Creating an Authentic Brand Story

The Solving Campaign by Google Cloud

This is Part 3 of a blog series on B2B tech branding. Part 1 Building a Tech Brand for Business; Part 2 Elements of a Tech Brand Story, Part 4 Brand Stories & Hero's Journey; and Part 5 Building a Business Brand with a Collective Soul: Google Cloud Interview

Every CEO on track for an IPO and every founder preparing for the next big funding round wishes they had a brand story in their pocket that they could deliver to investors, that they could land in a live media interview, or that they could unveil at a big trade show (well, scratch that last one for 2020)—a story that would bend the curve, change the market perception, and move the company into a higher orbit of valuations. Creating such a brand story seems straightforward, simple, and exciting, especially for visionary tech leaders with newly released products. Yet, most brand stories fail. 

This blog post will explain why this is the case and explore how to build a brand story that is more likely to succeed. I’ve used the recent Google Cloud brand campaign dubbed “Solving” as an example in this post based on my conversation with John Zissimos, VP of Creative, Brand, Media and Customer Programs at Google Cloud.

The most common B2B mistakes

Essentially, the approach common among tech leaders conflates a short-term new messaging campaign with advertising, and they believe this is “branding.” According to Zissimos, “They think of brand as a marketing-only endeavor.” In contrast, consumer brand executives do not view their brands in such light. Imagine if Disney ran an ad campaign that promised something new, yet there was no change to their consumer experiences in theme parks, movies or merchandise. This would be seen as a tactical messaging effort, not a brand shift. Zissimos says, “And when you think about the best executives in living memory, marketing was their love, brand was their love, but they didn't think of it as brand or marketing. They thought of it as the pure existence and the promise of their company that they expressed through the brand, through marketing, through their messaging.”

Without even getting into the story itself, here are the most common mistakes that virtually assure failure, even if the brand story looks perfect on the whiteboard or in the pitch deck. 

An overambitious story

Often, the CEO along with a few senior executives and an agency imagine an ambitious story based on the highest paid person’s opinion (HIPPO). The critical tasks of generating customer insights or gathering feedback are outsourced to the agency. The story is packaged and delivered as fait accompli to other critical stakeholders like customer-facing teams, top partners, and vocal employees. This mistake is common because everyone in the room creating the story is a believer, while everyone in the outside world would be a skeptic of a new technology. Most executives fall for a hyperbolic story without even realizing that their enthusiasm will be met with skepticism, and that gap needs to be managed. According to Zissimos, “A lot of people will just go out with a campaign, just listening to a small set of customers, think, ‘Oh, this is what they want to hear from us.’ That's step one. But if you just do that, you're going to probably fail miserably, because just because a customer wants to hear something doesn't mean that you have that right to say that to them at the current state that you are. You have to build up to that.”

Slick ad campaign with celebrities and other borrowed interest

With this mistake, the story is implemented through a brand campaign across paid and social media channels with a recognizable celebrity who has nothing to do with the technology, company, or product value. The campaign is rooted in a borrowed interest rather than an authentic impact of technology’s value. The celebrity may help break through awareness—and the tactic may work one time—but unless the company is willing to have multi-year, long-term endorsement strategies like in sports brands (think Nike), this is not a viable branding for tech companies. Zissimos says of this approach, “Those that dabble in branding only for a moment, they look like absolute fools, because they’re doing it in an opportunistic way.” Though the website and customer materials get a facelift with a fresh style guide, only a few customers are enrolled into the storytelling. Most partners or employees are unaffected or not engaged. Zissimos continues, “If you do a brand campaign, and the first time your employees see it is when they're driving to work, or watching TV, or listening to their favorite podcast, you have failed and miserably.”

No major change to customer, partner, or employee experiences

Here, the brand story exists in the media, but there is a huge gap between the story and the lived reality of the company’s customers, employees, and partners. Typically, the customer experience journey is unchanged, the product roadmap is not tied to the story, customer relationships remain weak or transactional, and employee engagement remains low. Effectively, there are no major changes in company commitments, milestones, and actions within and outside the company as a result of the brand story. 

No impact on measurements 

A branding campaign that lasts for less than a year, typically two quarters, doesn't move the needle. Once “the event” (e.g., IPO, funding, or M&A) is over, business returns to usual cadence. The brand’s perception or preference does not change substantially in the marketplace. 

Creating a Brand Story: An Inside Out Approach

 “All brands have three identities,” according to Zissimos. “There's the one you have, there's the one you say you have, and there's the one you're desperately trying to create. Most companies only acknowledge two: the one they say they have, and the one they're trying to create, which they can never get to because they're not dealing with the one they actually have.”

So, an inside out approach to brand story begins with the uncomfortable truth of your story as currently lived by your customers and employees. You may then imagine a new story, but that can be achieved only by acknowledging the gap between your current state and your promised story—and through a set of public commitments you make to close the gap. This is a difficult but the only path to building an authentic brand story.

With all of this in mind, let’s take a look at the brand story of Google Cloud’s Solving Campaign.

So, how do you use the inside out approach to create an authentic brand story?

1. Observe your [lived] story 

The best place to start your story process is to observe and capture the story you are living today. Just as culture eats strategy for lunch, your lived story eats your messaging all day long. What your executives, customer-facing sales teams, and employees believe to be the current story and how they communicate this in meetings, events, and online will especially determine the fate of any new story you can imagine. Any new story can be either sabotaged or supported by the story already being lived in the culture. 

Zissimos explains the importance of observing the lived story:

“You have to acknowledge and admit the story you have, the faults that you have. Because how are you going to get to the story that you want to have if you're just in the pretend state of the one you say you have? A great brand campaign comes from your faults, your acknowledgment of those things in order to get to where you need to be.”

Start with a basic audit of how customers, employees, partners, and influencers like analysts and media see your company. This is a necessary foundation. What value do your customers see you as delivering? How do your users compare your product to competitors? Do the analysts view your technology as cool and innovative? Do your employees agree with the company mission? Summarize the current state along the three brand story pillars (promise, insight, and offering) and the foundation of current commitments. 

2. Evolve your [imagined] story

Building on your current story, you can now evolve to a new more imaginative and aspirational story. The three key pillars can be worked separately but at the heart is a new brand promise—the value you expect to deliver—founded on an insight that is your core. You may imagine several brand promises ranging from the mundane to the fantastic. However, the question is your credibility. What can you stand for given your current lived reality that your customers will believe in? 

“The search for this collective soul—or insight—took about a year and a half,” says Zissimos. “We had to put the customer voice first and do the research.

At its heart, we had to find out what was true about Google as a company, that was also true about Google Cloud as an entity, that was also true about all the products, that was true for the customers.

The insight came down to the 21-year philosophy of Google engineering at its very best. This is when Googlers say, “What are we solving for? What are we doing here?” When Google puts their mind to something, they achieve absolute miracles. That was also when we were at our best with our cloud customers.”

The more ambitious the brand story, the higher the expectations of committed actions from the company to deliver on the promise, and therefore harder the cultural challenge of living up to your new brand story. This is the dynamic to manage when imagining a new story. 

3. Commit to your story [actions]

Now you have to commit to a set of actions that bring credibility to the brand story. Start with highlighting a few iconic actions behind which you can stand—especially for your customers, employees, and marketplace. Are you announcing a new product? A new pricing program to improve customer retention? Joining or starting a new consortium? An employee recognition program? Many of these if done right are part of the iconic actions that put wood behind the arrow of your brand story. This is where an external brand campaign is usually created to announce and expand the commitments. 

“The Solving brand campaign was based on business strategy"

“So the first thing we did was take all the customer feedback, and the business strategy laid out by Thomas Kurian. And we layered those together. You can't do one without the other. And so the fact that we were going to become customer focused, and build the large sales teams, and the right customer service organization was critical. If we weren't investing in all the salespeople out there to service our clients, with a humble approach that we shall be listening first, we would not be able to pull this off. So everything was put in place for this to succeed.”

It is also essential to have your employees commit to the story. “Inside out is critical. For the Solving Campaign, we spent months inside making sure everybody got it and loved it. Because then you got your Hamburger Helper. That’s a lot less work that I have to do as brand chief, a lot less dollars. Because they love it. It's theirs. They feel like they created it. I am just an ambassador. And I've got 35,000 brand ambassadors at Google. I'm not the creator of it. I just put it out there. They're the ones that are selling it, and that's when you have magic on your hands.”

4. Live your [new] story 

The hardest part of the story is living it. Your plan should include cascading actions in all six categories discussed earlier (user journey, buyer journey, product roadmap, customer relations, employee engagement, and network/marketplace engagement). Publicly and internally tracking the impact of these plans along with six monthly audits will ensure you stick the landing. A new brand story, even if good, takes at least six months to create and land and another year to have full impact in the market. 

“We engaged our customers to come with us on that journey, to pilot the brand with us,” says Zissimos. “Those customers that have worked with us for a while were the first people to help us tell that story. We were all vulnerable together because we didn't know if it was going to work. And it wasn't that simple or easy, but we went down that road with them, and these are the stories we made with them. They were raw, and they were real. And one story begets another story to get to another story, and suddenly the momentum starts. As our teams and the customers see themselves in the stories, the brand comes to life.”

“We are what we say who we are, what we do, how we do it—then you judge us on that.” —John Zissimos on an authentic brand story

Key Takeaways

• There are many common mistakes in branding. Most of them stem from confusing branding with short-lived messaging advertising campaigns.
• Most tech companies think of brand as a marketing-only job when in fact the brand story is the promise of the company to customers, employees and all stakeholders.
• To create an authentic brand story, you need to follow an inside-out approach.
• Begin with the truth of your lived story as practiced by your customers and employees.
• Imagine a new story but make sure you acknowledge the gap between your lived state and your imagined, promised story. 
• Make a set of public commitments and investments that close the gap. 
• Bring your customers and employees along on this brand story.  

This is Part 3 of a blog series on B2B tech branding. Part 1 Building a Tech Brand for Business; Part 2 Elements of a Tech Brand Story, Part 4 Brand Stories & Hero's Journey; and Part 5 Building a Business Brand with a Collective Soul: Google Cloud Interview

References

Building A Business Brand with A Collective Soul: An Interview with John Zissimos, VP of Creative, Brand, Media and Customer Programs at Google Cloud

Google Cloud “Solving” Campaign Videos:

Goldman Sachs

Spotify

Carrefour

Humana

PayPal