Stories That Define a Brand
We had an opportunity to look into pivotal moments that defined a brand for one of our clients. The most interesting bit we took away from looking at these case studies is how they were able to clearly articulate the brand’s vision.What was really effective about these stories is that they become the answer to questions about the brand’s culture, values and personality. It’s like a shortcut to the brand pyramid we all love.
Burt’s Bees
In the early days of the company, they were in talks with Target about carrying some of their products. The talks were going well until Target wanted to put one of the products in cases of two, instead of cases of six. The founder, Roxanne Quimby, was opposed to the idea because it would produce more waste so she told Target: “Screw you, I’m not using three boxes” and ended up losing the deal. (Source)
Stonyfield Organics
Stonyfield is the beloved organic yogurt company that was bought out by Danone in 2001. The negotiations between Stonyfield and Danone took a year and three quarters because Gary Hirshberg, the CEO, was building poison pills into the contract to protect the integrity of the company. There were terms such as committing to organic, donating to certain charities, etc. where if they were broken, Stonyfield would have the option to buy itself back from Danone. (Source)
Marks and Spencer
Former CEO Stuart Rose took Al Gore’s “Inconvenient Truth” with him on vacation and came back inspired and convinced that doing good is good for business. He rallied the top 100 people in the company and took them to a screening of the movie to get everyone on the same page. What happened afterwards was the development of Plan A, one of the most ambitious retail business strategies in play right now. (Source)
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The other thing we learned is that it’s never too late to take an action that can become a great story later. Often times, our bias is to refer to the brand’s history for something inspirational, but we forget that we have the option to create new stories, as shown by the Marks and Spencer example.
If you want to read more about the impact of stories in a company, there’s a great research paper from the Journal of Business Ethics.