

Obviously this is the stage and the moment where brand values come into play. Or, better said: the values of the company and organisation behind the brand. When your brand's parent company lives by values like 'traditional, solid, involved, responsible' then it can't be that your brand story will become one based on values like 'innovative, playful, happiness'. That seems logical, but you may be surprised about the number of brands that in terms of values are not quite in line with the company behind them. Sometimes because of dilution along the way, brand managers more or less forget about the company values while working on the brand's hectic life in the marketplace. Sometimes it happens due to more than a little opportunism to make a profit from changing market circumstances. Whatever the reason, it is essential not to lose sight of core company and brand values. The Why are we here? question centres very much around the identity of your brand. The answer tells you - and the rest of the world too from that point - who you are and what you stand for. That cannot be based on anything else than the values that either once upon a time were established or that, when you are a start-up company or start-up brand, comes from your own personal outlook on life.

Richard Branson's Virgin empire was the logical consequence of a mind that had a naturally rebellious streak. Branson had this cheeky preference of always wanting to be the first to do something new, to be the one to shake up existing ways to do things. His daring, positive, innovative, playful, boyish, anti-establishment drive: his personal character delivered the values that are still easily recognizable in all Virgin activities. Those personal values are intricate part of the Virgin brand story. Suppose Richard Branson had been a quiet, introvert, modest and careful man, would Virgin have been like this today? Would it have been here at all? Asking the question is answering it. Which is really all you need to remember when you start looking at your brand to put your finger exactly on the spot that tells you why it is on earth.

The WHAT: the ingredients of your brand story

Now that you have your brand story understood as clear as a bell - at least for yourself and your organisation - you can take a critical look at the ingredients that underline that story. That is a hard thing to do because it could mean a revision of anything from the physical product itself, the packaging, the marketing, the logistics, the distribution, the organisation behind the brand, the house style and the overall tone of voice to even the make of the cars your company leases. Scary as this sounds, it is all simply the logical consequence of the story you want the world to believe in. You have chosen to tell a specific story about your brand, a whole world of emotional motives with which you want to reach out and connect to likeminded audiences. "People don't buy what you do; they buy why you do it. And what you do simply proves what you believe", said Simon Sinek, author of Start with Why. Where your Why is about attitude, your What is about behaviour. Everything your brand does or doesn't do should be a true reflection of its character and identity and the brand story that you are spreading around. If you want people to share the story of your brand they shouldn't be surprised by something that looks - or is - out of character. If your brand is one big story about durability and love for the planet, you should go as far as running your delivery trucks on biogas instead of gasoline or mounting as many solar panels on your production facilities as possible. Putting your money where your mouth is, is a popular saying, but it fits the bill about the level of commitment you will have to bear in mind.

So check your physical product for anything that might be asked about the brand story. What about the ingredients? What about the function? What about the size of the packaging? What about the material of the packaging? What about the service if that is your product? What about the speed and efficiency of this service? What about the transparency of the company? What about the back office? What about the helpdesk? What about the connectivity? What about solving unexpected problems for customers? What about customer service in general? What about governance? What about compliance? What about working and production conditions? What about attractive working environment? What about internal educational programs?

And so on. The list is as long as your brand story needs it to be. Whatever it takes to back up your authentic brand story needs to be checked in order to, well, keep your brand story authentic. Because that means you can be sure to have an endless sea of stories to tell and that you will never run the risk of a faux pas with a single one of those stories. Securing your What is extremely important, as every little detail has the potential to be used in or as a story that adds to your brand's reputation and likeability. Storytelling isn't an instrument for the meek. It is a path that, once taken, demands never ending attention to your brand's operational way of life. Every single day, 24/7 it needs to be what it says it is. Any kind of failure to do so will mean that it isn't telling a story but, rather, it's telling a tale.

The HOW: the telling of the story on all levels

The answer to the HOW seems like a no-brainer: "Well, through the media of course, online, offline, just what we can afford and what we think is needed to reach our target audience". We are sorry to disappoint you, but that is the part that comes later. It will always be necessary to get started on a media strategy at some point, but as a communication instrument storytelling demands a different way of thinking. Good storytelling is not just a clean cut telling of a brand story or parts of it, one part at a time, in a nice and orderly fashion. A brand story is a complex web of stories that come from all sides and have their own objectives to realise. Individually, they literally tell their own story. They can be stories for internal use, to inspire, inform or motivate everyone within the organisation. There can be stories that tell the brand story from an HR point of view to attract talent. There can be stories for individuals in the client base or stories specifically designed to involve people to fill out an online poll as a way of marketing research. There can be specific stories for existing, true fans of your brand, aimed to draw them closer still and become active brand ambassadors. There are no limits to the use of storytelling as a means of communication as it is such a liquid, flowing process of spreading the story. Whereas traditional advertising is much more centred around a campaign theme, is strongly media focussed and is generally driven by largely quantitative objectives, storytelling is driven by one objective only: to connect with people. Storytelling is the brand acting as a person, trying to strike up a conversation with another person.

That is what makes storytelling so very different from the tales that are told by advertising. It is looking for some level of relationship on the basis of a story that is, not should be, meaningful, authentic, interesting and involving. Because of that, as a starting point for communication, storytelling forces marketers to think more deeply than what any advertising theme can sum up or convey. Even at its most breathtaking, advertising cannot last long; it has to be refreshed by another campaign and another campaign after that and yet another campaign. As we all know the chances of a long and unbroken string of extremely brilliant campaigns aren't that great. And even so, all that advertising at its very, very best will do is strike on a superficial level of awareness, maybe scoring some admiration, maybe see a peak in views on YouTube and likes on Facebook and then the effect wears off and winds down until the next campaign effort. Advertising has always been like that: it has always made us marketers feel like we had to start over all the time.

The storytelling instrument, however, allows you to go past the short-lived dazzle of advertising and concentrate on building a two-way bridge between your brand and the people you think are important to connect with. What is important here is that you develop a storytelling platform that creates all the room your brand story needs to create an endless string of stories and meet any number of people halfway. A storytelling platform is not like any traditional communication platform, which is still seen by many brands as a launching pad to send messages into space. A storytelling platform is the interactive hub of stories going out and stories coming in. It is a lively meeting place, the warm home of the brand story where anyone is invited to listen to stories, to join the party, to experience the brand, to get involved, to be inspired and to vent an opinion. Compared to a communication platform, a storytelling platform is much more focussed on connecting the brand with people. It is much more about brand content than about brand image. Where a communication platform's main concern is to strengthen brand awareness, brand image and brand positioning, a storytelling platform has the job to make people see that inside, the brand is really what it says on the outside.

Therefore, building a storytelling platform is a crucial condition for Triple-A brands®. These brands distinction and success is built on three pillars: Authenticity, Accountability, and Activation. Of all marketing communication instruments, there is nothing like storytelling to empower brands on all those levels, because of the content driven character. To paraphrase a classic Heineken theme: storytelling reaches parts advertising cannot reach.

## 4. Storytelling for Authenticity, Accountability and Activation

When do we trust someone? In this day and age there will be many people who will answer that with a wry smile and the snappy answer: "Never". The time when people blindly trusted each other has long gone. That was the time when a community was exactly that: a physical group of people who knew each other by name, face and family. A warm network of personalities who could trust each other to help out whenever the need arose. Today 'community' means something else: a fuzzy online network of individuals, from so-called friends on Facebook to unknown followers on Twitter. They do share with each other whatever they come across, but when it comes to trust we have all become too individual and critical to put our faith in people just like that. Faith in anything is hard to come by in our modern world. Increased individuality, the speed of daily life, a growing sense of failing to get a grip on developments around us, the risk of our bank accounts getting hacked, the chance of losing our privacy or even our identity to digital wizards, greedy banks, political instability - in a way it's a miracle that we still do put trust into anything at all.

The general feeling of insecurity makes it a scary time for today's brands. It has become more difficult for them to win consumers' hearts and minds. The generation that grew up with traditionally trusted brands and stayed loyal to them, is being rapidly replaced by a generation that isn't loyal at all and doesn't buy what a brand is selling them, just like that, in the first place. What power traditional advertising had for decades has diminished. No longer are people bowled over by great, big, expensive TV-commercials. In fact, we have grown a little tired of that stuff. Somehow people are past brands acting like peacocks, trying to dazzle the world with their feathers. They have gotten accustomed to the cheery slogans and fun messages and have started to look through it, restoring in full the all-important critical question: what's in it for me? And wanting to hear something different than just a lame proposition promising this, that and a world of luck and happiness. The simple truth is: people are tired of tales. Brands have to work harder than ever to win their trust. They need to be Triple-A brands®: Authentic, Accountable and Activating. Without turning to storytelling, either as a substantial addition to their advertising or as the replacement for advertising as such, brands will not be able to nurture their Authenticity, back up their Accountability, and prove their Activating character.

Authenticity: storytelling to show you mean it

Your brand can be artificial or your brand can be authentic: you choose. There is nothing in between, don't bother looking for nuances. If brands want people to believe them they cannot be anything else than as true as they can be. The credibility of a brand is as thin as one night's ice on a pond, which is why it is good advice to face people just the way your brand really, really is on the inside. Your brand has to show its heart and soul, pride and passion with everything it has. Your brand story has come from there, but after having defined that, it is essential from then on that everything the brand does, tells and shows is authentic. The best brands in the world are successful because people can feel the pride and passion of the brand owners shine through. If you look at Apple, you see a company that is as authentic in its intentions and operations today as it was when Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak got together and started building a computer. The maddening attention to detail and the maniacal ambition to do something no one has done so well before is visible in every single Apple product. You can feel their desire to make the best products ever, over and over again.

Like Apple say themselves:

This is it.

This is what matters.

The experience of a product.

How it makes someone feel.

When you start by imagining what that might be like.

You step back.

You think.

Who will this help?

Will it make life better?

Does this deserve to exist?

If you are busy making everything, how can you perfect anything?

We don't believe in coincidence. Or dumb luck.

There are a thousand "no's" For every "yes".

We spend a lot of time on a few great things.

Until every idea we touch enhances each life it touches.

We're engineers and artists.

Craftsmen and inventors.

We sign our work.

You may rarely look at it. But you'll always feel it.

This is our signature.

And it means everything.

Designed by Apple in California.

Look at the last two lines. "This is our signature. And it means everything". That isn't advertising copy. Those are words from the heart. Just these two simple little lines alone tell us a story of incredible drive, ambition, self-criticism, burning passion, tremendous pride. All directed at enhancing other people's lives with Apple products - they want nothing other than that, it is all that matters to them. It is not about money, it is not about ego. This is their true feeling. This is what authenticity looks like.

A brand that believes in what it does, will always outclass it competitors, because it doesn't have to waste energy inventing a story that sounds plausible or credible, even if it is only half true. A brand that knows that what it is made of and why it is here on earth will always be at ease when it is telling its stories. It is the difference between a politician that is more interested in a position of power and a politician who wants to change things for the better. They may both be able to give a speech that makes an impression, but it will be the power hungry politician who will have to be on guard all the time. He will always be talking from behind a mask, never at ease when speaking without a script. He will be the one who has a hard time keeping up appearances. And guess what: people will feel that and will have their question marks about his promises, his true motives, his ability to deliver when the time comes. Being authentic is not a trick for people or for brands. Being authentic is being yourself, completely, utterly, all the time. That includes knowing that you will not be able to please anyone and still be OK with that. Trying to get everyone in your camp means that you will have to make concessions to yourself, to what you believe in, to what you feel passionate about. The moment you decide to do that, you are stepping out of your own comfort zone. As a brand you will believe your own brand story. And make no mistake: even doing that once can be enough to undermine years of built up trust.

Storytelling is the means of showing your brand's true face. That doesn't automatically mean your brand comes out with nothing but emotional stuff. Authenticity can be represented just as strongly by rational stories that tell something about the way you produce things or the way you are always trying to find ways to improve customer service. Stories told not as 'the brand', but by the people who actually make the brand tick, individuals whose stories radiate the drive and passion to improve life for the brand's customers. Not being afraid about your image is what counts most. Authenticity is identity driven instead of image focussed and so too should your storytelling be identity driven.

Be yourself, as a brand. Be proud to tell your story. Tell people what you believe in and show that you mean it. Don't polish what doesn't need polishing. The honest truth about your brand doesn't need any polish to shine.

Accountability: storytelling to hold nothing back

Promises! Promises! Once it was the title of a musical. But for brands, today's stage is no longer a song and dance show. That show is over. What the audience is interested in now is a look behind the scenes. What makes your brand tick, how real are the promises that are shown on the theatres outside? Accountability, until not so long ago was just seen as something that you associated with corporate and fiscal year reports, is now the brand in its most naked form. Keeping promises, backing them up with explanation and proof, opening up for any person and party with an interest in the brand: it has all become crucial to hold up a brand's reputation and credibility. You could say with some irony that brands have brought that on themselves because of their efforts to conquer the public with wave after wave of traditional advertising performances. The promises that went out now come back at them in the form of ever more critical curiosity of what they are doing to justify their advertised propositions or, for that matter, if they are doing their share to help the environment, act responsibly or have durable production. The meaningful stuff behind the package and the promise is becoming a matter of interest for a generation that is not taking commercial promises for granted as an older generation used to do.

Justifying your brand's actions is one of the main reasons why it is so enormously important to have a brand story to believe in. Without it, your brand would have nothing more to show for itself than its advertising promises. For some products that may be enough. Having said that we actually have a hard time coming up with an example to back up this statement. Even the simplest branded products like, say, matches or sugar lumps or eye drops or bath sponges. Even those are open to question. As the modern day, careful consumer you have become, you ask yourself one or two questions about even these types of products. Is that cane sugar really cane sugar? Is it truly fair trade, like they say? Those matches, are those from trees that are being replaced by other trees? This bath sponge, is it organic or synthetic? If it is organic where does it come from? Did it get harvested from the right place and are the divers decently paid or underpaid? Maybe you are not as curious a consumer yourself, but don't expect everyone to be like you in that respect. Why shouldn't they be? Consumers today want to know what they are buying and they want to know if what they are promised is true, if what brands and companies tell us is the truth, the half truth or a downright lie.

The brand story is, besides a lot of other things, the backbone of accountability. This is where the truth of your brand is found for those who have gone out to look for it. But that same truth needs to be actively distributed to all the groups of people that matter to your brand. Accountability needs constant attention. Many are the brands and companies with the idea that accountability comes into play as a kind of crisis management, as a swift PR offensive to put something right that went wrong or explain some damaging trouble away. It is the other way round. By actively and regularly addressing all kinds of aspects concerning your brand story (or your company/corporate story) you cultivate a connection with people who slowly but surely will see how your brand works, how it thinks, what its ambitions are... When you share this information without being asked for it, either to the public, to your customers or to your stakeholders, you show your brand has nothing to hide or - more positively - it is proud of what it is doing. Accountability is pro-active storytelling. The more attention you direct to creating and nurturing a sound connection between your brand and the people that are important for its success, the better it is. That way, even when something unforeseen does happen, your reaction to that won't be anything like the panicky confused half truthful press releases you see all too often. At that moment your explanation will be met by a lot less criticism and a lot more calm. Any story you tell at that time concerning the unexpected problem or mistake will fit the picture of a brand that has structurally been honest about its operations, ideas and vision. That is the true accountability becoming a Triple-A brand®. Anything else is just silly PR, the tales that signal a cover up.

Activation: storytelling to make people buy you

This is the part where storytelling enters the territory of SALES. It is where the story war will be fought and where the value of storytelling comes to the surface... and bottom line. All those stories to show the true face of your brand will pay off as they have been paving the way for other types of stories: the stories that convince people to take the final step and buy your brand. To many marketers, that sounds like a job for advertising and promotional efforts. Push, pull and sell, sell, sell. It is all well to tell stories to back up your accountability and to show you are passionate about what you do and want, but in the end we have to get practical. There is money to be made, isn't there? There is indeed, yes, but there is no reason why the selling part could also not be successfully executed by storytelling. If anything, chances are that it could prove even more successful than the traditional hit and run approach of advertising and promotion. Selling is about convincing, and conviction is the end product of trust and trust is what your brand is or has been building up through storytelling.

One of the advantageous aspects of storytelling is that it works more cumulatively for your brand than plain advertising. Storytelling departs from firmer ground as it is more focussed on building a relationship with consumers than advertising. Its intentions are generally far more directed towards creating the right image in the longer term. That is a vulnerable operation at the best. Image is built on perception more than on actual knowledge. Today advertising campaigns need to be refreshed quicker than ever before. Today's consumers are spoiled with the overload of funny, spectacular, emotional, shocking or otherwise entertaining content that is so much part of their lives now. Consumers aren't easily impressed anymore. There is a growing trend to hop from one hype to another. What isn't a trending topic doesn't seem to exist. So it is a huge task to build your brand image as consistently as it should be built.

First of all, it demands great discipline to stick to the proposed strategy. That alone seems increasingly difficult for many brand managers, judging by the many twists and turns you can see a lot of brands take within a period of two or three years. It is a fact that the pressure 'from the top' to deliver results has increased, but no-one is doing his brand any favours by changing its advertising too fast and too radically. And secondly, what makes image building even more vulnerable is the amount of creativity that needs to be applied to continually create a high level of awareness (a devilishly hard job by itself in a world like this) and doing that with enough consistency over a longer period of time, so the brand image can grow in strength. Good luck with that - creativity has always been the abstract factor in any brand strategy. You can strategise as brilliantly as you like, if it isn't followed up with ideas that bring the strategy to life in the form of great attention grabbing and truly influential advertising, than all is to no avail. Quality creativity is still as hard to come by as ever and to make it even harder the deadlines to perform are shorter than ever and the budgets to work with have not gotten any bigger - and that is an understatement.

What advertising lacks, storytelling makes up for in spades. There is more control, as all stories depart from your brand's identity. That is firmer material to build with than the abstract campaigns that try to create a new brand image. The moment you are coming out with stories about your brand that show a lot about your brand's level of accountability and show a lot of your brand's true, authentic self you are building a stronger case for your brand than by advertising alone. Every story will function, as a building block and the total sum of the stories will cement those blocks in place. Storytelling, either explaining things rationally or personalising the brand on an emotional level, will create an atmosphere of trust and belief around your brand that is more valuable than anything - and that includes a shiny brand image. It is one of the reasons Triple-A brands®, living by their criteria Authenticity, Accountability and Activation, are doing better than brands that are still focussed on creating an image and not much more. By working consistently along the lines of accountability and authenticity those brands open up the door to consumer willingness to purchase. Storytelling to activate is different from storytelling to show accountability or authenticity in the way that it does have a selling objective. But it will never come across as pushy as the hard sell of promotional, activating advertising. Storytelling to activate is the organic next step in the storytelling process. If done properly it will not be seen as a typical 'hard sell' activity, but as a recognisable and even logical gesture - as if we have been expecting something like this from your brand.

A great example of that is 'Mattress Mack' Jim McIngvale from Houston (Texas). This retailer made smart use of the Super Bowl by inviting his customers to come in and he offered them an exiting challenge: anyone spending more than 6000 dollars in the store in the days leading up to the Super Bowl, would get all their money back if the Seattle Seahawks, very much the underdog, would win the Super Bowl title. It cost him 7 million dollars as some 1000 clients spent 7000 dollars each. Earlier, Jim had already returned 685.000 dollars to clients who had rightly predicted that the Super Bowl would be a battle between the Seattle Seahawks and the Denver Broncos. All in all, these activation activities cost Jim around 6% of his yearly turnover. It didn't bother him in the least. It fit with his long time brand story of being the retailer of the honest deal, a man always as good as his word, a reputation of being a stand-up guy. Like he said: "Financially, sure, it is a lot of money, but I see it as marketing costs and the all-important thing is: this is great for my reputation and that is what counts most".

A pragmatic guy, but smart too. His line of thinking clearly is about building a reputation more than just an image. Reputation, in the end, is the home of trust where people will be happy to come in and buy what they are looking for.

## 5. Storytelling: a story of many stories

Back to the basics of the brand story. What is it for and what should you do with it? Do you actually need one? The scepticism is widely spread amongst many marketers, so used to pushing brands and products by advertising based marketing. It is understandable scepticism as the very word storytelling does evoke associations with slow going. We have actually heard someone make the comparison: advertising is fast food, storytelling is slow food. There is some truth in that storytelling is in absolute terms a long-term form of brand communication. Maybe that is why it makes so much sense to try and integrate advertising with storytelling and vice-versa. You use both instruments differently, but the sum of all efforts is a better and better picture of the brand and a growing understanding of its meaning.

After all, a brand story is what defines a brand's personality as well as its positioning. It is a set framework that makes sure anyone involved in the brand - from marketing director and brand manager to the fresh junior marketing intern coming straight out of business school - knows the boundaries of any activity that is proposed for or taken in favour of the brand. The brand story and its well described values set the course for strategies, advertising, promotion, PR, sponsoring, client contacts, logo design, packaging - anything, including storytelling. The brand story leads the way and that way today doesn't mean going out into the world shouting anymore. There is too much going on to get noticed like that in the first place and it would take an enormous advertising budget to be able to create the awareness like in the old days of worldwide TV-advertising campaigns. The framework of the brand story has therefore become more important. With budgets not exactly reaching sky high proportions these days (even the biggest brands in the world have grown cautious on spending) it is wiser to concentrate on ways to paint the bigger picture of a brand and that is where brand storytelling comes in.

Storytelling is not a cheaper form of advertising. It is not a low-budget substitute for getting people interested in your brand. Good storytelling is like starting and tending a vegetable garden: it is all about grooming the soil, sowing the seeds, nurturing the plants, picking the fruit and after that: start over again. Never stop caring. Never stop telling stories that give new depth to your brand and that will sow new seeds that will grow interest and sympathy. It involves careful planning in a different way than it would take to strategise a traditional advertising campaign. Storytelling is an ongoing process on many different levels and through many different channels, whereas advertising has a more wave-like structure. Advertising has a more visible and pronounced character and is very much aimed to impress, while storytelling is a continuous content based flow of information, emotions, experiences, news, facts, anecdotes, initiatives and even invitations to join the story. Sometimes storytelling meets an advertising campaign in the middle, in the sense that for a period of time all stories are somehow closely attached to the overall advertising message, adding content that advertising has no place for. That kind of integration can be very successful in that it opens the gates of attention wider than an advertising drive would be able to do on its own. It will make your brand spread the net of communication wider and at the same time you will be fishing deeper, as it were, right under the wave of advertising.

But the moment a particular advertising drive ends, the storytelling carries on. In fact, there should never be a rest for the brand story. Ideally there should always be, at any time, something out there about some aspect of the brand for some part of the people who follow the brand. The story needs to be kept alive. It doesn't need to be in the absolute spotlight all the time, but underneath the surface a lot of good work can be done. Today especially, with all the online storytelling tools we can put to work for the brand story. If there isn't any active advertising going on in traditional media like television it is still easy to maintain a presence for the brand. Like Chanel did, where Karl Lagerfeld himself told the story of Coco Chanel herself in a sequence of 'Once upon a time...' films, that can still be seen - and are watched quite a lot - on YouTube. For a time the films were part of a communication drive to add another layer to the brand, making the amazing personal story of the French country girl becoming a revolutionary fashion icon, the centrepiece of storytelling.

You wouldn't think a famous brand like Chanel would need something like that, but in fact it would be a mistake not to think that. Times change, younger generations of girls and women need to be made aware of the essence of what Chanel stands for. The legacy of what she personified was made clear in the 'Once upon a time..' storytelling, which was done with great care and love for the brand. In a way a traditional 'history lesson' about how the brand Chanel was founded and grew into what it came to be. But fascinating because of the way the story was told, visually beautiful in little movies as well as in animated form showing beautifully executed graphics. The stories went around the world of fashion followers, able to confirm the roots of Chanel with the usual fashionistas, fashion designers, fashion professionals, financial stakeholders, fashion press influentials, fashion followers and of course a whole world of aspiring new Chanel clients. By showing again that Chanel today still breaths the spirit and creativity of that extraordinary girl from those early days, the brand story supplied not just interesting information for those who didn't know. The glamorous, high end outside of the brand showed its inside, the heart and soul of the real person, her once strange and new ideas and her unique personality. The story makes you see her, the real Coco, in every bottle of Chanel perfume, in every Chanel lipstick and every Chanel dress and in every model showing Chanel couture on the catwalk during every Chanel show. Storytelling is about making people see new meaning in what they see before their eyes. In the clothes, accessories, catwalk shows, make-up and perfumes of Chanel, Chanel wants them to see the special spirit of that lively, very real girl Coco Chanel. All those things aren't things at all. They are stories that keep on telling.

A brand never stops telling

Of all the differences with traditional advertising it is the continuity of the telling of the brand story that is the most striking. A brand that really deeply cares about its appearance, performance and reputation will never, ever slack in that respect. The whole organisation that works behind the brand, from top to bottom, has to live in a state of high awareness about every little move the brand makes out there in the world. If there are any people involved in your brand that see this as a burden: fire them. The motivation to pay attention to the storytelling of your brand needs to be total, and then some, in anybody that supports your brand. In today's world your brand is fighting a Story War - yours against many, many others. You simply cannot afford to have some of your troops not wholly committed to the importance of a constant level of storytelling. One single faulty stitch on a Chanel coat is a story and that isn't the Chanel story: it is a story of a fashion brand that has forgotten the perfectionism of its founder. It doesn't matter if that damages the trust of just one client; it just shouldn't happen, period. That coat is the story of Chanel just as much as one of the Karl Lagerfeld films about Coco Chanel are. If there is a seamstress who isn't aware of the Chanel brand story, it is time that someone updates her. If she doesn't care about the Chanel brand story, it is time for her to leave the building. A brand story is either perfect every time it is told at any level or it isn't. The Story War will not just be won by the brand with the best or most interesting story. Of course a great story matters. But most of all a Story War will be won by the brand that is able to tell that story year after year after year as fresh, as inspiring and as interesting as if it were the very first day of its existence. In every shape and form. At every occasion. At every appearance. To anyone. Anywhere. And that is why it is essential the brand's story is in the blood of the people who tell it. Because there are so many brand appearances that can be used to add meaning to the brand story.

The brand's packaging. A pack is a story. The large carton casing around a television or the blister pack hanging from a shelf in the supermarket: both tell the story of the brand. Take one look at the box in which Apple delivers you your iPhone or iPad and what you see is not a box, but Steve Jobs' mind and Apple's brand story of 'less is more' and incredible aesthetics. The physical appearance of your brand is nothing less than the extension of your brand story. It should be in line with the story behind the product. If at all possible - and it always is if you really want it - the packaging should carry some basics of the brand story, something about its history, about its heritage, about its mission, vision or ambition or a little anecdote that illustrates the popularity of the brand. It is a message in its own right and it is a message carrier that is getting a lot of attention from people, either while on display or at home when the product is bought and unpacked. People tend to read packages more carefully than any other communication item, so the package is a great opportunity for storytelling and should be eyed constantly to put to use for that.

The brand's headquarters. The home of your brand is a story. People see your brand's name and logo on a building and associations pop up. They add what they see to what they know about your brand. It should fit, at least for the most part. When your brand is one of many of a parent company and your brand's organisation is housed within the parent company's building, your name and logo may not be noticed from afar, but it still will be by visiting suppliers, clients, business partners, trade journalists, delivery people, cleaners, window washers, people applying for jobs - and your own people. Not a direct reason to move of course (if a move would even be granted by the parent company) but it is fair to be critical on how that building works for your brand. Your brand story could be all about cool innovation and when you are located in a building that has a tired '70s feel about it, you and your people are working in a contradiction. Not exactly inspiring and befitting an innovating company. Ideally a brand's headquarters is a statement that adds to the brand's story. Ad agency Chiat\Day, one of the most creative agencies in the world at one time, made a statement with its building that was designed like a village of creativity (basketball court included), made to interconnect, shedding the traditional boundaries between creatives and media, strategic and account people. Innovative at the time and fully in line with the out-of-the-box creativity of the agency. See how Apple brings its brand story of an open, innovative, inspiring design and less-is-more company to life with the upcoming Apple campus: a round, glass, highly transparent 'spaceship' in Cupertino, California. Designed in the mind of Steve Jobs and already an icon without a single brick laid.

The brand in speeches. A speech is a story. No matter who is delivering a speech in function of the brand or the company behind it, the speech should be written with the brand story in the back of the mind. A speech at the annual shareholders meeting, a speech streamed online for all 20.000 employees worldwide, a speech at a conference, a keynote speech at a seminar or at the most important trade events of the year: they are all opportunities to present the brand story and build on it. What the brand story is about should come out through the words written on paper. A great speech can do a lot for a brand, especially in today's world where everything noteworthy is shared in an instant. Yes We Can is what people remembered of that one speech of Barack Obama and what carried him a lot further towards the White House. The speech was a lot longer than that, but in those three words his spirit and beliefs came through - his personal brand story of making things possible, no matter the differences between people, became clear right there. Speeches are often underrated as means of storytelling, while actually they are literally that: stories told by live people, able to put the soul of the brand in words with their own voice. Treat speechwriting like any other professional piece of storytelling and communication. It pays to have all speeches written by one and the same person to make sure the brand story is never neglected.

The brand's stores. A brand outlet is a walk-in story. There is nothing better than being able to welcome people, customers, into a place where they can experience every aspect of your brand. It is the best opportunity for the brand story to shine but at the same time it is also the possibility for the brand story to disappoint. Here the truth comes out and it is a kind of a miracle that people are willing to accept the difference between the thick, juicy Big Mac in a TV ad and the actual thin one they get handed over at the counter. The overall experience of quick and friendly help, the family feel, the relationship price-quality and knowing-what-you-get are obviously elements that overcome that one element in the McDonalds brand story. Overall, McDonalds tells its story right, from the burger menus to the salads that are in line with an added mission to supply more healthy choices. Also the brand makes good use of the placemats to tell about ingredients from time to time, or supply little games and promotions with an eye on the family fun experience. Another well thought out example of 'storytelling by outlet' is Starbucks. Bringing people together and community thinking is the story you encounter the moment you walk into a Starbucks. There is a straight line between the brand's intentions and the look and feel of the coffee shops. It is a place to have the coffee you like and meet people from the neighbourhood as well from anywhere in the world. Changing the world one cup at the time: it is a story that is well told behind the Starbucks windows.

The brand's sponsorship. A sponsorship is a multitude of stories. First of all it is the sponsorship on its own. That alone comes in so many different forms: from just buying your brand's name on the shirt of a football club to taking over a football club in its entirety. In becoming a sponsor the brand story should be decisive, because the values of the brand are directional in whether your brand is going to sponsor a sport or a cultural activity, a club or a team, an individual sportsman or a group of young talents. The goal of sponsorship is often seen as creating or enhancing brand awareness, but in truth it is better to consider approaching sponsorship as a means of storytelling that is aimed to connect with a specific audience. The very choice that is made - sport or culture, individual or collective sponsoring - already tells something about your brand. As is the choice for the top or for the talent, that also tells people something about a brand's view on life and its positioning. When sponsorship is taken seriously, it is the brand story that will guide your brand to the right choice. Energy drink Red Bull sponsors anything that is ultra dynamic, spectacular, from a Formula 1 racing team to events of their own invention like downhill skate racing and flying competitions. They create and control their own stories through sponsorships and the Red Bull brand story about 'getting wings' is translated into stories that are experienced and shared. Whichever kind of sponsorship you choose for your brand, make sure it fits the framework of your brand story. Make sure it adds value not just to your brand but to the authenticity of your brand. Choose the kind of sponsorship that is able to connect your brand with the right audiences, because is will bring an endless stream of stories and experiences for your brand's followers. Just buying an English Premier League football club for hundreds of millions of euros and investing the same amount into new players and coaches, yes it is some kind of sponsorship too. But how valuable is it for your brand, when the world outside that club turns against the team and its sponsor because of the amount of money that is thrown around? Or when the team doesn't perform like you should expect with a budget like that? Or when, after a few unsuccessful years, your brand quits the sponsorship again, leaving the club in distress - how will people look at your brand then? You have to consider the end of your sponsoring and its consequences for your brand story just as carefully as the start of it. Because that is a story too and why risk it being a negative one?

## 6. Storymining: how to make your story win the Story Wars

If your brand is a global player, it sounds logical that you'll be fighting a Story War on innumerable fronts. If your brand is more locally, regionally, nationally or only partly internationally active, the picture isn't any different. The Story War is a never-ending war of many battles on any kind of battlefield imaginable. And as your stories are your troops, you will need your brand to never stop sending stories to the front. Being in total command of your brand story at any point is what makes or breaks the success of your brand in the hard-fought marketplace of today. Having your brand story in order, having it well defined with the right values in place, is just the beginning. After that looms the task of lining up your army of stories and keeping them marching on, doing whatever is necessary to conquer the world for your brand. Things happen, markets change, competitors alter their strategies and your brand will have to be ready to hit back within the boundaries of the brand story. It is essential to supply the brand story well in advance with more than enough story ammunition to set out and follow the planned route. A brand story needs to develop all the time, story after story after story. Wherever they come from.

Exploit your story goldmines

The importance of storymining is becoming automatically clear the moment you start putting it into action. This is the area where the brand story gets rich - at least, that should be the case. Storymining is supplying you with the answer to the question: where do all the stories come from? They can come from literally anywhere but not from fantasy. Fantasy is where the beautifully creative tales are born that are used to dazzle audiences with brilliant advertising. It is possible to have your ad agency working with you on both advertising and storytelling, but you should always be aware that there are different skills involved in working both sides of the brand story. If the agency is serious about your brand, however, they will make sure that the storytelling part will not come from the same minds that are behind your advertising campaigns. It still takes creativity to find ways to connect to specific audiences, but it is fair to say that instead of 'the creatives' you need true storytellers, able to apply a healthy dose of restraint in putting their minds to work and knowing where to look for relevant and useful stories.

Content is what drives your brand story most. This immediately tells you something about the importance of storymining. The stories that will make your brand story connect with people on all kinds of levels will always come from a realistic background. They have to be true, for a start. They have to be believable. They have to be authentic. They have to convince people of the beliefs of the brand. They have to show the identity of your brand. Those are not stories you can dream up, those are stories you can only find when you go out with your story shovel and start digging. Of course that is not something that is done randomly, but will always be started in the close vicinity of the brand story.

Knowing what the brand story is all about, you know what to look for. You will find that it won't be that difficult to recognise the right stories that will add value to the brand story as a whole. But it is the delving for them that needs to be planned and organised on several fronts, in and around your own organisation, for example. You would be surprised how many brands and companies overlook the many possibilities to harvest beautiful and meaningful stories from the very people that are working right under their noses, inside the company. Also the outside people directly related to the brand and influentials in a wider circle around them are bound to know or say a thing or two that might develop into valuable brand stories. Only after having them spilling the beans on your brand, so to speak, it is time to turn to the clients, the customers, the potential customers, the world in general. Storymining covers broad territory and it is wise to take stock of the possibilities to delve for stories before you start.

Dig up your archives

How it all started, what happened along the way, anecdotes, successes, client letters, historic packaging, and funny stories: there is a goldmine of stories right in your brand's basement. Brands tend to look anywhere but back as they have the natural tendency to look forward and feel they need to embrace a contemporary, modern day image to have a chance of succeeding. However, there is nothing old fashioned about great stories that have been accomplished in the past. The heritage of the brand is in fact often a story that is worth telling, even for the hippest kind of brand. More often than not the way a brand started out is a story about passionate people inventing a product that grew to become today's brand. More often than not it can be used to show the authentic side of, for instance, an innovative image. And we are not talking about a legacy that is calculated in hundreds of years. Even a company that developed some cool new app only last year, could tell something about that day and the moments that - although it happened in the past - would add passion, credibility, authenticity, inventiveness, innovation and intelligence to the brand story. Don't ever think no one would be interested in some entertaining tidbit from your brand's past or in an anecdote that could be characteristic for the stormy beginning of your company. Actually, the opposite is true: today's smartphone and tablet generation loves infotainment and not just in the way of weird YouTube films or superficial items about the latest rock star divorce. Their interest is just as much peaked by intriguing 'did-you-know' stories from brands and companies, even if it is about their past. If that story is told in a way people can relate to, if that story is surprising and authentic and people find it worth sharing on social media, it doesn't matter if it stems from something that happened last week or 200 years ago. It pays to look back, there is always something to find that will make a story that adds value to your business.

Talk to your people

Talk to your sales people. Your guys in the field. Your helpdesk heroes. Your receptionist. Your retailers. Your former, oldest and retired employees. Your delivery van drivers. The founder from long ago. Stories are born every single day in and around any organisation of any brand. Where people work, things happen and when things happen, chances are, there is a story in there that is worth noting, storing for later use or telling at once. This part of storymining is largely overlooked, its value often underestimated. The truth is there may not be a more effective way to extract a multitude of authentic stories from your brand's organisation. There is nothing more authentic than a first hand story. It is the oldest from of storytelling, one human being telling about something he experienced to another human being. Ever since two people were able to understand each other, nothing in that exchange of words has changed. In a conversation between people you can ask questions, get to know more, the story deepens and settles in your head. That is why it is smart to induce anyone in your company to come forward with any story about your brand or your company they think is funny, nice, touching, interesting or exciting. From a storytelling perspective, but also from a business perspective, it is sensible to facilitate a continuous input of stories from within the organisation. It should be the simplest thing to do, setting up an internal website or online platform for that purpose. Seeing storytelling inspires storytelling: if it is easy for everyone to have a look at what other colleagues posted on the internal platform the attraction to join in with more stories will grow.

This internal form of storytelling platform will have more than one advantage:

  * it will allow you to sift through the stories and pick those that could become the basis of a round of external storytelling
  * it will show your involvement with your people's work
  * it will tell you something about the general atmosphere in the organisation: an enthusiastic and regular input of stories or a total lack of input both send a message about the internal involvement with your brand or company
  * it will be an extra means of interactive conversation with your people, the open channel running between management and work floor, inspiring not just exchange of stories but also of ideas and initiatives that could have a strong impact on the business end of your brand

It is just good practice to set up an active internal storymining program. Inspire people to get their stories in, no matter how trivial they may seem. Reward the story of the week, the month, the year. Have people vote on the best story. And when stories are picked to play a part in driving the external brand story forward, make sure it is communicated. Tell about why those stories are so valuable and how they will be used. Make them into inspiring examples that will illustrate what you, as brand management, are looking for. Or work from another angle: if you have a specific goal in mind for a future storytelling activity, actively ask your people to come up with stories that are specifically tied into that subject. In short: keep the fire going. It does take time and energy to draw stories out, but your brand story will grow all the richer for it.

Ask your customers

If you have customers, you have stories. Ask them directly. Mail 'em, write 'em, phone 'em, tempt them, and reward them. Customers are storytellers too. Even a complaint is a story - don't be afraid to turn a negative into an unexpected positive. Any brand, your brand too, lives because of people who are buying into the brand story. They can choose any brand and any product. But out of all of those, they buy the one with your brand name on it. They buy it not because your advertising is the most wonderful in the world. They buy it because they believe in your brand. They believe what it promises and if it delivers what it says, they will believe it some more. But the core is that they buy the one story that speaks out to them the most. Other, similar brands and products could, let's face it, not be that less effective or worthwhile than yours in daily use. Technologically, it is a "me-too" world, after all. Intrinsically, there aren't that many differences between products anymore and if there are, they are short lived. So people are left with the brand story, the story to believe in. When people believe and choose your brand over others, they have something to tell you. And they will tell you, the moment you ask them politely and with genuine interest. What do they like about your brand? How good is it in daily use? How useful, valuable, fun, practical, effective do they find it? Why do they love it? Why do they trust it? Do they recommend it to others? Are they fans? Many brands do ask those kinds of questions from time to time by way of marketing research, like any brand should of course. But instead of seeing it just as a measure of consumer insights they should see it as potential for stories that could work for the overall brand story. That is one big missed opportunity as there is a wealth of stories, right there. Customer stories are to be treasured as they are unbiased. So, why wait until the next round of market research to go to them and ask them to talk about their experiences with your brand and product. If you have a database of customers who are receiving your newsletter, you can make good use of that. Ask for their stories in the newsletter. Mail the customers in that database individually, by e-mail if their spam filter agrees with that or by good old-fashioned direct mail. That may seem like a lot of extra effort just to get some stories about your brand. It isn't if you approach it as another communication moment. Make it part of your campaign if you like. Treat it as a friendly opinion poll. Reward feedback with a little something, including a real thank you letter from the man or woman responsible for the brand. Let them know the outcome of the poll or questionnaire. E-mail them with a link to a special website page where selected stories are posted.

What if your customers suddenly surprise you unpleasantly with all kinds of comments that aren't particularly favourable about your brand? Sometimes it works like that. A poll can wake a sleeping dog. Given the opportunity, customers see a great chance to get all kinds of angry or disappointed comments off their chest. If that is the case, it will tell you that you did well to reach out to your customers. Suppose you thought everything was hunky-dory while, underneath the surface, things weren't actually OK? The knowledge your brand isn't sitting very well with your customers at the moment can be used to react by starting an actual exchange of stories with your customers. Going through the comments you will surely learn what is wrong and that gives you direction for the story you can come back with. Levelling with people is what storytelling is about. Negative comments will not be softened with an extra advertising push. Addressing problems honestly and directly along the lines of the brand story is part of storytelling too. People don't like to be left out in the cold. People appreciate it very much if they are being taken seriously. The moment you take them seriously, you will see that even your toughest customers will acknowledge that and at least give you the benefit of their doubts.

Storymining like this is a way of connecting with your customers and that happens to be one of the main objectives of great storytelling. The two are linked. Find out what your customers think about your product and brand and keep getting in touch with them after that. Let them know and feel that they are important to you. They are important to you. You wouldn't have a brand without them.

Do your mining on the pack

Packaged goods have a pack. Make it a standard to call for stories on the pack. Put your own stories on the pack and call on your buyers to send in anything they think will make a great story. Publish the best ones on the pack and it will expand the brand story as well as inspire people to join in with their experiences. Packs are great storytellers in their own right, but they can serve as interactive 'storyminers' too. Being in the buyer's hands at the moment of purchase and after that being in plain sight in and around the house there will always be an opportunity to attract the customer's attention with a storymining activity. It makes a lot of sense to call for opinions, stories and experiences on the pack as it is a given the person reading the pack is either a loyal user of the brand or a not so regular and even first time buyer. The fact is: the brand/the product has been bought and that means there is already some trust in what it promises. That is an attractive situation since whatever is said on the pack will be looked upon with kind eyes. To read that your favourite brand is interested in getting to know your opinion or would love to hear about your personal brand experience may easily trigger a response. It is friendly territory, even less intrusive than a kind e-mail to someone in the database. The way to go about it would be to tell some interesting stories about the brand or product yourself on the pack and end that with a call to action: 'What's your story? Go to www... and let us know!'. Another possibility would be to create an attractive storymining competition that has a promotional character: 'What was the best time you had with our product and win...' Or, just to show that stories don't have to be verbal accounts of experiences: 'Send us the funniest selfie with our product and win...'. Customer pictures are just as much spreading your brand story as verbal stories. On the pack storymining could be a stand alone activity, but it will undoubtedly work better if it is part of a connected storymining drive, that is also running online, on your website and in social media.

Invite or challenge the social media

Authentic brands are never afraid. They go all out on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, Vine, blogs, anywhere on the internet that is open to storymining. This is a great world to reach out and ask people directly what they think about your brand or what role it plays in their lives. There is no question about it: social media are made for storymining.

The strong interactive and personal character of social media are ideal for reaching out to fans and potentials alike. Getting actively involved in social media traffic with followers and the followers of followers does more than just showing you are one of those brands that know how to get along with changing times and modern media-use. Being active in social media turns your brand into a person, which is exactly what people like about brands today. It is not the time anymore to be a faceless company sending messages across the market landscape. People want to relate to brands more than ever and they demand brands to be as interested in them as they are in their friends. Although everybody understands that brands want to sell them products or services, they don't mind as long as they are taken seriously. And there is nowhere better than on social media to follow up on that feeling. That is why an active pursuit of stories within the social media community is an excellent way of showing you are serious about establishing and maintaining a true relationship with people. It is one thing to announce new products, new campaigns, new commercials or new promotions on social media, but it is quite something else to come out with an invitation for people's thoughts about your brand. It fits the general trend to look kindly on brands that seek contact on a level that is more personal than commercial. Asking someone's opinion is social interaction. It is what we as people do when we are talking to others. It signals interest in someone and that is the signal a brand gives out the moment it opens up on social media with a call for stories. In a sense, it is already a way of storytelling to start storymining on social media. The simple fact of asking people for stories is telling a story of transparency and being serious about what goes on in consumer's minds.

How you go about it in social media is a matter of setting firm objectives. It is not that you just go out there and say 'Hi, how do you like our brand?' (although, put like that, it does sound refreshing). What kind of stories would you like to get out of this venture? Is there anything specific you would like to draw out? Are you using the call for stories as the first step in a future storytelling drive? It could be, because the way a brand opens up on social media, that it gives a glimpse of where the brand wants to go. Maybe even include some aspect of the brand story. For instance, if a carmaker's brand story is about safety and on social media the call is for stories from people having been in accidents while driving that car - that is intriguing as a question as well as already touching on the brand story. Why haven't there been any banks brave enough to face the music on social media by starting an honest conversation about their ethics or behaviour? Why not come out and invite people to send in their opinions and suggestions for better banking? Why not use the storymining instrument like that also? For any bank it would be helpful in more than one way. First of all, it would be seen as brave. Secondly, as a sign of dearly missed responsibility and thirdly as an honest attempt to put people first instead of bonuses. Vulnerability may look like a weakness, especially in the eyes of the macho banking community, but in reality it would be a sign of strength to confront the mood of the public. Trust comes from reputation and the reputation of the banking community as a whole has been thrown out the window by the banks themselves. So it would have made sense - and it still does - to turn to the social media with the objective to get involved in people's problems with banks and in turn get people involved in the new intentions of banks to behave differently than before. No doubt about the amount of stories that would be streaming in and also no doubt about the level of criticism in the stories too. However, it couldn't be better, because that would give any bank something concrete to build on. Even bitter stories are potentially advantageous if you are brave enough to address them openly on a self-created online forum, on your Facebook page or with a film on YouTube. Instead of hiding in silence until the storm has finally passed, it would make good business sense for banks to seek out the questions people have and talk about them in the open channels of the social media.

Social media have a lot in common with each other, but to approach them all the same for the purpose of storymining would be a mistake. That is where the need for well-defined objectives comes from. Choosing a medium like Vine with its 6 second clips calls for other skills to begin with and you will have to ask yourself how it relates to the kind of storymining you are about to start. Twitter is a great social medium, but if you haven't been that active and the number of followers isn't large, it may not be the ideal place to start storymining. That would be a pity, as Twitter is one of the best media to get a topic going like wildfire, making it very useful to surprise a large number of people with an interesting challenge to come in with stories or opinions about a special initiative you may be planning. The social media types all have their own nuances and have to be treated individually to get the best results. Keeping it simple is often good advice and here it pays off too. Make sure you have a good base to receive plenty of stories, just in case the social media communities get really rallied your website doesn't go offline all of a sudden. Have the input of stories monitored, reply to every respondent, get back to them with comment individually if at all possible. If there are too many stories coming in to do that, send out a grateful reply to all of those people collectively - they have taken the time to respond and acknowledging that is the first step you take toward actual storytelling.

## 7. Brand story development: line 'em up, move 'em out

A brand story is a complex of stories, that come from anywhere and in any form you can think of. It is not a one man's job. It may not even be a 50 men's job to do that if a brand operates worldwide. On any scale it is hard to keep the core of the brand story intact as more stories are uncovered and sent out. It is incredibly easy to loose sight of what the brand story is all about in the first place. The backbone of the narrative should be felt or be visible in any story that is seeing the light of day to work for the brand. Therefore, it is essential to bring the threat of the narrative into focus with everyone involved in communicating the brand story at some point. A brand story is usually defined at the higher echelons of brand management, deep inside the company behind the brand. After that, the brand story needs to be communicated and explained inside the organisation first if it is ever to be told correctly, externally outside of the company. This is where a continuous guarding of the brand story comes in. This is storylining.

Storylining: keeping the narrative in check

Even if there are no immediate plans to get into active storytelling, a brand story has to settle into the hearts and minds of everybody who has a role in the marketing, communicating, promoting and selling of the brand. Lining all those people up to get acquainted with the finer points of the brand story is the first task of storylining. From then on it should be clear what the brand values are, which ones are more important than others, why that is so and what every individual can do with them. Introducing the brand story to the organisation and to any relevant and important business partners is key to get all noses pointing in the same direction. Without that it will be no use to set out and start communicating or get into any storytelling manoeuvres. If a serious part of the organisation is not getting the message, to the point that people lack inspiration or motivation, the core of the brand story will be jeopardised quite quickly. It is key for any brand and any brand story that there is a unified front of people that really, truly and deeply believe in what the brand story entails. The narrative will otherwise falter because of stories popping up that are not consistent with the overall brand story or are distorted with messages that have no bearing to the core of the narrative.

People who are 'into the brand story' will treat the telling of the story differently than people who just take notice of the brand story. They add their own 'inspiration' to stories that they are supposed to bring out as part of their function.

That can and will happen to the best of people once in a while. As long as it doesn't go any further than an accidental slip-up there is no harm done. However, there will be pain if the 'once in a while' grows into a line of stories that stray further and further from the proposed line of narrative. All it takes, especially at the beginning of active storytelling, are just a few stories that differ from each other in tone of voice or brand values or a not quite authentic content. Stories that go out like that are often seen and interpreted as being 'right' by people within the organisation who are somewhat removed from the origins of the brand story. They easily mistake those stories to be 'right' for the simple reason that those stories have been able to come out. "If those guys up there are OK with these sort of stories, I have a great idea to do some storytelling of my own too". That is not the kind of inspiration you are looking for, as a key marketer who has maybe been co-responsible for defining the brand story and bringing it home to the people inside the company. Once the narrative has gone blurry in a line of stories that are all over the place, it is hard to get the brand story back on track.

This is one of the main reasons why storylining needs to be in the hands of not too many people. Traditional advertising campaigns, even with all kinds of activities connected to it, are relatively easy to direct and to monitor. Storytelling is spread wider, dives deeper and is more vulnerable to getting distorted because of its more emotional content. The character of storytelling is different, as it doesn't concern itself with an advertising one-liner kind of thing, but with the story behind the brand, the identity and authenticity of the brand. There is more to gain when it is done right, but also more to lose when the stories get out of line even for a short period of time. The thread of the brand story must at all times be clear for anyone following the brand. So, once it is decided to go forward with this, be sure your organisation knows the brand story, quite literally, by heart. It doesn't hurt to refresh the memories on a regular basis. New employees have to know what you are doing with the brand story and why it is crucially important to stick to it, whatever they do to move the brand story forward. Existing employees also need 'maintenance'. It is just good practice to organise a floorshow or presentation once a year to overlook the stories that have gone out. Refresh memories on the finer points of the brand story. Update them on new developments. Talk about upcoming activities, review their own input or actions. Have they all added to the overall story at some point, do they all still carry the backbone of the brand story, have they observed the right tone of voice in the stories they brought forward? Having a good and critical look at the whole palette of stories will help you keeping the storyline in check and move forward as planned.

The development of the brand story is a vulnerable operation as it touches all areas of communication, from PR to sales, from social responsibility activities to internal motivation, from HR to regular advertising. The resemblance with a bucket of frogs is hardly an exaggeration - so many stories to keep in check with, so many stories to guard, so many people who could be adding their own views and influences. Developing the brand story therefore is a matter of keeping a tight organisational rein on the central narrative. One of the best ways of keeping everything and everyone moving on the right track is turning out one powerful piece of storytelling for anyone to see and follow. Creating some sort of 'lead story' that is bang on the brand story in every respect and executed in a way that it will stick in people's minds for some time. An extremely good example of that was the 6-minute film that was produced for Johnny Walker, enhancing the brand story by telling how Johnny Walker actually became Johnny Walker. This was done within the boundaries of the storytelling adagio 'Keep walking' and became a seamless extension of the more abstract advertising campaign based on the 'walking' concept.

In the YouTube clip, Scottish actor Robert Carlyle, well known for his role in the 1996 film Trainspotting, keeps walking along the hill of Loch Doyne, telling the story of the Scottish farmer who turned his product into the world famous brand it is today. 'The man who walked around the world' is an inspiring example of storytelling, as it adds such a lot of depth to the brand. The story works because it entertains as well as informs. The story shows pride in Johnny Walker's heritage as well as in its authentic quality. For people who see Johnny Walker as a brand of whisky that is somewhat run of the mill, the story hands them something to think about, to see Johnny Walker as something more authentic than they may have thought. The film on YouTube has been the centrepiece of other storytelling exercises to inspire people to have a look. All in all, highly useful storytelling that not only brought the brand further, but also functioned as the lead story, setting the standard for anyone in the worldwide organisation involved with communicating the brand story. Not only does it work for the brand story and its communication strategy as a whole, but for every single Johnny Walker employee in the world it offers inspiration, a great sense of pride, an understanding of the brand story and the heritage of the brand and supplies a true feeling of connection enhancing the loyalty towards the brand and the company. A well thought out and inspiring piece of storytelling has the power to do all that at the same time.

When storytelling becomes storyselling

Content is king, but it's only half the battle. You choose storytelling to connect with people in order to grow an ever-greater level of trust with your customers. That is the base from which all kinds of stories leave the building so to speak. The character of storytelling means that, for many marketers, it comes across as some sort of gentle flow of stories, calmly massaging people's hearts and minds with things ordinary advertising can't do. That is partly true. Storytelling does have an introverted feel to it. But when teeth are needed, then teeth can and will be shown. There is nothing to hold you back on selling the brand story quite vigorously in order to make it function as a sales instrument. Here storytelling becomes storyselling, which is - to many marketers - an unexpected practical aspect of this special marketing communication tool.

Storyselling starts with the right content, just like every other form of storytelling. That content is of course defined by the brand story, but content is by nature divers. At one end, the brand's story can be about being helpful to people. At the other end, the brand's story could be entertaining. Helpful content shows how the product will fit into the consumer's life and talks about its convenience or simply shows us how it works. Entertaining content is about letting the consumers express themselves, connecting them to the brand emotionally and giving them a chance to interact directly with the brand. Two ends of a large spectrum of storytelling, but both equally important in the process of translating the telling about the brand into the selling of the product. The emotional part gives consumers something to relate to, creating the 'human' side of our brand. This is what builds sympathy and trust with consumers. The pragmatic side supplies more rational reasons for purchase and it's important to develop the story from both sides, meeting each other in the middle to create an overall brand context. This is what storyselling entails. Storyselling content gives your brand context, because it supplies a narrative of how the product fits into people's everyday lives, functionally and emotionally. The context is made up of the seamless connection of emotional people's stories with the functional stories of the products workings, materials, performance... Nike and Red Bull are brands that understand creating a context extremely well. They bring people's stories and brand stories together in a tight fit, fuelling their audience's need for - in their cases - excitement and adrenaline as well as their wish to be able to rationalise their choices.

How does your brand impact those who use it? And what are the stories that illustrate that by getting the mix of emotional and rational arguments just right? Finding the answer to that lies in finding the right tone of voice in the emotional reasoning to put the rational arguments forward. People cannot be forced to take notice of a brand's facts and figures. People cannot be forced to believe a brand's arguments, however convincing they are on paper. And traditional advertising is not the instrument to make them accept it either as they know advertising is usually showing not much more than 'the bright side of the brand'. Storyselling can fill the void here as it makes good use of a story that is emotionally appealing and at the same time filled with the powerful truth of proven facts and figures. One interesting example of that has been the story that brought Subway restaurants a 20% jump in sales. While their message about how healthy their meals were had been a part of the brand story for some time, it didn't quite land firmly in people's minds because Subway sandwiches were still seen as a form of fast food - and fast food cannot be good for you.

That changed when one Jared Fogle started on a self designed 'Subway diet' with which he lost 245 pounds in a single year. His story began when he read about Subway sandwiches that carried just 6 grams of fat. By following his own regime of low fat Subway sandwiches twice a day and later choosing to walk more than he usually did, in the end he weighed 180 pounds where once he weighed in at 425 pounds. From 2000 onwards Jared has appeared in Subway commercials to tell his story, but more than that he became a living 'storyselling story' as he also participated in the Jared and Friends School Tour, sponsored by the American Heart Association and was a guest on numerous TV shows, including The Oprah Winfrey Show and Larry King Live. His story was exactly what Subway needed to get the important part of its brand story across. Thanks to Jared Fogle, Subway was finally able to make people see that Subway was not just another fast food chain, but really had healthy meals to offer. They had been telling everyone that for ages in their advertising, underlining their message with facts and figures. But that didn't convince people until they saw living proof in the figure of Jared Fogle. It was his story that got them interested in those same Subway facts and figures and they let themselves be convinced of the healthy side of the Subway brand story. The fall-out of the Jared Fogle story helped enormously as a lot more people started to follow his example and started blogging about it and spreading the word. This is one of the best aspects of storyselling: once a brand story's rational side is made clear in the right emotional way and gets it accepted by people, they in turn will start 'selling' the story to their friends, relatives, anybody willing to listen. The brand story at that point will have given them the arguments to back up an otherwise non convincing story. They can point to where the story has come from, they can point to the living proof, they have the story ready to say to people: "See, what did I tell you!" Storyselling is what you want to achieve by storytelling. It is very much how the Story War is won.

Storybuying: people are buying stories, not products

Advertising is the tale of temptation. It can make people aware of a brand's existence. It can make them paint an image that appeals to certain groups. It can push them into thinking one brand is better than another. That is all well and fine, but it is an artificial process, in truth. Advertising is sending messages and repeating the process endlessly. At its core advertising is a fishing expedition, where the growing experience teaches you to use better bait and fish in the right places - but it will always be a toss up whether or not the fish will bite. They might just nibble at the bait that looks nice but is still just all image and temptation. The bottom line is that the product or brand story you try to hook people with needs a lot more than superficial appearances. They need better reasons to buy. They need justification to buy your brand or your product. They need to be able to feel, even more than know, that your brand or product will really make a difference to their lives. That's the change your stories must focus on if they are to resonate emotionally with your audience, be memorable, and create compelling calls to action.

Making people want to buy into your story is what lies at the other end of storyselling. Advertising can make people buy and try; storybuying will hand them the why they can believe in before they decide to give a brand or a product a place in their life. That is a learning process; storybuying is nothing more than making people see there is more to your brand or product than it appears to be on the outside. Advertising doesn't cut it without storytelling anymore. Those days are over. People are increasingly wishing for the truth in products - just look at their growing interest in product ingredients for instance and the success of consumer programs on TV sites and websites scrutinising and comparing products and brands. See how they surf the internet for people's opinions about their experience with brands and products. A growing number of people are going a long way to get the whole story about brands and products, instead of buying out of impulse or because of an image. The availability of information is enormous and whoever goes out looking for the truth will undoubtedly find it. This works against brands that don't act on that fact and keep trusting their advertising will do the selling for them as it has always done. Those brands would be well advised to take advantage of our great big online information world.

There is no future in hard selling stuff on the basis of presenting a bright outside of just the hard facts. The future lies in selling a bigger story by telling it in a way and through channels that people come to see how a brand or product will make a difference in their life. Advertising people love to talk about 'likeability' as one of the objectives a modern advertising campaign, but they happen to translate that into even more superficial images aimed to create a feel-good mood - and not much more than that. People may like it, but today they want to get a grip on the whole package. The preference for more meaningful brands and products that we register in all kinds of marketing research is extended to the wish for more meaningful communication. What does purchasing a brand, a product, a service really mean for me, my life, my family, the rest of the world? How does it alter things I care about? Does this brand have an eye for something more than increasing its profits and sales? This is what people are buying into these days and there are signs that we are just at the beginning of a worldwide movement of people that embrace this frame of mind. Some brands and products have understood that and are doing very well because they have their brand story show what they are truly made of. Quite exceptional is the story of 'Buchanan's Forever', a musical experience which honours the legacy of whisky brand Buchanan's founder. It is part of an ongoing community enrichment program which forms part of parent company Diageo's regional social responsibility platform, Learning for Life. Buchanan's Forever concerts have been held in Mexico, Colombia and Venezuela and in each country supports a charitable project that will help each of these communities. Buchanan's acts as a sponsor for these huge concerts by world famous musicians, ranging from Jon Bon Jovi to James Blunt to Sting to Elton John. This sponsorship doesn't sound exactly unique, but what does make it so is that you can only visit the concert if you have done a given number of hours of voluntary work in the community where the concert is held. Now there is a meaningful brand, rising far above the general hubbub of advertising promises. A story to buy into and a brand to believe in.

The same goes for Chipotle, an American restaurant chain that refuses to use cheap, heavily processed ingredients like most others. Instead they use great ingredients from more sustainable sources. They also cook their food in their restaurants, using classic cooking methods, instead of having it pre-cooked in industrial plants and have it re-heated in the restaurant. Chipotle will soon become the first American restaurant chain to ban genetically modified foods. It is a brand story of honesty, sustainability, quality, goodness and the way the story is told is a fine example of the power of storytelling. The restaurant chain doesn't advertise on television, choosing instead to invest in great branded content with online-only films that brought their message of true goodness home in a big and highly entertaining way. Chipotle has attracted a huge following with their storytelling (as well as with their food). They have managed to present their beliefs in a story that people could and can easily buy into, even when tackling a complex issue as genetically modified foods. They feel that those issues are made much more accessible to people when they are presented in the context of entertainment as you can reach a universe of people who might not otherwise be paying attention to the issues. Or as they say: "It's not necessarily about selling burritos, but selling ideas." And that too, as their growing success proves, is a story that you will happily buy into.

## 8. Storytelling at work

Great storytelling is inspiring. It should be, because that is what people are looking for. Today's consumers are more than ever before on the lookout for brands that don't just try to paint a pretty image, but treat people as people instead of consumers. Brands that apply storytelling next to or instead of their advertising choose to strike up a conversation with people and aim to develop a relationship with them. Storytelling brands - and any Triple-A brand® can't afford to not be one - therefore, do more to get to know their potential fans. They invest in that conversation and in that relationship, just like any individual would do to develop a more than fleeting friendship with someone. The first condition is to be honest about yourself and give true insights into what you like, how you think about life and what you want to achieve. People cannot start liking someone who remains as closed as an oyster, who only tells you what he has to sell. For any Triple-A brand® that wants to be true to its A's of Authenticity, Accountability and Activation it is a must to think about common ground with its audience. The brand story is, of course, what drives the thinking ahead, but there are still some options about the type of stories that would offer your brand the best opportunities to get into a conversation with its potential customers. Two types of stories that you will see being used most for external storytelling are the lifestyle story and the heritage story.

There are also subtypes like leadership stories, organisational stories and corporate stories, but often those somehow are part of the two main lines of storytelling. The organisational story is usually an organic element of the heritage story. The story of inspired leadership (Jobs/Apple, Branson/Virgin, Zuckerberg/Facebook, Gates/Microsoft) is often influential in creating the brand values and the brand story and the corporate story can just as well be a heritage story at the same time. Those subtypes of storytelling are built into the history of a company or a brand and a lot of the time they are used as a source for either internal storytelling or for arguments that can add depth to the external lifestyle or heritage story. Storytelling isn't an exact science. It does need clarity of narrative over a long period of time, but there is always room to mix stories from another area of interest into a main line of storytelling. Whatever helps to keep your brand story lively and interesting, you can play with all kinds of storytelling elements. As long as the main line of storytelling you have been going for is still clear, you have a lot of freedom to mix in stories from anywhere.

The lifestyle story

There is not a brand in the world that isn't able to open up to people. As a brand you can't think of yourself as not having another story to tell other than your simple straightforward product story. You will always have at least one, because in the event your product story is indeed quite one dimensional, there is always the lifestyle of the people you would like to reach. What your product means to them is a story that you can always fall back on. The lifestyle story is a great and easily walkable bridge any brand can build between itself and its customers.

The irony is that when advertising goes 'lifestyle' it usually makes for the blandest sort of imagery, commercials and messages. Usually it involves a lot of shallow phony happiness, where the product is the hero in a perfect and always sunny life. To storytelling, the lifestyle angle is a rich, deep and fruitful source of stories that makes brand and people meet in the middle. Showing interest in the lives and lifestyles of people is extremely appreciated by them. After being chased after them for ages by hungry advertising they love the brands that actually take the time and effort to try to talk to them. The brand that comes to people with a story that shows it understands something of their life stops them in their tracks: "Wow, this brand is not selling me something but sharing something with me, let's hear more." Where advertising may be able to swivel their attention to the brand just for a moment, storytelling will hold their attention for longer as it hits them on a deeper emotional level.

It is nice, as a consumer, to discover that a brand has something to tell you which clearly shows it knows what you like. It is surprising to find out that this brand presents you with stories about its goals in life and what it hopes to contribute to that with its products. Suddenly you get a better picture of the brand than when it would have shouted at you with some advertising promise. That promise you may have understood too, on a rational level, but it wouldn't have touched you like this brand story does on an emotional level. The value of storytelling starts right there. Whether or not it will lead to a deepening relationship is still in the future, but that first storytelling contact is all-important. Touching on a person's lifestyle to find common ground is one of the most useful ways to work with, as it is easier to explore a particular lifestyle that happens to suit your target audience as well as your brand. Sharing an interest in a special subject can open up an exchange of stories and opinions and from there a bond can be formed, maintained and strengthened.

Clothes brand Out of Print has made the most of a shared interest in fashion as well as in literature. They celebrate the world's greatest stories by having their clothes featuring iconic and often out of print book covers. As they say: "Each product is treated to feel soft and worn like a well-read book". That is already a great way of telling about the product, right there. But Out of Print has gone further than that. They have used storytelling to spread the joy of reading first by their range of T-shirts and accessories, and by sharing with their buyers the story about the many parts of the world that don't have access to books at all. Out of Print is sincere in its goal to try to change that: for each product sold, one book is donated to a community in need through their partner Books For Africa. That does strike a cord with the T-shirt buying community and it shows on their website as Out of Print actively invites people to leave a message in pics and subtitles.

Something else completely, but still an interesting way of rising above a basically terribly non-sexy product and market: Sharpie is a brand of markers, a simple product that doesn't exactly makes you think of storytelling that would go a long way. But it does. Sharpie makes its storytelling work for them by deepening its brand story of creative expression with a Sharpie community, that delivers inspiring input to the website, showing what you can do with a simple marker. The Sharpie community is an involving way of telling and spreading the brand story - "What will you start?" - and spreading the brand name and its products. This is an admirable feat for a product that isn't that sexy by itself. The way it has been able to connect to the lifestyle of creative people has started a lot of active interest. The community grows and will keep giving new stories; which in turn will inspire others and grow the community as well as the brand even more.

People are quick to associate a lifestyle story with fun and lightheartedness. Often true in reality, but don't forget there are many people on earth who cherish a serious lifestyle. More people do, actually, than ever before and a lot of them have been avid followers of the seriously good ice cream of Ben & Jerry's and their authentic and meaningful values. Started by two inspired guys in Vermont, USA, now a Unilever brand of ice cream famous the world over, Ben & Jerry's is still as committed as ever to contributing to a better world. The hearts of the founders live on in the brand's beliefs as well as in the way the actual product is produced. They have attracted a massive and loyal following by staying true to the original brand values, adding interest and meaning to the tubs of ice cream. Apart from the values they apply to the day-by-day production and distribution, one of their great stories is the Ben & Jerry's Foundation. Just read their mission, that alone says it all: "To engage Ben & Jerry's employees in philanthropy and social change work; to give back to our Vermont communities; and to support grassroots activism and community organizing for social and environmental justice around the country". And they do. The Foundation awards a couple of million annually to eligible organisations across the country and in Vermont. Ben & Jerry's employees serve on committees that review grants. The Foundation administers grant programs, either within Vermont or across the country. They are actively engaged in initiatives that can contribute to making some sort of difference to people, to the environment, to communities. Apart from producing great ice-cream in the most natural way possible it is their authentic concern for people, communities and the planet that touches many people, who are only to happy to make Ben & Jerry's a welcome part of their lifestyle.

Without any doubt, one of the shiniest storytelling examples is Coca-Cola. Just have a look at their websites and see how this brand takes storytelling seriously. "Open Happiness", indeed. It's the site for anyone to enjoy, from serious business people to the hip and happening music-craving crowd. It offers an enormous array of stories about the brand, about the product, about their initiatives, about living a great life, about music, about enjoying yourself, about keeping fit, about happiness. You can spend a day on this website and then some. "At Coca-Cola, we're in the business of spreading smiles and opening happiness every day all across the world. Share your moments with us" - that is their brand story in one line, featuring underneath an element called 'Snapshots of happiness' where people are invited to post their pics. They have great video stories about social projects like Empowering Women, Water for Africa and the Go Behind the Bottle story about sustainability. Coca-Cola makes storytelling look easy as it is fun to browse all the website pages and subjects. The happiness they stand for is carried over on every page, but they succeed in making it a meaningful kind of happiness, adding value to what is - you would nearly forget that part - in effect 'just' a soft drink company. Of course as a world leader in the soft drink department they have the resources to maintain their storytelling on a high level in terms of quantity as well as quality. Then again, they could have just chosen to let their good old-fashioned lifestyle advertising do the work, all image, light as a feather and never more than a passing moment of artificial happiness. They haven't and the result is that you cannot help but look at Coca-Cola with different eyes and see it as a great company that is much, much more than a bottle of Coke or any other fizzy soft drinks. Investor Warren Buffet will never sell Coca-Cola stock, he has said. And that is a story that tells us something too.

The lifestyle story centres around emotion. Every aspect of the brand story can come to light, but it will always be shaped to join a certain lifestyle, to fit the views of people that will feel at home with the brand's views of life. A typical lifestyle brand won't find that hard to do, although it is still needed to select the right tone of voice and the actual story subjects that will build the bridge to the right audience. Starbucks could just as easily have chosen to stick to an advertising tale like, say, 'great coffee in nice places', but it is fair to say that they have attracted more customers and followers with their stories about a sense of community, changing the world one cup at the time, turning any Starbucks into a meeting place instead of a coffee shop. Starbucks have used lifestyle storytelling to rise above getting coffee and has become an intrinsic part of the lifestyle of millions of people the world over.

The heritage story

Heritage stories are based on function and factual history. They are often told by longstanding, legacy-rich brands to explain how a specific product will make your life easier, more efficient or better in some way. Does that sound like something advertising could do too? It could, but to a limit. The character of advertising is that you can talk a lot, but never tell a lot. Advertising will be able to talk about the year the brand was born and that 'the unique craftsmanship today is just as it was back then', etcetera. That will do for some time, but it is very hard for advertising to translate that often instrumental heritage into a 'Why' that people can relate and connect to. Harley-Davidson could have gone on and on about the way the iconic motorcycles have come into the world and how they were built. All very interesting, but their brand story is 'freedom'. The freedom of the road, that is what Harley-Davidson stands for. That is something advertising can certainly talk about, but not tell you about or make you feel. That is something storytelling can do. That is what Harley-Davidson fans and riders can spread around, describing their experiences, inspiring others, sharing their stories with other fans all over the world.

Heritage makes for a great storytelling platform. It is a rich source of stories, as heritage for a lot of brands where authentic values have been defined that are still part of the fibre of the brand and its products. Many brands have always stayed true to their origins; whatever they went through from the day they were founded until today. In most cases there is a lot of pride to derive from the past, which can add an emotional layer on top of the functionality of craftsmanship, materials, construction, production techniques, innovation and other instrumental elements of the heritage brand story. The pride and passion of the founding fathers can act as an emotional foundation for the stories about the brand's products. The pride behind the brand can be made to shine through every story, however technical or functional they may be. A good example of that is luxury car brand Aston Martin that has succeeded in using its great heritage and history to its advantage in today's market. "Aston Martin incorporates its heritage into all its cars and constantly revives the passion and spirit that started with Lionel Martin and Robert Bamford nearly a century ago", it says on its website. There is no question about that in the clear and fascinating way the Aston Martin brand story is told in all kinds of stories. The authentic craftsmanship, the made-by-hand engineering, the exquisite luxury, the Britishness, the racing capabilities and all other elements that are essential building blocks of the brand story are there for people to enjoy. There is sophistication on every page and with true heritage as the key word to sum up the iconic brand's character. But it is not just the website that does the storytelling that adds value to the brand story: the story that speaks to people all around the world is the story of James Bond and his deep connection with Aston Martin. It is this story that says it all. The worldly sophistication, the preference for speed and exceptional luxury and the British gentlemanship that are personified in the James Bond character come together in the Aston Martin brand as well. James Bond and Aston Martin are a perfect fit. Every James Bond film featuring an Aston Martin as his car is in some way Aston Martin storytelling. Not only the product is shown in a way the brand would never be able to do in a self produced commercial, but there is the underlying story of heritage: the icon of the British car history that has been able to change, keeping up with time. It is not just a historic brand; it is a modern brand with a great history. The James Bond story is extensively and beautifully told, on the website but also in the James Bond merchandising with Aston Martin scale models - also storytelling that connects with current car and James Bond fans just as much as to a new generation of boys, aspiring to become just like James Bond, driving an Aston Martin.

No matter which type of storytelling fits your brand best, the most important thing to remember is to tell one. Many brands lose their competitive advantage because they lose focus and thus lose the attention of their loyal customers. If there is one thing that you need to consider storytelling for as one of your main communication instruments, is that it is, without a doubt, one of the best ways to connect to people. Connecting with your existing customers most of all, your loyal client base where your profit comes from and who you can turn into your brand's ambassadors, happens with storytelling.

Sharing your brand's passion, heritage, fun, solutions, innovations, views on life or anything else your brand story is all about with people: that is the edge that continuous storytelling will supply you with. It is your authentic brand story that will win the Story War for you, not your advertising tales and promises.

## 9. Storytelling checklist

Being Authentic, Accountable and Activating is what makes a brand a Triple-A brand®. This is the kind of brand that can go to any Story War with the best chance of victory. It is hard to imagine there is any other way to go out into the marketplace without the whole of the brand story doing the work instead of its advertising department aided by any number of agencies. These times are different from what we are used to. The world is changing too fast, technologically, culturally, socially, economically, and politically. It is mind-boggling that a 16-year old teenager comes up with the idea of Virtual Reality glasses for gamers, gets going thanks to crowd funding, attracts millions more from investors and not long after gets acquired by Facebook for 2 billion dollar. That story alone sums up what times we are experiencing and of one thing we can be sure: we will see a lot more of these stories. The world is open to anyone with an idea. Whether that is a hi-tech device for online gamers or a socially driven initiative to develop a sun powered laptop for people in developing countries, it doesn't matter. We have never before seen the speed with which ideas can get turned into reality. Millions of people, some of them still very young, are working on apps, on games, on inventions, on new solutions for old problems, on ways to help the planet move forward somehow. And because of the open character of the world we live in now, their stories have every chance of attracting enthusiastic fans, users, investors, companies.

Brands, big and small, will have to deal with this new reality of openness, that may well be one of the main reasons why advertising has become somewhat of a blunt knife. The advertising tale has become too one-dimensional for the new generation of inquisitive, critical stories and experiences shared with and by consumers. There will always be advertising that succeeds in getting their attention, but what today's generation is looking for is the meaningful aspect of a brand and product: the story behind it. They are interested more in the why than in the what. That is what attracts them to those new breed of app makers, game inventors or entrepreneurs of any other kind. They are not scared to share their ideas at a very early stage, inviting feedback and actually doing something with it. What they are doing intuitively is exactly what brands and companies will have to learn to do. Open up, share ideas, start a dialogue, learn from what people have to say, really connect with people.

Is storytelling the miracle cure for marketers, then? No, it is not, just as TV-advertising or PR or direct mail or brand activation working on their own will not solve your marketing challenges. However, the trend is unmistakeable: consumer behaviour is more and more influenced by a longing for authenticity and accountability in general. The economic crisis has put a big dent in the trust people had in the large institutions like banks and governments. After the masks came off, people saw that banks were not what they wanted people to believe in their advertising and governments were not as calm and capable as they liked to appear. With this diminished trust in the institutions, trust in 'all those advertising promises' went out the window too. It is fair to say that there is a deep mistrust towards brand advertising across the board. The carefully crafted advertising proposition that not so long ago could make people sit up, pay attention and even get them buying, now finds people frowning and thinking: "Yeah, right, what's the catch?" Advertising tales have always lived by the silent bond between brands and consumers that what was shown was a fun exaggeration of the truth or an entertaining way of handing out information. Now, that bond has been broken and consumers are flocking towards brands and companies that step up to them and say: "Look, this is who we are and why we do what we do and we can't afford to let you down, so we don't." The value for brands doesn't lie in the occasional brilliantly creative advertising anymore, but in the honesty and authenticity of their brand story. It is incredible that most banks and mortgage insurers, the bad geniuses behind the worldwide economic crisis, are still advertising the same old advertising tales of 'no worries' and 'here to help you'. That won't cut it. Of all brands and companies, they should have been apologising publicly, getting their story together, explaining things to clients and consumers, telling them what they have changed inside to make sure this won't happen again, and most of all getting back to their authentic roots. They haven't and they will have a hard time earning back the trust they once had from consumers, a long time ago. If ever at all.

Storytelling is the way forward for any brand and company that doesn't want to lose contact with consumers in this sharing society. That will need a shift in thinking about communication, less focussed on the next advertising campaign promise, but on the meaning of your brand and the stories that can be derived from that, now and in the years to come. Creating an attractive, interesting and open storytelling platform will be more important than creating a new advertising campaign - that can come later, being part of the storytelling activities and serving the storytelling platform by attracting people to the story and finding out more about the brand. Storytelling goes deep where advertising stays shallow. That is already one of the aspects that marketers will have to get comfortable with. Storytelling has its own do's and don'ts and we couldn't finish this book without a helpful look at some guidelines towards building and maintaining a brand story.

Build your brand story around your identity

Your brand story represents your brand's identity. And here we are not talking about house style design or something like that, but about the whole make-up of your brand. Like in a person, a brand's identity is more than its outer appearance; it is character, views, values, attitude and behaviour all rolled into one. Authenticity comes from within; storytelling is the means to bring it out. People have no trouble believing in brands and companies that they feel are telling the truth. The brand story, being told in a continuous output of stories that reveal ever more of the true identity, has to be monitored carefully at all times. Regularly checking back to the basics of the brand's identity - the values especially - is just as important as planning any next step of the marketing strategy. Make sure every story is builds on the brand's character. Make sure that any activation fits with what people would expect from the brand's identity. Make sure any public appearance, CEO speech or employee activity is according the brand's values. Storytelling is like threading a string of real pearls to create a beautiful necklace - it just takes one blemished one to spoil the effect you are after.

Live your story

Be who you say you are - as a brand, as an organisation, as a sales force, as a CEO. Ideally, anyone involved with the brand's management, marketing and communication should think and behave as if he or she actually were the brand. From marketers to product designers, everyone is part of the same story and should therefore be pro-actively involved in safekeeping the brand story and guaranteeing its authenticity. Every detail counts; every aspect about the brand too is part of its story. If the core of your brand's identity is about durability and sustainability, the packaging should be as recyclable as packaging could get. If the core of your brand's story is about health and natural ingredients, than you could consider not having vending machines at your offices filled with chocolate bars and potato crisps. If the core of your brand story is about savings and economy, you may decide that there is never to be any flying in first class by anyone, not even the CEO - which in turn makes for another good story to support the brand story. The brand story is a living, continuous, forever and ever ongoing entity. It thrives on continuity and stories that keep adding value to its true character.

Admit a mistake: it's a great story

Don't be afraid to say sorry. Tell the public what happened and why it happened. Explain, apologise and start telling what steps have been taken or will be taken to prevent the same thing from happening again. Today's world applauds honesty. Brands and companies can get into trouble at any given time and when that happens, you'll see it will always be at the worst possible moment. A glitch in the production line may have caused a problem with a product. An online error may occur that prevents your customers paying their bills on time or book their holiday tickets. A logistical problem causes long delays in the delivery of packages that your customers are waiting for. Anything can happen but if your brand story is in place there are no worries. Actually, it offers you the opportunity to build on the unfortunate incident because your brand story will point you in the right direction. Here is where authenticity will shine through and win the day for your brand. Most companies try to solve a problem with the smallest of ads communicating the withdrawal of a product or calling on the public to come forward if they have bought something that may be wrong or risky. Instead, be as open as you possibly can, get a story out that is in line with your brand and company values. Better still, turn the whole event into a bigger story about the brand: the care that is taken to produce it or the care that is always applied to service the customers, the heritage, the craftsmanship, the eye for detail, the reputation, the pride. Make people part of the whole process and let them see and feel how unfortunate and extremely rare this problem really is. By turning a problem into another story about your brand you will make people see the bigger picture. Of course the problem needs to be solved as quickly as possible, otherwise any story will fall on deaf ears. But a problem with your company, brand or product is not a reason to panic or start spinning some tale. Instead, it may well prove to be an opportunity to prove its authenticity and build further on the brand story.

Be interesting

Great stories are not always about the biggest issues. Dig deep into your brand story and find surprising content to tell. Many small stories build a big one. Whether your brand is globally active or just beavering away in a local market, there is always value to be found in the little bits and bobs of the brand story. For marketers that are used to thinking in advertising terms that may be hard to adapt to, as advertising usually doesn't concern itself with small stories but is always looking for the biggest proposition it can find. Storytelling follows the bigger picture of the brand story, but inside that frame there will always be many little stories to tell that will add something valuable to the brand. They don't necessarily have to be about the product or service itself, but could be found where you least expect it. What's the story of that great little biological farmer that grows the beans for your coffee? What's the story of the woman that gained a lot of confidence from your brand's cereal and its tips for a healthy lifestyle? What's this anecdote about the guy who cleaned the hired car and found your client's Ray Ban's he hadn't even missed? What funny thing happened during the shooting of your brand's commercial? What's that nice story about the time those little school kids got the tour around your factory and discovered for the first time how chocolate was made? There is a world of stories all around the brand if you are willing to look for them. And so you should, because people love to hear and read about these little stories, as they are always looking out for interesting diversity. Be entertaining, be interesting, and be generous with your stories. Small is great when it comes to storytelling. You'll find that the smaller stories that have something to tell about your brand are shared most on social media. There is a big hunger for entertaining stories, and 'storytelling snacks' will feed that hunger nicely.

Inspire, motivate, connect

Everyone wants to be part of a big story. Try your hardest to make them feel at home in your story. The great asset of storytelling is that it unfolds an all encompassing feeling about the brand that everyone wants to be warmed by. It may go too far to compare a shared story to a family feeling, but the emotion isn't that far apart. It is great to experience something special with a lot of others. It is one of the reasons - and maybe even the biggest one - that in Holland the position of the royal family is still untouchable, even as royalty is an anachronism in this day and age. The royals are presented as the story that binds the Dutch population, which is just as well in a country filled with individuality and increasingly deeper rifts between political convictions. On the queen's and now the king's birthday there is indeed an atmosphere of togetherness that is felt throughout the country as everyone is allowed to come out and sell their stuff on the streets and parties are being held in every city and village. That day the country colours itself orange, which is also part of the story of the monarchy that started with William of Orange. This particular colour has even become the colour of the Dutch nation, more than the red, white and blue of the national flag - the Dutch football team usually plays in dominantly orange outfits. The orange colour and the royal family form part of the brand story that inspire and connect the Dutch to being proud of being Dutch. That brand story is monitored and groomed quite carefully by the royals themselves, with assistance from the government's communication department. For the more down to earth story of brands and companies the value of storytelling isn't that much different. One of the goals for a brand story is finding a way to get people connected, internally and externally. The more authentic, appealing and honest the story, the sooner people will want to become part of it or want to feel part of it. That is incredibly valuable for any brand, as it creates a following of fans that could be inspired to become true ambassadors of the brand. In the sharing society we experience today there is nothing better than to have your brand story liked and shared by an increasingly sympathetic social media crowd.

Keep the fire burning

Storymining enriches your storytelling. Inspire and challenge people to bring in their stories. It will connect them closer to your brand. Look at the defining stage of the brand story as the spark to start a fire and you'll have no trouble knowing why it is essential to keep coming up with new stories to keep the fire burning. There is no letting up once storytelling has been set in motion. Where there can be months of advertising inactivity, there can't be any time off for storytelling and therefore for storymining. One of the advantages of storytelling is that it can diesel your brand story along in an undercurrent of stories, aimed at specific target groups like clients and stakeholders for instance, keeping the interest in your brand going, as it were. Actually calling upon those audiences to come in with comments, stories and experiences is where storytelling and storymining come together: asking for new stories is telling stories at the same time. The fact that your brand isn't just sleepily waiting around for the next ad campaign to begin, but instead is showing an interest in its fans and followers, already tells them they are valued and cherished. They may not massively engage in coming up with responses and great new stories you could use, but that is only half the point of storymining. Much of the value lies in the effort you are showing to connect with them. The same goes for a more elaborate activity like the organisation of a sponsored event or an online activity/promotion/competition that challenges people to engage in interaction with your brand. Events, sponsorships, other brand experiences: those are great storymining opportunities, as it will bring lots of people together around your brand and will help you to mine stories that can be communicated further down the line, be it in online live-streams, smartphone reports by people attending the event, loads of selfies on social media and lots of tweets and likes on social media. Whatever your brand is doing in life and whomever it does it with, there will always be stories coming out of that that will prove valuable. Be sure to be as active as you possibly can in pursuing them, as story after story will keep fuelling interest in your brand and you will need fresh supplies ready for use at all times.

A brand story has no ending

Advertising campaigns come and go. Storytelling isn't a campaign; it is your brand story living forever. This is one of the reasons why storymining is so crucial an element of the whole storytelling process. Authenticity needs to be showed over and over again, accountability needs to be proven over and over again, and activation needs to be set in motion over and over again. Over time your brand will fulfil set objectives, but as new audiences are coming into view and habits change, buying patterns change, tastes and trends change, your brand story will have to be told in refreshingly new ways. Ten years ago a brand story could never have been told as efficiently and effectively online as it is possible to do today. Considering the speed of technological developments (think: Google Glass) other means of storytelling will keep popping up and the storytelling itself will have to adapt to them. Will that change the brand story? No. There is no other answer to that question. The basic brand story is tied to your brand, the roots and heart and soul of your brand will still be there, whatever happens to media and anything else in the world of communications in the future. Naturally, over time, your brand's image may be steered a little to the right or a little to the left by advertising, but underneath that the values and character of the brand story will have to be kept alive. For new generations of consumers to get acquainted with, for existing followers and fans to stick comfortably with their trusted brand in a changing world. The brand story stands at all times, as long as the brand thrives and moves forward. Storytelling, more than anything else, more than advertising will ever be able to, is by nature the instrument to secure the brand story for as long as the brand lives. And that could well be forever when you keep succeeding in finding new and interesting ways of storytelling.

Never, ever lie

Not even once. Not even a little. Your brand story represents who you are. Tell a tiny little white lie about your brand story and still it will make you a liar. And you wouldn't even be lying to the public; you'll be lying to yourself. There are quite a few people around these days that are called 'spin doctors' and it is disappointing to see how they appear on talk shows to be greeted there with some kind of admiration. But actually, they are not worth the admiration. Spinning the truth is what they actually do, making the most of a bad situation, trying to distract people's attention from whatever nasty problem politicians, companies and brands have gotten into. Spinning the truth is the kind of storytelling you don't want to apply to your brand. The first victim of that would be the authenticity of your brand and the second victim would be your accountability. The truth is the most valuable asset of any brand and company. The moment you start twisting that, however slightly, you are compromising your brand and company. It doesn't need to be an outright lie you are telling, just the very spinning of the truth is already enough to cause some frowning with the people who just before were blindly trusting your brand. And what is the problem, really? Things happen, shit happens, there is no one on the planet who will not understand that. The best thing you can do, as a brand, a company and, if you are reading this too: a politician is to come out, face the music and start explaining as honestly as possible. Be accountable, be authentic, be yourself, be brave and get people to understand your side of the story. Apologise for what has been your fault entirely, explain what happened if there has been an unfortunate and accidental error somewhere down the line. Lying about it, spinning it, talking about it with a lot of fluff will only make matters worse. Never forget what day and age we live in. In the sharing society opinions and rumours take seconds to be formed and spread around the nation first and the world after. Even the slightest whiff of something sounding like a nice tale but not the truth and your company and brand will be either the laughing stock of social media or the prey for the always hungry pack of journalists. Either way, that is not a happy prospect and it will inflict a lot of damage to brand and company. Trust comes on foot, but leaves on horseback - and it will take great effort and a lot of honest and authentic stories to restore the trust you may have been building for many, many years. There is no problem so big that it's worth trying to hide it or spinning the truth for. You can use storytelling for anything you like - but not for that.

## 10. The Story Wars: why storytelling will prevail

Advertising is dying on its feet. That may sound a harsh statement, but the facts are there for anyone to see. What we are seeing around us makes it hard to believe there is still a future for the good old image creation our industry was born in and has been working on for so many decades now. The online world we live in has changed and is increasingly changing the way consumers look and listen to media and, for that matter, to each other as well. Apart from television most other traditional media types are on a downhill slide without anything to hold onto but a slippery hope that things will one day return to 'normal'. Magazines are going out of style, newspapers see their circulation getting decimated year after year and even struggle to make money out of online news. Outdoor advertising has lost its once undeniable power to surprise people in the public space as people are too caught up in what's on their smartphones and tablets to notice the world around them very much. And even online advertising, the supposedly cool new sister of traditional advertising, has a hard time getting through to people as most of the ads are drowning in the flood of banners, skyscrapers and other annoying pop-up ads that fill - unrequested and intrusively - our tablet and computer screens.

However, it is not just because of the changing media consumption habits of consumers that advertising as we know it is fighting a losing battle. There is something bigger going on that should give any marketer a pause for thought. The deep economic crisis that hit the world in 2007 has brought to light the idea that for many people society had already changed too quickly and too fast. The financial disasters that caused the mayhem were clear symptoms of that as they unravelled society at an unprecedented pace. Suddenly, it became clear how incredibly complicated and complex our society had become, how everything and anything had become inextricably tied together in one big unsolvable knot. The feeling many people already had that they somehow had lost their grip on the world and in fact on their own lives was brought to the surface by the developments that followed the giant financial puzzle. The economic downturn ironically fitted the state we were in after 9/11, when our lives were cut loose from reasonably strong foundations and the world got tangled up in wars that had many implications for all of us. From then on many of us started to feel a growing insecurity about the world around us and the economic crisis added to that as it led to mass unemployment, spending cuts by governments and consumers alike... and a shaky outlook on the future of pensions. That the worst of the crisis economically seems to be behind us has done nothing yet to make us feel better. Many of us, millions of us, feel lost and it is not strange that so many people turn to anything that still feels real to them. There is a quiet but strong longing for the good old times. We are not talking about the modern days before 9/11, but about the days way before that: the days that smelled of authenticity. The days a loaf of bread didn't have a fancy name and an industrial crust, but a simple name and the smell and taste of a real baker. The days when you could talk to the guy who was your banker any day you liked. The days when you could pick up the phone and get through to someone real in an office instead of having to go through a computerised menu and put on hold for ten minutes after that. The days where you could reasonably believe promises to be fulfilled, from people to do a job to products to perform and services to be done. The days when companies didn't hide behind small print in contracts and policies and fake helpdesks in remote and offshore countries. The days most politicians didn't act in front of cameras like they concerned themselves with people's lives but really tried hard to make things work for a country's wellbeing.

People understand: things have to move forward. Most us do love the technological advance that makes it possible to Skype with family and loved ones while on vacation on the other side of the world. But in general there is a strong longing for the days when life was simple in many ways. We feel that the 'real' has gone out of our lives. Authenticity has gone away. The promises have multiplied but for many of us the follow-up of so many promises has proved disappointing. And when asked for some explanation or excuse, companies, institutions and governments hold up their hands and say: "Don't blame us, blame someone else". Accountability too has become scarce. And the more we hit a wall as consumers, the less we trust whom we are dealing with. Consumers have begun to turn their backs on faceless companies, institutions and governments. Consumers have started to lose faith in their pretty advertising tales. Consumers have started to find each other in a common loathing of fake promises. Consumers have started to tell each other where to look for better deals, real deals by companies that have proved to be true to their word. Consumers have started to find out about the truth behind products and services and about the truth behind corporate stories of sustainability, responsibility, durability, and charity. Consumers want the truth and nothing but the truth and the company that promises but doesn't deliver will get killed in a barrage of tweets and WhatsApp traffic.

Consumers want a story to believe in and want to be proved right in believing that story. Over and over again. They are turning to companies and brands with a real story to tell, not just with an authentic 'feel' to it, but also with true authenticity deep inside it. They are turning their sympathy towards companies and brands that are not afraid to be held accountable for something that went wrong. People want honesty, at the very least, some human morality from commercial institutions that shows they are not just there to squeeze the last eurocent or dime out of someone. Business will be business, a deal is a deal, a sale is a sale: that part is still understood, but we are on the verge of an era where people expect that the selling party will stick to his or her side of that deal. In the years to come people will increasingly be preferring companies that will keep in touch with them after the sale, after the deal is done. The social media crowd will point those companies and brands out and label them as great, just as they will point the finger at other companies and advise each other to avoid them at any given time.

In the years that lie ahead of us companies and brands will have to get their story straight. Without a solid, true and truthful, inspiring story there will be no point in getting into the Story Wars that will be fought on any market imaginable. Already the most successful brands in the world are the brands with a great story to tell and with the will to tell that story tirelessly. Apple, Coca-Cola, Red Bull, Starbucks, to name just a few, are examples of storytelling brands that any company CEO should study at length. And there are already many, many smaller companies and start-ups that are feeling what people around the world are feeling and what they are looking for in companies and brands. The best thing a company or a brand can do is define its story and set the objectives to unfold it in such a way as to embrace as many people as it can. The individual character of today's world has us all longing to be part of a bigger story, something that is great to share with friends but also with strangers. Consumers are tired of superficial promises and love to find refuge in a story that inspires them and is able to connect with their lives. The easy availability of social media has triggered the always latent need to express ourselves because we know we can go for stories we think are great to share with anybody. It is one of the reasons the Story Wars will be fought out on the battlefield of social and easy accessible digital media. People don't trust advertising anymore to make their choices; they will trust other people, people like them, first. People will increasingly turn to other people for advice, their experiences with brands and products, their love for them or their disgust. Social media will become more and more important for brands and companies as they need to get out there and get in touch with people. And we mean: really get in touch with people. Talking to them, asking questions, starting discussions, responding seriously and truthfully, involving people in their story and inviting them to learn more of the brand and showing the brand likes to learn more about them.

Storytelling is as old as humanity, but it is and will still be in the future the most efficient and effective instrument for companies and brands to get people interested in them. Forget about going to battle with worn out advertising tales, bling-bling promises and opportunistic charitable sponsorship for window dressing. You will be met by an already growing army of great, authentic stories that will unmask you in front of laughing crowds of consumers. You will die without honour on the battlefield; quickly forgotten as the storytelling troops will march on, accompanied by the cheers of a new generation of loyal followers. The future belongs to true stories and to those who are able to tell them best.

Remember to tell and sell your story as Authentic, Accountable and Activating as you can! Become a Triple-A brand® or die!

## Special: the varieties of storytelling

Stories are as varied as people. Every one of us is a living story on his own. Every day of our lives the stories keep being added as we work, play, love, experience, meet people, raise children and simply grow older and older. Stories make up the fibre of every single life on the planet and all those stories combined shape the world, writing what will eventually become history. Without stories we would not know what happened anywhere, news would not exist, knowledge would not be passed on, we wouldn't be able to learn valuable lessons from each other's experiences. But maybe the most valuable asset of stories is that they can bring people together. Think back to Ghandi, Martin Luther King, John F. Kennedy, Winston Churchill, and Nelson Mandela. We remember them by their words, the speeches they delivered that touched people everywhere. Their words were their stories and their stories in turn were very much part of their personal stories. Their stories made us share their drive, their convictions, their beliefs, their hopes, and their dreams.

If storytelling is anything, then it is the ability to touch people on an emotional level that no other marketing instrument can reach. Having been raised with stories from the day we understood words, we are drawn to stories to make sense of the world around us. We come to understand the most complex problems because there will always be someone who is able to tell us what it is about in a story we can relate to. Storytelling does that: it makes us see things clearer and by doing that draws us in to start thinking about a solution. Stories are able to connect us to anything we may otherwise not take another look at or wouldn't even be that much interested in. That is why storytelling is such an extremely powerful business tool. The simple truth is that doing business starts with trying to make people see what you have in store for them and why that would be useful for them to know. Virtually any problem you can think of can be explained by way of storytelling as the right story sets that problem in an emotional context that makes people see and feel what otherwise would be 'abracadabra' to them. You can still use advertising to attract attention, but when it comes to explaining stuff to people and building a relationship while doing that, there is nothing as effective as storytelling. It does take some getting used to, as it demands a more profound look at communication that involves a greater commitment to a basic, authentic core story that will drive activities on all fronts.

Storytelling starts with defining the story and after that it is essential to stick to it, no matter if the storytelling is used for corporate matters, organisational issues, brand and product marketing or sales activities. Of course, all those business applications do demand their own kind of stories, aimed at achieving specific objectives. But the flexibility of storytelling is endless and as such there is always a way to find the right variation and the right story to work with. To see how storytelling can be applied in business, here is an overview of the varieties of storytelling.

The corporate story

Who are we? Where do we come from? Why are we here? What is our mission in life? What is our outlook on the world in general? What are our values? How will we be trying to achieve our goals? The corporate story has IDENTITY written all over it. It takes all those elements to connect past, present and future with each other. It paints the picture of the company but also defines its personality, its character and its state of mind. When defined really well it shows the common dream, the dot on the horizon that is the one and only big objective for everyone involved in the company. The corporate story is the driver for everyone and everything inside the company and at the same time it is what leads to the story that wants to connect to various people outside: various stakeholders such as clients, partners, consumers, suppliers, general public. The corporate story is the mental guide and compass for decision-making as well as the essential base for creating and maintaining a community made up of anybody able to contribute to the company's success. The corporate story is not an image creator, but a reputation builder as it stretches far beyond the picture painted by corporate advertising, which can be used to communicate part of the story but must never be mistaken for being the corporate story itself.

The corporate community story

First and foremost the objective of creating a corporate community story is creating a bond between management and stakeholders. Those bonds can vary; being financially interested stakeholders (shareholders) as well as employees, suppliers and clients. The closer they can get involved in the meaning, activities and plans of the company, the greater the possibilities to strike up a relationship, taking the first steps towards a following of fans and ambassadors of the company. That can be established by trying to get people involved, reaching out to them with authentic stories about the company, about plans and initiatives, showing true interest in their opinions and actively asking them for input and stories. The way to go would be to create and build a digital communication platform, connected to an employee and customer database. That allows a company to store and communicate all kinds of stories from all corners of the organisation. Make those visible for anyone interested and invite people to add their own stories and experiences. This will demand, from management, a lot of trust in the transparency of the company, but when it is done right the corporate community will result in building a great reputation that will help achieve marketing and sales objectives.

The leadership story

The leadership story is an effective way to bring out the vision of the company. In some cases it is directly coupled to the individual personality of the leader, if that person happens to be the company's founder (Steve Jobs, Richard Branson). The leadership story voices what the company stands for and the way the company wants to contribute to the world today and in the future. If the leader is a strong and well-known personality the company will in some way mirror that personality, as its corporate story will reflect the ideas of its founder(s) anyway. In any other situation, the leadership story is motivational and inspirational, building on the authentic story of the company with stories that underline the meaning behind the company's ideas and activities. It is important for any CEO to get personally involved on a regular basis to put the corporate story to work when and where it can add to the company's reputation. Internally this can lead to a stronger community feeling, giving employees reasons to share the greater story the company personifies. Externally the leadership story can be used to explain future plans and current activities and is in general a great way for a CEO to put a face to the company and take on a role as ambassador.

The organisational story

The organisational story is used to get everybody inside the company behind the dream of the company. Making people part of the identity of a company is essential as we all want to feel important and we want to know why we get up and get to work every morning. In the organisational story the company's history and identity are the main story elements as that is where its meaning comes from. It may have been lost somewhere in the past because of mergers and acquisitions, but it is worth every effort to retrieve it. From there the organisational story is told throughout the company in all kinds of ways. The best way to do that is not top down but from the cellar up! Employee stories and stories from the company archives can make up a very rich story platform that can be as explanatory as it can be inspiring. It can be verbally told, but also in the form of company films, online interviews and video's, internal presentations, even company gatherings and parties. The organisational story will install pride into the company workforce, which is one of the best drivers for productivity and pro-active activity.

The brand story

The brand story is much more than the sum of product and promise. The brand story is made up of a vast collection of stories from clients and customers, employees and brand designers, product designers, R&D people, original brand and/or product inventors, ingredients and service aspects. All that centres around the core story that contains the meaning of the brand and that holds its authentic character. The brand story is what is needed to get people to start believing the brand on a deeper emotional level instead of just on the basis of an advertising-induced image. The stories that will come from the brand story will be aimed to develop a lasting relationship between the brand and its customers, growing them into a loyal following. The brand story functions as an anchor of authenticity and accountability and is the check back point for storytelling, advertising and brand activation.

The sales story

Sales stories sharpen the value proposition by connecting the brand or product to client needs and demand. They aim to give the brand or the product a recognisable place in people's lives, handing consumers their reasons why for trying them out, trusting them and becoming loyal users in the process. The most effective sales story is a collection of best-practice stories and customer stories that can help the salespeople inside the company understand customer demand better. The sales story is not so much a story on paper, but can be turned into practical and educational sales presentations, workshops and training sessions for internal use. It helps anyone involved in the sales process connect to the way consumers look at using and buying relevant brands and products and how to build a sales story that meets them in the middle. That can entail all kinds of separate stories, from building the best possible sales pitch to recognising and putting rational and emotional drivers to the best possible use. The sales story helps the overall brand story grow on sales people, enhancing their knowledge and belief in it as well as in themselves. By making them feel more comfortable with the brand and product they need to sell, the sales story will take away any invisible barriers there may be. Selling is a special talent, but it needs to be reinforced to give sales people all the confidence they need to get out and succeed.

## ENDORSEMENTS

Technology changes the face of the world. It brought us the ability to share experiences and ideas on a global scale.  It also brings us back to the very essentials of marketing: word of mouth. Any story, brought in an intelligent way, is more powerful than all of the traditional marketing vehicles combined. Just think about how half the world remembers the line: "I'll have what she's having" by the way Meg Ryan brings the story to Harry. This book brings you all the elements of storytelling to help you win The Story Wars.

Walter Torfs, Director Branding & Communications, BNP Paribas Fortis

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Storytelling is in Erik's nature. Everything he has taught me as my mentor has somehow always been through a story. During our daily work at the Brandhome office, he is constantly fuelling things with examples, structuring plots with beginnings, middles ends, futures and exploring them with a great eye for detail. Every page of the book breathes the passion Erik has for the job. With The Story Wars, he tells the story of stories in such a way that you want to keep reading, line after line... because you don't want the story to end.

Jef Pelkmans, Strategy Manager, Brandhome Belgium

\- - - - - - -

More than ever storytelling for brands is not only a nice-to-have or a point-of-differentiation... it is a NECESSITY! It is the marketing element that humanizes brands and that truly connects brands to people. Storytelling connects on a human-to-human level. And storytelling creeps into all elements of the commercial agenda, from how you sell your ideas internally, to how you build a case for ROI to a CFO, or to how you capture the consumers' heart! As Saelens rightly points out, we are at the verge of a real story war. If you want to win this war of authenticity, attention, liking and love, then you better read this book! It's time to get your story straight.

Kurt Frenier, Global Vice President Marketing, PepsiCo HQ

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As usual, a sharp analysis by Erik of the world of marketing today, on the way people interact, build their thinking and make their buying decisions. It's a story about the power of storytelling. It's a marketing book that reads like a story. Full of examples, pleasant to read, you don't need to be a marketer to understand and appreciate the book. Better than an explanation, it's a demonstration. Great book!

Nathalie Chevalier, Head of Branding, Communication and Culture AG Insurance & Karel Coudré, Marketing Director Non Life

\- - - - - - -

We have entered the age of social and mobile media. The old advertising models are outdated. The time of one-way-communication has passed. Brand strategist Saelens not only defines these issues in his own inspiring and refreshing way, but also gives the tools and techniques to solve them. He explains why storytelling is not just the next marketing hype. It is about building an authentic and passionate dialogue between brands and consumers and employees and stakeholders. People buy stories, not just products. The Story Wars is an inspiring story and way forward for executives everywhere in the age of social and mobile media. Everyone who is involved in branding should want to win The Story Wars.

Wim Vos, CEO VAB Group

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After reading this book you will never look the same way ever again at brands and the stories they (don't) tell. Not only has Erik written a captivating book, filled to the brim with real life examples and useful insights, it is simply 'unputdownable'. That is why every minute you wait to read this book, is a wasted minute. If a good brand story is authentic, accountable and activating, then The Story Wars is an excellent one. Period.

Peter De Keyzer, Chief Economist, BNP Paribas Fortis

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Creativity and storytelling are like Oreos and milk - separate, they're nice, but together they're magic. As Erik's creative partner, reading this book has enriched my view on storytelling and taught me how to reframe and tell stories in a more creative and engaging way.  So if something in your story hasn't quite clicked yet, this book could be the ultimate branding weapon you've been missing.

Joris Moolenaar, Executive Creative Director, Brandhome

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Storytelling is alive. If there is one item, which has motivated people throughout the centuries, it is storytelling. With the correct authentic and activating tone, Erik's story sets people into action. Activating people to move in the right direction is what business is all about. Whether it be your customers or your employees, both are essential to your business. Erik has further enhanced this well proven notion. The added value of his new book is that it provides guidelines on how to enact storytelling to activate your own business. Well timed Erik and congratulations on your excellent feeling about where brand marketing is going. Compliments on how you provide meaningful guidelines to use it in one's own business environment!

Peter Boerma, Executive Director, former CEO DELTA group

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The key message of this book is focus on the basics! In this fast changing world people seek authenticity. They still want to trust you and your brand. But more than ever, you have to earn it. As Aristotle understood, "If an audience trusts the debater, they accept his point of view." That's still so true. This book understands this too. Erik motivates us to go back to basics, learn again about who we really are and tell those we want to align with. It helps us to be successful again!

Arendo Schreurs, Manager Corporate Communications & Issue Management, DELTA NV

\- - - - - - -

"Victorious warriors win first and then go to war, while defeated warriors go to war first and then seek to win", wrote Sun Tzu in the book The Art of War. Erik is one of those victorious warriors. His endless fight for the right story, told at the right time, by the right means is one of his big gifts. The Story Wars are highly underestimated marketing challenges, now well told by one of the biggest and most genius marketing solution builders of this era. Read his story to win your war!

Nicoline Spruijt, Lifelong friend & Sales Director, Van Gansewinkel Belgium
All content in this book is copyrighted and protected by applicable copyright laws. Nothing may be published, reproduced, copied, modified, uploaded, transmitted, posted, transferred or distributed in any way without the prior written consent of Brandhome publishing.

The registered trademarks Brandhome®, Brandhome method®, identity-driven brand building®, Triple-A brands® are used under license by Brandhome, Brandhome publishing and its related affiliates, and are governed by national and international laws. The above-mentioned trademarks hold various intellectual property rights such as methodological approach, key performance indicators, etc. These rights remain under the sole commercial ownership of Brandhome, and may not be used without prior written consent of Brandhome.
creative direction by Joris Moolenaar

executive creative director Brandhome

Publisher Brandhome publishing  
Falconplein 30, 2000 Antwerpen, Belgium

www.brandhome.com

€ 50    $ 75    250 AED    £ 40    ¥ 5000

© 2014 Brandhome bvba

ISBN 9789077163092  
NUR 803/810  
D/2014/9616/1

