How to Tell Your Company Story with Passion and Purpose

Experts recommend you should have a company story. But why isn’t this something you can just delegate to the marketing department?

A memorable company story communicates excitement for a winning cause. Your story should capture the essence of your business in a tale of passion, opportunity, and inspiration. It’s what being an entrepreneur is all about.

A great story makes a lasting impression, creates compassion and trustworthiness while compelling people to take action. In fact, your story is the foundation of your entire marketing platform. It’s where the rubber hits the road.

But when you hear the word “story,” you may imagine a copywriter whipping up a tall tale to persuade naive buyers. So, you may not be surprised to hear that a fake story helped launch one of the most successful online companies ever — eBay.

In the early 1990’s eBay was a struggling startup. They had a heart warming story that captured the public’s imagination. Their Founder, Pierre Omidyar had supposedly started eBay to help his girlfriend promote her Pez candy dispensers. As it turns out, this was a complete fabrication by the eBay PR Manager.

The truth was that Omidyar had advertised his broken printer and was stunned when someone actually bought it. His true passion was the economics of creating a “perfect market.” But this story was more likely to attract an economics professor than online buyers and sellers.

Their fake story worked long enough to help launch eBay, but could you get away with lying like that in today’s environment of hyper-transparency? Highly unlikely — and not worth the risk. True stories trump the fake ones anyway, because they authentically convey your passion and purpose.

The truth is far more powerful than any made-up story could be. For example, Nikos Mourkogiannis, a Harvard University professor tells a gripping true story at the beginning of his book, “Purpose: The Starting Point of Great Companies.” It shaped his life forever.

It’s about the day the communists came to his family’s farm in Greece when he was 5 years old. They wanted his father, but he’d gone off with the other men to fight the communists. There were 54 women in the village that day, and the communists demanded they denounce his father. When they refused the communists shot them all dead. Two of the women survived, but only because there were enough bodies for them to hide under.

While you don’t need a story as tragic as this one to succeed, Mourkogiannis believes stories are essential for communicating your purpose. He says, “concrete stories are usually more powerful teachers than abstract ideas. Indeed, stories are the way we learn.” But you’ll need people to remember your story, too.

What Makes a Story Memorable

People have a short attention span. They tend to lose focus and daydream constantly. A great story helps sell your products because it synchronizes the listener’s brain with the storyteller. By engaging people emotionally, it activates more parts of the brain than facts alone.

For example, have you heard the story about how shoe designer Kenneth Cole faked a movie production to launch his shoe company?

When Cole started his business in 1982, the best place to launch a shoe brand in New York was at a downtown New York City tradeshow. Exhibitors had the option of taking a room at a Hilton hotel or a showroom within a 2 block radius, which is what most people did. Cole didn’t have the cash for either.

Instead, he came up with the idea of parking a 40-foot trailer on the street in front of the hotel. Unfortunately the bylaws were such that only utility companies or film production crews shooting full length motion pictures could get a license.

In a bold move, the next day he changed his company’s name from Kenneth Cole Incorporated to Kenneth Cole Productions. Then he filed with the mayor’s office to shoot a full-length motion picture called “The Birth of a Shoe Company.”

He hired a Film Director, who sometimes had no film in his camera and aspiring actresses as models. 2 1/2 days later he’d seen every important buyer in New York and sold 40,000 pairs of shoes. 8 years later his company went public on the New York Stock Exchange, and to this day Kenneth Cole shoes is still technically a film production company.

After reading this, you may think — I don’t have a story that creative. But that may not be what’s needed. Cole’s story suits him because it aligns with his core values of being brash and edgy. Over the years his company has become known for supporting controversial social causes and using in-your-face advertising. So, his story truly communicates his passion and purpose. And that’s what counts.

What’s your story? Is there a situation or event that best illustrates what you’re about? Or even an event that happened to someone else? Just remember, for it to stick in people’s minds it must have some emotional impact. And a few other things as well.

NEXT: The 4 Parts of a Great Startup Company Story

About the Author

Derek Little is a Copywriter and company story coach. He interviews today’s most inspired entrepreneurs to help them discover their company story. What’s yours? Contact Derek at derek@trailblazerwriting.com