As most business leaders can attest, standing out in today’s marketplace is exceedingly complicated. Challenges include brands expanding product variety or selling innovative alternatives, noisier physical and virtual advertising spaces, and more customers pushing the “skip” or “close” button on pop-up ads.  

“The reality is we aren’t just in a race to get our products to market; we’re also in a race to communicate why our customers need those products in their lives,” Donald Miller stresses in his book “Building a Story Brand.” 

Getting communication wrong could be worse than offering products that aren’t competitive. “Even if we have the best product in the marketplace, we’ll lose to an inferior product if our competitor’s offer is communicated more clearly.” 

Such messaging needs more than graphics. “Pretty websites [or ads] don’t sell things. Words sell things. And if [companies] haven’t clarified [their] message … customers won’t listen.”  

Miller advocates using the “framework” movie writers follow to create engaging and relevant content, then filtering and clarifying the resulting message “so more customers listen.” 

Buyer mentality

The primary motive for searching and buying products is “humans’ desire to transform,” the book says. “Everybody wants to be somebody better or, perhaps, somebody who simply becomes more self-accepting.”

Brands that enable such transformation will turn customers into “passionate brand evangelists,” Miller says. Accordingly, company storytellers must ask, “Who [their] customer wants to become? What is their aspirational identity?”

Miller gives an example of a brand of knives that associated its image and products with customers who are “tough, adventurous, fearless, action-oriented and competent to do a hard job” through ad campaign graphics, TV, and the slogan “Hello Trouble.”

Miller says that brand is “selling something intangible …  a kind of person you and I can become [an aspirational identity].” That message enticed Miller to buy a knife, even though he “would only use it  to make a peanut butter and jelly sandwich.” He admitted that when he eventually owned that knife, he would repeat “Hello Trouble” before using it. 

The other dimension of “aspirational identity” is what others will say about those who own products from the brand and how quickly they make that link. 

Finding the hero

The first step in Miller’s framework is identifying the main “character” or “hero” of the message. The book stresses that “the customer, not your brand, is the hero of the story.” The brand’s role is to “honor the journey” of the customer and position itself as “a leader” and “trusted source … providing wisdom, products, and services [its] audience needs in order to … overcome their challenges [and] thrive.”  

Miller sees that as a “major paradigm shift” from traditional storytelling — where the focus is on the company’s story. “Positioning the customer as the hero … is more than just good manners; it’s also good business.”

The company has to know what customers want and need, and whether the brand can fulfill their desires. “Unless we identify something our customers want, they will never feel invited into the story we are telling. [It is the] catalyst for any story,” the book says.

The problem

Much like all good movies, “a story starts with a character who lives in peace and stability. Suddenly, that stability is disrupted: a bomb goes off, someone is kidnapped, or a disaster strikes.” That event will spur “heroes” on a “journey to return to the peaceful life they once enjoyed.”

Miller argues customers follow paths similar to those of movie characters. “They want to solve a problem that has, in big or small ways, disrupted their peaceful lives.” Troubles range from basic wants, such as looking for a car wash, to high-stakes ones, like hiring a financial consultant. 

“By talking about the problems our customers face, we deepen their interest in everything we offer,” the book says. Miller acknowledges many companies already do that. What they miss “is that there are three levels of problems a customer encounters … external, internal, and philosophical. Almost all companies try to sell solutions to external problems, [even though] customers are much more motivated to resolve their inner frustrations.”

Reflecting those three components clearly in a company’s message “helps create a brand promise that will connect with customers on a primitive level and at their deepest point of need,” Miller notes. “This, in turn, will help us endear customers and create passionate brand evangelists.” 

Supporting role

Companies that compel customers to listen to them must know their place, he says. They are not the other hero of the story (message). Instead, they are the helper or guide. That role is essential. “If heroes in a story could solve their own problems, they would never get into trouble in the first place,” the book says. In a nutshell, companies must help the hero win.

Not fulfilling that role can be risky. “Brands that position themselves as ‘heroes’ unknowingly compete with their potential customers. Every human being wakes up each morning and sees the world through the lens of a protagonist …They are the center of their own world.” 

If the brand decides to be a co-hero in the message, a customer’s subconscious thought pattern goes down like this: ‘Oh, this is another hero, like me. I wish I had more time to hear their story, but right now, I’m busy looking for a guide.”  

Plan and action

Having successfully identified the message’s hero, their problem, and established the company as their guide, customers “still aren’t going to make a purchase … because we haven’t laid out a simple plan of action they can take,” Miller says. 

The importance of a plan increases with the cost of products or services, the book says. It has to be “a clear path laid out that takes away any confusion [customers] might have about how to do business with us.” 

It can be “information or a few steps the [hero] can use to get the job done.” It also could be a “philosophy [a hero needs to] embody in a series of steps … to solve their problems.”

Once heroes understand the plan, the company must encourage them to take action. “If we’re telling a story about a man who needs to lose 30 pounds and suddenly decides to do it of his own volition, the audience will check out. There needs to be a reason … They must be challenged.”

That means the company must declare clearly what’s at stake. “If nothing can be gained or lost, nobody cares,” the book says, and potential customers won’t buy the product. “After all, why should [they]?” 

Companies “must show people the cost of ‘not’ doing business” by showcasing how the product could change customers’ lives. “Never assume people understand how your brand can change their lives.”

Not many companies do that. “You would be surprised how many companies don’t create obvious calls to action,” Miller writes. “This principle is true in a story because it’s true in life … Without clear calls to action, people will not engage our brand.” 

Simple message

Once the company’s storytellers build an engaging and compelling message that makes their products aspirational, the next step is simplifying that communication. 

Miller lists several “yes or no” questions to quantify message clarity. “Can you say it easily? Is it simple, relevant, and repeatable? Can your entire team repeat your company’s message in such a way that it is compelling? Have new hires been given talking points they can use to describe what the company offers and why every potential customer should buy it?”

That message also must be unmistakable to the outside world: “How many sales are we missing out on because customers can’t figure out what our offering is within five seconds of visiting our website?”

Getting affirmative replies requires a message to be short and straightforward. “There’s a reason most marketing … doesn’t work. [It’s] too complicated. The brain doesn’t know how to process the information.” 

Messages also should be as specific as possible. “When we have to process too much seemingly random information, people begin to ignore the source of that useless information. “Customers’ brains [are] designed to tune us out should we ever [get] confused.”

The solution is to use a story format, which “puts everything in order so the brain doesn’t have to work to understand what is going on.”  

Moving that message to the outside world adds another complication: noise. “It has killed more ideas, products, and services than taxes, recessions, lawsuits, climbing interest rates, and even inferior product design.” 

In addition to overcoming noise from increasingly crowded social media, emails, billboards, and broadcast channels, Miller notes there is the “noise we create as a business.” 

It appears mainly when a business prioritizes marketing diverse products or services, not what it is at its core. Miller’s example is a painting company that uses a collage of building types it can paint in its marketing. “It doesn’t make a great deal of sense from an outside perspective,” he says. 

He suggests the company would do better with “an image of a [person] in a white lab coat painting something [generic] next to text that reads, ‘We Paint All Kinds of [Stuff],’ accompanied by a button in the middle of the page that says, ‘Get a Quote.’”

Taking the time to clearly define what the company does in a phrase or sentence is critical. “What we think we are saying to our customers and what our customers actually hear are two different things. Customers make buying decisions not based on what we say, but on what they hear.”