The method behind the magic

Image: Nikola Tesla circa 1899

Whenever people say that our ability to design stories with the exact voice for their brand is uncanny, or amazing, we always tell them that it’s nothing magical; but a very rational process of mining the right information from the client and using it in our creative process.

The first step of this process is the questionnaire that we share with our clients; it serves as the cornerstone of our story design process. It’s designed to extract key insights about your brand, values, and other ideas that help us capture the authentic story of your company or personal journey. So, this questionnaire is more than just a series of inquiries—it's essentially the series of dots that we will connect into an articulation framework for your business; a blueprint that enables you to make decisions, brief creatives, and communicate what’s at the heart of your business to your staff. In this blog post, we'll address the frequently asked questions surrounding our questionnaire, offering clarity on how your responses can be formulated to best inform our story design process. 

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* Please note that the explanations given here are for selected questions only; we’ve chosen to give explanations to these questions because more people have needed help with them. If you’re a client who needs more explanations or wants a better understanding of a question not listed here, reach out to us. We’ll get on a call to make sure you get all the answers you need. We highly recommend listening to this video walkthrough while you attempt the questionnaire. It gives a step-by-step explanation of each question and can help you complete the questionnaire with greater accuracy.

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Question 4 

In question 4, we ask about any specific needs, problems, or wants that must be taken into account in our design process; usually, the answer to this question would be a set of words, colours, or ideas that you want to steer clear of for important reasons; or a market context that you want to make special reference to. For example, a consultant who commissioned us wanted to steer clear of the word ‘design’ because it had a strong association with a set of services she did not offer and did not want to get inquiries for.

Question 5 

Question 5 is to get you to consider how the articulation framework will be used. If your primary focus is on driving creative decisions when speaking to consumers, you should emphasize how the framework will inform your marketing and promotional strategies. 

On the other hand, if your priority is to share your work culture, values, and onboard new teams or inform existing teams, focus on how the framework will serve as a foundational tool for internal communication and alignment. Then the framework will be somewhat tailored to help you integrate it into onboarding processes, employee training programs, and internal communications to foster a sense of belonging and unity among team members.

Question 6

When answering question 6, whether your business takes a group-led or individual-led approach in your business story, consider if your business is best represented by the collective efforts of a group or by an individual founder or leader who closely directs others and makes most of the key decisions. Determine which approach resonates most authentically with your way of working.

Question 7 

In question 7, we ask you to associate a fictitious age with your brand persona; and this has nothing to do with how long your business has been in operation. Here’s why. A brand’s age has to do with shaping how it’s perceived by your target market. Although hardly ever explicitly mentioned in stories, a brand’s age can be hinted at in its visual presence or vocabulary.

Consider how these age groups are generally perceived. Envisioning your brand as young can convey a sense of freshness, innovation, and forward-thinking. This youthful persona may appeal to younger demographics seeking products or services that are modern, cutting-edge, and disruptive. On the other hand, positioning your brand as middle-aged suggests a level of maturity, reliability, and experience. This persona may resonate with consumers who value stability, trustworthiness, and a track record of success. Portraying your brand as a senior evokes notions of tradition, heritage, and legacy. This venerable persona can instil confidence and trust in consumers who prioritize longevity, heritage and established credibility. Lastly, embracing an ageless persona transcends temporal boundaries and emphasizes timeless values and universal appeal. This approach resonates with consumers seeking products or services that are enduring, adaptable, and relevant across generations.

When answering the question of how old your brand considers itself to be, it's crucial to align the fictitious age with the desired perception you wish to convey to your target market. Consider the demographics, values, preferences, and aspirations of your audience, and choose an age that best reflects the identity and positioning you want for your brand. 

Question 8 

When considering the gender of your brand persona, it's important to recognize the impact this decision can have on shaping the perception of your brand and its appeal. Associating a gender with your brand persona can serve as a powerful tool for conveying specific traits, values, and characteristics that resonate with your intended audience.

For instance, envisioning your brand persona as feminine can evoke qualities such as nurturing, empathy, and creativity. This persona may appeal to consumers who prioritize emotional connections, authenticity, and inclusivity in their interactions with brands. Positioning your brand persona as masculine suggests attributes such as strength, leadership, and assertiveness. This persona may resonate with consumers who value qualities like reliability, confidence, and ambition in the brands they choose to engage with. Alternatively, embracing a non-binary persona challenges traditional gender norms and fosters a sense of fluidity, diversity, and acceptance. This persona can appeal to consumers who prioritize equality, openness, and representation in their brand interactions.

It's important to note that when considering whether a brand persona is feminine, masculine, or non-binary, we're not necessarily referring to traditional notions of male, female, or LGBTQ identities. Instead, we're associating these terms with energies, traits, and tendencies that can transcend gender boundaries and apply to individuals of all genders.

By understanding these distinctions, brands can leverage the concepts of feminine, masculine, and non-binary energies to communicate specific values, characteristics, and emotions that resonate with their target audience, regardless of their gender identity. This approach fosters a more inclusive and nuanced understanding of brand personas, allowing for greater flexibility and authenticity in brand representation.

Question 13

When answering the question about what your brand sounds like when speaking, reflect on the preferences and characteristics of your ideal target audience. Determine whether they are more responsive to communications that sound local and familiar or if they prefer a more global and cosmopolitan tone. Understanding your audience's cultural context and linguistic preferences is crucial in shaping your brand's voice. Consider your business’ origins and how important that is to your story. Evaluate whether your brand's voice should reflect the speech and language of a particular region or culture. Consider whether aligning with regional dialects, colloquialisms, and cultural nuances will enhance your brand's authenticity. Is your business rooted in a specific community or culture? 

Or does it have a more cosmopolitan and globally-minded perspective? Assess the potential impact of adopting a more universal and culturally neutral tone on your brand's global appeal.

This tone of voice must be managed consistently whether it’s in advertising campaigns, social media posts, customer service interactions, or written content. Maintaining a cohesive and unified voice across channels is a must.

Question 28

This question prompts you to think about the type of consumer with their purchasing decision-making methods. When creating stories and visual language, a brand must pay close attention to the type of consumer they are targeting because different types have unique behaviours, preferences, and motivations that shape their purchasing decisions.

For instance, the Bargain Shopper is primarily driven by discounts and deals, seeking value for their money. In brand stories and visual language, emphasizing cost savings, special offers, and price competitiveness can effectively resonate with this audience segment.

The Researcher, on the other hand, values information and seeks thorough research before making a purchase. Providing detailed product information, customer reviews, and comparisons in brand stories and visual content can help build trust and credibility with this audience.

For the Impulse Buyer, who makes spontaneous purchasing decisions, leveraging eye-catching visuals, limited-time offers, and persuasive storytelling can create a sense of urgency and drive immediate action.

The Negotiator appreciates flexibility and seeks opportunities for customization or personalized offers. Tailoring brand stories and visual language to highlight customizable options, flexible payment terms, and personalized recommendations can appeal to this audience segment.

The Loyalist values brand trust, consistency, and reliability. Reinforcing brand identity, values, and past experiences through consistent brand stories and visual elements can foster loyalty and strengthen the emotional connection with this audience.

Lastly, the consumer on a mission seeks efficiency and convenience, with a singular objective of completing the purchase quickly. Streamlining the buying process, providing clear navigation paths, and minimizing distractions in brand stories and visual language can cater to this audience's need for speed and simplicity.

Understanding the nuances of each consumer type allows us to tailor their brand stories and visual language effectively, resonating with their target audience's preferences, behaviours, and motivations. Consider this when you’re answering this question.

Question 34

This is one of the questions often elaborated by our clients; however, the point here is to be as succinct as possible, narrowing down on what exactly it is that you do. This question is to identify how to refer to your work or business. For example, ‘a clothing store’, or a ‘financial intelligence consultant’. Of course, there is room to bring in a specialized aspect of your business here; for example, an ‘abstract painting artist’. When a business identifies what it does, it helps customers understand its purpose, offer, and what to expect. This is important for brand stories and visual language; this clear identification should be reflected in messaging, visuals, and branding elements to ensure consistency and coherence.

For example, if the brand is a digital marketing agency, it should clearly convey its services, such as "digital marketing solutions," "online advertising," or "social media management”. 

This is a question that requires a somewhat short answer, which is why we encourage clients to try and explain their work as succinctly as possible, in approximately 3 words. 

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* Got a question that we didn’t cover here? Don't hesitate to reach out to us. We're more than happy to schedule a call and help you complete this questionnaire. We highly recommend listening to this video walkthrough, while you attempt the questionnaire. It will save you time and help you record accurate answers that best reflect your business.

Designing stories with difficult messages

Sometimes, businesses find themselves in dangerous waters when trying to engage their audience through emotionally charged popular narratives. Often enough, we see businesses initiating or tagging onto sensitive conversations involving race, politics, skin colour and gender; some nail it, others damage their brand catastrophically, and most end up making their conversations seem unauthentic. Remember how the race to position themselves with the Black Lives Matter movement came out for most brands? Those who didn’t filter the narrative through their own brand personality, or present it through their true views and ideas, had their audiences disengaged, and sometimes even enraged. That awkward Pepsi ad, which only became famous as a tone-deaf disaster of a story, is probably the best example. 

Engaging with popular narratives is a good thing to do; It shows that the brand is alive, current, listening and responding to the world that its consumers live in. But, not every brand can tag onto every narrative. It must be authentic; there must be history, connection or reason; And most importantly, it must be delivered right through the business’ persona, values, and tone of voice.

When we were helping the in-house team at Rithihi—one of Sri Lanka's most beloved saree boutiques—to identify its brand voice and story styles, it became important to demonstrate how to engage with certain topics that were sensitive. At the height of the Covid-19 pandemic in India, as the death tolls were sky-rocketing, it was insensitive to talk about the beauty of sarees handmade in areas like Banaras, Kanchipuram and Ludhiana, which were devastated by disease. It was important to address this, and convey the brand's authentic emotions towards the catastrophe; However, it was a highly emotionally-charged topic and there was already growing criticism on how some brands were delivering their messages. We created a newsletter with stories that celebrated the skill and beauty of artisanal communities affected by the pandemic. The message was approached through Rithihi's values, while the response to the situation was framed through the brand's personality framework. The stories, as always, were delivered strictly through the brand voice that we carefully identified for Rithihi. As a result, the message was authentic in reflecting Rithihi's true views and sentiments, and it was well received. This story led to creating many meaningful conversations between the business and its audience.

During Sri Lanka's economic crisis in 2022, many hospitality businesses struggled to articulate why it’s still worthwhile to visit the island along with the reasons for the peaceful protests that were sweeping across the nation. It was a challenging message to coin. However, it couldn't be ignored or overlooked by any business inviting people to visit Sri Lanka; especially with the spread of misinformation and sensational news making Sri Lanka appear unsafe. Here's how we helped one of our longstanding clients in hospitality to articulate this message with the earnestness and sense of humour true to their brand voice.

These kinds of emotionally charged narratives are where a brand's true strength in communications is tested. In both these instances, the brand articulation framework that outlined the business values and the voice were the key tools in getting these stories right. 

A well-articulated brand persona and voice are the most important tools you have when navigating through complex or sensitive narratives. They are your frameworks to be truthful and authentic.

If you want to find out more on how we consult and create stories to help businesses navigate through challenging messages, and complex narratives, send us a message.

Why truth is fundamental to commercial stories

The trust that a business cultivates with its audience has a lot to do with the truthfulness in the stories that it tells. Especially now, in our age of misinformation driven into hyperdrive with deep fakes. From my experience in designing stories for business, I’ve understood that truth is fundamental. It’s the basis of a good business story that forms a real connection between businesses and people.

Remember a good story told by a business that led you to forming a connection with that brand; it either tapped into your desires, fears, anxieties, comforts, amusements, or aspirations by offering solidarity, by resonating with you or by providing a solution. But, imagine if you later found out this story was not exactly factual; it would most likely alter your entire perception of that business. Why, though? Why isn’t an untrue business story easily acceptable as fiction, like we would embrace a movie or a comedy skit? This is where context is everything in a story. People generally associate a business story with reality; a product or a service they can use. Unless stated, or presented through the work of an artist, performer, or an influencer whose stories are known to be fictional, business stories live in the context of reality where truth is imperative. For example, see how we set the context for this fictional story for a client. Also see this funny story that needed no explicit context because audiences already recognise the work of these creators as fiction. 

However, the product qualities or values told in a fictional story by a business must still be true. For example; in a campaign video that went viral, tech giant Apple’s team, including CEO Tim Cook, is portrayed having a meeting with Mother Nature played by Oscar-winning actress Octavia Spencer. In a compelling narrative, Apply cleverly uses a formidable Mother Nature’s demand for sustainability updates to talk about the company’s innovations across materials, clean energy, and low-carbon shopping as well as its work in restoring natural ecosystems. The story ends with Mother Nature being pleasantly surprised, as Apple successfully presents itself as on track to meet targets for its 2020 pledge to reach net zero across Apple’s entire carbon footprint by 2030. The story also doesn’t miss the opportunity to unveil its first carbon-neutral product, an eco-friendly Apple Watch. This story has won Apple admiration for transforming a boring sustainability report into something that has humor, entertainment, and facts while also achieving what all companies want with their content—going viral. It’s genius storytelling. Or, is it? The story has also created significant backlash bringing the spotlight to Apple’s already existing reputation for creating products that quickly become obsolete and limiting the ability to repair—both highly unsustainable policies. This has led to accusations of greenwashing and dismissal of Apple’s sustainability claims; unfortunately, even the ones they uphold. This is a case that highlights the importance of making communication not only interesting but also authentic. In the long run, honesty is at the core of stories that build trust. Brands should proudly claim their victories while being honest about their shortcomings and what they’re still working on. For brands that prioritize longevity and build a legacy of reliability over short-term profits and virality, honesty is key when it comes to communication.

Truth is fundamental to business stories; it’s non-negotiable. Even in entertainment, where fiction is a norm and readily welcomed by audiences, truth holds enormous value. Just think about the weight it adds to the value of a story when you read the line ‘this story was based on a true incident’ at the end. Truth is so valuable; never, ever compromise or downplay it in business stories.

When a brand is truthful in its communication, it establishes credibility. Consumers grow to trust a brand that doesn't mislead, change narratives, or overpromise. This means transparent communication about products, services, and business practices; it builds trust because consumers always appreciate more knowledge and a deeper understanding of their purchases. 

Honesty in branding and business communication is not just a moral or ethical consideration; it's a strategic one. It builds trust, credibility, and loyalty, ultimately contributing to a brand's long-term success and financial growth.

Truth is one of the most fundamental aspects of a good business story; but, there’s more to building a successful conversation between a business and its audience. We always encourage clients to tell true stories, or present truth through the entertainment of fiction; this paired with conscious intention that comes from your company’s values, a rational relevance built to your audience through the message, and the ritual consistency of a well-rounded brand personality, language, voice, and tone maintained right throughout can form a great connection with between a business and its audience. Without these elements, your brand stories will also remain lost in the digital noise, deleted unread from inboxes, or overlooked on the feed. To find out how we can help your business tell its real story in ways your audience can draw value from it, get in touch.