Inspiration as a communications strategy

I’ve come to believe that inspiration is no longer an option, but the necessary status quo for brand success.

A simple idea, surprisingly complex to come to grips with.

There are three pieces that coalesce this approach for me.

First, that in the digital channel reality we live in today, there are an infinite number of flash communities of interest strung out across the threads of our lives. Less interconnected, but all adjacent as we ourselves are the connecting tissue through the fingerprint of our beliefs, not the mechanical platforms themselves.

If people are the glue and digital the form factor, emotion is the nerve that ties it together. We see with our hearts and rejigger our lives through what inspires us to do so.

This is not math and numbers, it is emotions and beliefs. That is what brings such diversity in people to act unilaterally with purpose within a group.

Second is that by definition inspiration as a narrative platform is inclusive, not exclusive.

We as digital natives, all of us, search for commonality, informed by nuance and stronger by personal internalizations of a shared reality.

This is the superglue of a story that moves the masses to action, whether collectively, to aggregate in the flesh, or individually to act, from donating to a cause or purchasing a product or deciding to reshape your life.

Advertising at its very best ala early Apple understood this.

Today the collective inclusivity of a storyline, that brings you into a familiar emotion in an unfamiliar situation is the pulse that can move the world. In community as the backdrop for narrative marketing today, each individual must be personally empowered to make the group function as a whole and at those special movements, move forward as one.

Third is that us and them as an idea is gone.

I harp on this theme for good reason, as the ageless craziness that we as marketers have invariably felt outside the market we sell to. If this is true, you are the wrong person to do the job. Surely diversity is one of the offshoots of this thought, that your teams must be reflective of the markets and the world you target.

But it is beyond that.

Empathy is the strongest backbone of inspiration to action. The very idea of a narrative approach to marketing is that it is a process that builds on engagement to move it forward. Engagement driven by concern, or identification, or want. By the need to remove the distance between you and them, between us and the market.

This doesn’t mean obviously that we shouldn’t test our messages or manipulate our language or gauge success by measuring results. Hell yes, we must.

But it also probably means that you shouldn’t work on what you don’t believe in.

And you need to believe in the breadth and inclusiveness of the message as a tie that binds, not a edge that separates.

Think of it this way.

Whether you are working to bring actionable attention to a tech platform that could change how we get around or replumbing the world's emergency response infrastructure. Or a new approach to controlling your own health. Or a broad support for animal rights as critical to our cultures own ethos of value.

It doesn’t matter.

You need to take your community, one by one, to the top of hill and share with them a story of a world where your idea or product will make their lives better as you roll the clock forward with them.

How they are not only the beneficiaries of change but the participants and somehow the owners of it.

This is a narrative of inclusion.

The very definition of inspiration as a platform. And the necessary idea of where marketing and commercial storytelling needs to go to move the world and your markets today.

Show me something of value that drives your life, that doesn’t hold these characteristics.

I bet you can't.

And I absolutely certain that each of you can isolate within yourself, the emotional why of what makes a difference to you, driving a pause for reflection and a reason to act.