Strategy Is Knowing What to Leave Out

Welcome to Story Is Everything, our new monthly LinkedIn newsletter. Ambitious stories can rally people to a sense of purpose. Connect us with one another. Inspire audiences to think and feel and believe. Our team of journalists, designers, and strategists build story-driven brands that win hearts, minds, and market share. Each month we will share insights here on what we’ve learned and draw back the curtain on some of our current work.?

In this issue, our head of strategy, Danielle Bird , talks about the power of knowing what to leave out when it comes to telling your story. Bird brings 20 years of experience partnering with leaders at organizations like Google , Nike , and the Obama Foundation to find their North Star. She’s got an unparalleled sense of direction.

Visit gdp.studio to explore more than 40 case studies of our work. And if you’re new to this newsletter, please subscribe. Next month, you’ll be the first to hear from our executive producer, Paula Chowles , about why smart storytellers embrace their vulnerability.

By Danielle Bird , Head of Strategy at Godfrey Dadich Partners

The brands that we admire, love, follow, and support all have a good idea of who they are. They also know who they are not. Having that good idea is the result of a powerful brand strategy.

Think about the first pair of Nikes you ever owned. Did you feel like you could run faster? Or the times you turned down a soda if the restaurant only served Pepsi instead of Coke. Or the way your kid’s face lights up—my daughter’s certainly does—the minute they see the castle take shape on the screen before a Disney movie.

These moments are genuine and real, but they are created from thousands of decisions, and each decision has gone through the lens of brand strategy. The power behind these moments is fueled by a consistency in execution and the way these brands honor their singular positioning in the market. The way they understand the role their brand plays in the lives of their audience.?

And a crucial part of that understanding is honing in on the things they do better than anyone else, which means leaving some stuff on the cutting room floor.?

Sure, Nike sells apparel and sponsors sporting events and has a running app, but its foundation remains: authentic athletic achievement. The Coca-Cola Company has other sodas in its stable, but the focus is still on making the world’s single-most iconic soft drink. The Walt Disney Company has its fingers in many pies, but driving all of it is a dedication to creating the sense that you are entering a magic kingdom every time you engage with the brand.?

Or a restaurant that tries to be everything to everyone—you probably know the kind of place I’m talking about—and ends up failing because of a lack of focus. Maybe that’s why the first thing chef Gordon Ramsay made restaurateurs do on Kitchen Nightmares is trash 90 percent of their menus and focus on a few signature dishes. Instead of trying to do everything, just do something, but knock it out of the park.?

STRATEGY WITH A CAPITAL “S”

I’ve been doing strategy work for 20 years; like any discipline in the world of brand storytelling, strategy has changed. Clients tend to not want strategy with a capital S anymore—they want strategic thinking. But when you start spelling out the process, there tends to be a hesitancy.?

Clients want that resonant thing that strategy helps create, but they don’t think they need the strategy itself. They see strategy as a PowerPoint or Keynote presentation. What I help them see is the secret power: Smart strategy provides a map to the road ahead, a road that may be socked in with fog right now, or closed due to construction. They may think all they need is creative output—the destination, if you will. To know where they’re going. But first, I tell them, they need directions on how to get there.

Not to belabor the metaphors here, but asking for the end product without the connective threads is like asking an architect to design a house and then build it without a blueprint.?

I get it, this is not a painless process; when we do the real strategy work, it can be intense. It can get us to the client’s pain points, and to the company’s truths—or often more illuminating, its untruths.?

THE MIGHT OF MINIMALISM

The process of discovery and development can get us to a place where a brand can tell its story in a single word. Sure, we all think we need more, ahem, space to say what needs to be said. But when a brand tells me, “One word? No way,” I point them toward the healthcare provider Kaiser Permanente . It has “Thrive.” One word, but it does so much for its brand. What do we want out of healthcare more than to thrive??

Brands need to think about what story they want to tell and what emotion they want people to feel. Then they need to think, “Okay, what’s the smallest container I can do that in?”

THE BIGGER PICTURE

Remember the Kodak Carousel campaign featured in that classic episode of Mad Men? So much of advertising then was about trying to manipulate you to feel a certain way. Today, the messages that companies are sending are about making you feel like you’re part of a bigger picture—that the human race is in this together.

And these companies have a choice. Some of them are trying to say something about everything. They may need to pull it back a bit. And some of what they’re saying is not authentic to their brand. That’s an essential point: finding the essence of what is authentic for your brand to say.?

On the flip side, we have brands out there that have amazing things to say, and they’re doing such worthy work, and they have purpose-driven initiatives within their organization that are moving a crucial needle. But you know what? Maybe they’re not talking about it outside of their organization because they’re scared.?

As part of our strategy work, we want to show those clients the benefit of being authentic and vulnerable. And help them realize that brands that show a crack every now and again, brands that get out there and get in front of it, those are the brands that are highly valued, with passionate customers.?

Staying true to your brand strategy is not a superpower reserved for companies that reach a certain awareness level (like Coca-Cola) or revenue size (like Nike). It’s a discipline and practice that any brand can master.?

It starts with identifying your position—the space you want to own in the mind of your audience. And then using that position as a filter for decision making, one that guides what’s on your website, what’s in your lobby, and everything in between.?

Brand lust can happen instantly. But brand love is built over time—and it’s the result of that brand consistently making hard choices about what to leave out.?

Danielle Bird has helped leaders at dozens of top-tier companies hone their stories to their essence, including Google , Apple , the Obama Foundation , Symantec , Palo Alto Networks , IBM , Adyen , and Nike .

Hear More About It

Want to learn more about the importance of building brand relevance through storytelling (and hear a clip of Don Draper’s famous Carousel soliloquy while you’re at it)? Listen to this interview with longtime IBM brand genius Jon Iwata on Riveted , GDP’s original podcast that demystifies the art of great storytelling.

Case Studies: Behind the scenes of our work

Client: Microsoft 365

Mission: Create a podcast that arms business leaders with the insights and hard data they need to help them stay two steps ahead in the rapidly changing world of modern work.

How We Did It: After the successful rollout of the editorial portal WorkLab , Microsoft asked us to produce a podcast as a natural extension of that digital publication. We jumped at the opportunity to create an intimate setting to further explore ideas and develop perspectives, bring Microsoft research to life in a surprising and engaging way, and showcase the company’s executives and scientists alongside other prominent thought leaders. We partnered with the podcast production studio Reasonable Volume to record and produce the series, and enlisted veteran technology and business journalist Molly Wood to host. Our design team created a strong graphic treatment for each episode to match the vibrant aesthetic of the WorkLab digital publication.

What We Learned: No amount of planning can account for how fast news changes, even on a podcast platform. Our focus has shifted to follow an ever-evolving topic: from work-from-home to hybrid work to flexible work to AI-assisted work. But the nimbleness of the platform allows us to provide an always-fresh perspective on big questions that are top of mind for managers and employees across the country and around the world.?

Read the full case study about the WorkLab podcast on our website and follow the show on Apple or wherever you get your podcasts. Our sixth season launched in February with an interview with Charles Duhigg , bestselling author of The Power of Habit.

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