The power of storytelling in branding

Today I listened to a podcast. It was about Tom’s shoes.

I’m not a huge fan of Tim Ferris’ self titled podcast, I find him to not be the greatest interviewer and he goes on tangents a lot, but occasionally there’s a guest who spikes my interest.

Blake Mycoskie (episode #249) is the founder of Tom’s shoes — you know the brand, comfy light weight canvas shoes and if you buy a pair they donate a pair to a child in need. The idea for the business came when Blake was on a month long trip to Argentina and came across three girls who were collecting slightly used pairs of shoes and giving them to the kids in the slums. They informed Blake that not having a single pair of shoes was what stopped these kids from attending school.

He figured if that was the only thing stopping them from getting an education then he should join the cause and help the girls out for the last week of his trip. This lead to him meeting some people who were passionate about the charity, and he founded Tom’s that week, extending his stay by another month to figure things out.

I won’t go into the details too much, you can listen to the podcast yourself, but one story that stuck out to me was when he was back in the states doing market research.

He invited a bunch of girls he knew to his house for dinner. When they arrived, there were piles of shoes on the table, not dinner. He asked them what they thought of the shoes. They said “cute”, “I would wear them”, and other similar comments.

Then he told them about his trip to Argentina and his business model of buying one pair and donating another pair to kids in poverty. He told them this was a purchase they didn’t need to feel guilty about.

Their response went from “cute” to “I’ll buy three pairs”, “here’s a list of stores you should contact” and “I’ve got a friend who would love this”. Blake described this as a frenzy and it was just what he needed to hear.

Later on when Tom’s was a bit more established, he saw a woman at the airport wearing a pair, and he of course wanted to know more so he asked her about her shoes. She gushed to him about how Tom’s were not only great shoes, they were made by the greatest company in the world. She had watched all of their YouTube videos (this was 2006 so YouTube was a baby) and was a genuine fan.

Of course, she talked more about the story than she did the shoes.

Storytelling can do so much more for you than your product can. You can frame your product in infinite ways, and the framing can sell better than the specs of the product.

The same goes for service based businesses. Your inspiration for providing the service, or the story of how you acquired the skill, is your individual and unique selling point.

That is something you have that no one else has.

Don’t waste this by having a crappy ‘about’ page where you have generic copy like Kayla graduated from university in 2014 and has since gone on to become an award winning coin collector or Company B was founded in 2012 after Founder 1 and Founder 2 met on Instagram.

You story can be told in one or two paragraphs very effectively. But you can’t start with just those two paragraphs.

Whenever I sit down with founders to do their initial branding, the storytelling session lasts a good one to two hours, then I go away and work on it for up to a week.

I poke and prod every detail of everything that lead up to the conception of the company, the who, how, when, where, and why and then I push harder for even more detail. Forgotten stories make the best stories. If you laugh while you remember something, I want that story. Sifting through that much raw content takes time, but it’s always better to have too much than not enough. If you’re sitting down and banging out your ‘about’ section for your website in thirty minutes, you’re doing it wrong.

What is interesting to you isn’t always the most interesting angle to take. Have someone else read over it. This is a time when it’s ok to use someone close to you or someone who has seen the journey as they will have an interesting viewpoint on what stuck out to them the most.

Whether you get a professional or do it yourself, you need to go way back as far as you can and work your way to present day, then edit edit edit down as much as you can, only keeping the most interesting stuff and connect it to your sales pitch.

P.S, Tom isn’t a real guy. It’s short for Tomorrow’s Shoes, the original company name. The slogan was buy today, give tomorrow. What seemed like a great idea at the time ended up not being quite right, just like your ‘about’ section!