So is THIS your story?

Yester years in the beautiful downtown Vancouver, Jim a young executive, on his way to his office came across a pink sheet pasted on a lamppost with a large capital heading “LOST” underneath it read as follows…

“ I lost my Journal, I believe somewhere in this area, it’s brown in color, size 8”x10”, it has all my research I have been working on, notes and recipes, I’m lost without it… if you find please, please, call me….”

There was a phone number

Jim’s felt sorry for the loss of this person…shook his head and kept his brisk walk to work….a block down he came across another sheet, it was blue, pasted on a tree, this is where under shades of trees, little shops and intricate lanes hugs the small quaint park where a fountain surrounded by benches becomes the center for pigeon feeders. The colorful shrubberies provide the right scents for the tired and exuberant alike as they mingle in this area.

This blue sheet stated “Lost Journal” I’m searching for my brown color journal that I lost somewhere in this vicinity…please call”

Jim, once again, felt bad and kept walking, thinking about the agony of that poor soul…during his twisted daily course to office and while admiring the greenery he suddenly spotted a brown journal underneath one of the park bench lying flat in one side and easily visible…

Jim almost ran towards it and grabbed it hastily in excitement, flipped the pages, and yes, there were notes, some recipes, some sheets of printed literature and more recipes and yes on the last page there was the name of the person, Robert

Jim, immediate turned back and in excitement and quickly identified the tree where the sheet was posted and approached rapidly to verify the name and to pick up the number and called…

“Yes, this is Robert; ….oh thank you, thank you so much…please, please can you come to my shop? I’m only 2 blocks from where you are… this is a wine shop and I will give you a bottle of wine in return…please do that…thank you …thank you” the person on the other line was emotionally collapsing.

Jim holding the brown journal firmly in his hand proudly went along with the request, took that suggested detour, and 2 blocks down, entered the wine shop, met Robert, a warm shake hand, gave him the journal, felt very good about his good deed of the day and also accepted a free bottle of wine…

Further conversations between Robert and Jim led to recipes, food and wines, Robert also offered some printed leaflets with new and special recipes…suggested certain wines that are supposed to go very well with them and in all that excitement, feeling slightly obligated with a free bottle of wine Jim purchased few bottles and didn’t mind their higher prices while taking all this in stride went happily to his office.

“Guess what happened today… and let me show you some great wine bottles” he declared as he walked in….and right there from the other side of the floor behind the cubicle a sharp but recognizable voice bounced back. “You too, Jim, look at my wine bottles too”

Two people on Jim’s floor, including his boss and four more in the building also found the ‘brown journals’ same day and ended up buying expensive wine bottles.

The long story; the wine shop cooked up this campaign as a brilliant word-of-mouth and emotional branding strategy, as they were posting notices and short distances later dropping brown journals and fooling the people all as a well coordinated synchronized team work.

The short story; campaign backfired, people felt their emotions exploited, felt cheated for being obligated by free cheap wine bottle coerced into buying mediocre wines at inflated prices. The media blasted the story, customer demanded refunds and boycotted them, the wine store apologized, heads rolled, agency fired and who knows whatever happened to the company?

These kinds of stories are all around us, have you not experienced when you are enticed for a real deal you end up paying three times in surprises. Organizations hires team to do the ‘cooking up’ of such ideas and later have other teams hired do the ‘washing up’. The kitchen remains dirty. But when do the organizations learn, ever or never?

A quick walk in any mega mall will prove that as boxes get fancier and bigger
the inside contents become of lesser quality and smaller quantities.

“Story telling” is now a new term for advertising and branding and there is nothing wrong with this… provided you have a ‘real’ one, old adverting is already out of tricks and changing its name to ‘story telling’ for the same old shenanigans is not the answer… please do not ‘fabricreate’ stories just become so good in your offering that it becomes the ‘the real story’ Study super successful organizations and you will find the proof of ‘real value creation at the central core.

Old fashioned honesty

No matter where you are and what you produce it must have ‘extreme value’ and but not ‘extreme packaging’ … today increasingly ‘value offerings’ are like fancy gift wrapped boxes with nothing inside and it should be the other way round, great value offerings with maximum impact and minimum but justifiable and elegant packaging.

So what is your story?

Can you achieve the following breakthrough tasks?

Honestly challenge your best product; take a hammer and smash it into pieces on the boardroom table…and hang each single broken part as a Carder mobile, like a chandelier suspended and floating in air… spend all the time to figure and surprisingly you will find many additional options, often easily improved under the same production line…etc. The same applies to any service offerings or anything else. Secret is to just do it and later apologies for the scratches on the boardroom table. Do this monthly and your will be on top of the ‘innovation’ chain

Boldly ask the definition of proprietary ownership of your brand; what portion or parts of your brands do you really own or are you making Androids or simple making ‘paperclips’ or ‘rubber bands’ as price driven commodity. What portion of your name identity can you really claim as your own? Like Rolex or Panasonic or are your names like TechLink, InfoTech, PrimeRealty, Dynamic, Quantum or Genesis…here in all such cases you are basically sharing your brand name identity with millions others… lost in the jungle…this subject is most sensitive to discuss in any organization, but professional name evaluation is a must.

WHAT is your story?

Dig deep and get serious. WHAT can you tell the world with integrity and power and WHAT is it that you are offering as something of real and amazing value…if not…be prepared to answer WHY are you in the business in the first place? Think very deep…start all over

Please, now tell me your real story, one more time?