The Story Native Manifesto

All brands tell stories about their products. Story Native brands make products about their story.

Photo by Malik Skydsgaard on Unsplash

The relationship between brands and their customers is broken.

You can thank the internet.

What we’ve been living through for the past two decades is called a digital ‘revolution’ for a reason. Like the agricultural and industrial revolutions before it, the digital revolution is transforming of our entire social order — including your company — around the incredible power of the internet.

Every few hundred years throughout Western history, a sharp transformation has occurred. In a matter of decades, society altogether rearranges itself — its worldview, its basic values, its social and political structures, its arts, its key institutions. Fifty years later a new world exists. And the people born into that world cannot even imagine the world in which their grandparents lived and into which their own parents were born. Our age is such a period of transformation.” — Peter Drucker, Management Consultant & Author

We were hunter-gatherers until someone domesticated wheat. So, we settled down into villages and became farm families organized around seasonal crops. Then someone invented steam power so we moved from our villages into cities and joined corporations organized around material goods and services.

A few, short decades ago a handful of very bright, creative people invented the internet. Now society is reorganizing again. This time into digital communities organized around purpose and beliefs.

“Just as the human body is organized around a neural network, so too are electronic communication systems emerging…into an equally complex economic and social network around which institutions and society would be forced to reorganize.” — Dee Hock, Founder Visa International

Digital native companies have always lived in this new, digitally reorganized world. Most legacy companies still operate as if they live in a bygone era. Which is why these legacy brands are falling out of favor, sales are stalling, and they’re being replaced by small, story native DTC upstarts.

Customers expect a level of meaning most brands aren’t equipped to deliver.

Consumers appreciate higher quality and better performance. But they also expect it. What they really get excited about are products that make a meaningful difference in the world. Clothing that help bring about a sustainable supply chain. Makeup that makes us feel beautiful for just being ourselves. Backpacks that empower the factory workers who build them. Forever forward, it’s not higher quality or performance that will inspire customer loyalty. It’s the better world you make your products about.

“Share your beliefs. Those that believe what you believe will become part of your tribe.” — Craig Wilson, The Compass and The Nail (read)

The question every brand needs to answer today is: What problem are you and your customers solving together?

Story native brands solve this by putting story at the center of everything they do

For all the talk about putting the customer first, most legacy brands are still very product driven. They build products then try to tell interesting stories about those products. For them, story is still just another word for marketing.

But story native brands put story at the center of everything they do. Their story guides everything from the people they hire to the products they build. For them, story doesn’t just inform and entertain. It makes decision-making easier, reminds employees why their hard work matters, and builds lasting relationships with customers.

Story is how our brains create meaning

Every day we wake up and live our lives. But for the day’s events to make sense, we need to fold them into the ongoing story of our life. That self-story is what gives our lives meaning. Events and objects that don’t help us make meaning of our lives are forgotten. Events and objects that help us make meaning are folded into our self-story and remembered. The same is true with brands. A brand’s self story gives purpose and meaning to the work it does.

Stories are how we share meaning with others

The story you make your products about not only gives purpose and meaning to your work, it also gives purpose and meaning to your customers’ lives as well. Companies that help customers feel like they’re making the world a better place by supporting your brand and using your products will be remembered. Brands that make customers feel like they got a quality product at a fair price will be forgotten.

Story native brands:

Put beliefs before products. Our closest relationships. Our favorite jobs. All the books, movies and music we love are built around beliefs that matter to us. Our most loved brands are built on beliefs that matter too. The company you build, the people you hire and products you create are just different expression of your beliefs about how the world should work. Inspiring beliefs build inspiring brands. Self-serving beliefs build self-serving brands.

Put relationships before transactions. Amazon built its business by replacing humans with technology at every step. But efficiency and convenience aren’t the only ways to win online. Story-native, DTC brands are growing at an even faster pace by offering an antidote to Amazon’s nameless, faceless shopping experience. Even more than low prices and convenience, people want to connect with other people about things they care about. Story native brands win by bringing together a close-knit community of like-minded customers based on a narrow set of shared beliefs.

Put small before big. Most fast-growing, story native DTC brands couldn’t afford to advertise when they launched. What they soon realized was, not only did they not need it, but advertising was actually counterproductive. Advertising can help scale traffic, but it can’t build relationships. By focusing on the small details along the entire purchase experience, story native brands gain a greater understanding of who their customers are and what stories and products they’re drawn to. They realized their product pages were like a family’s nightly dinner conversation. It’s where you show your customers you care day-in, day-out. Advertising has its place. But it will never replace the authentic relationships built organically on thousands of small, authentic interactions in every corner of your brand.

Put quick and responsive before slow and deliberate. To achieve the personal, one-on-one experience customers expect from their brands, every employee needs to be able to quickly make hundreds of brand-right decisions every day without anyone telling them what to do. Story is how that happens. A strong and understandable organizational narrative provides the ‘why’ everyone can work toward yet allows each employee to get there with a minimum of oversight and a maximum of freedom, creativity and humanity.