A brand “narrative” is something lots of people refer to these days. Instinctively it makes sense that a brand should be dynamic and evolve over time to continually surprise the people we want to engage, much like a film - or better still - a soap. But how do we meaningfully apply this principle to brands?
The obvious answer is to create a narrative that features the brand, such as the Audi A3 launch in the US. The danger is that this approach can feel a little contrived.
Here’s Robert McKee’s take on narrative. McKee is a screenwriting consultant and teacher whose Story sets out some principles for creating successful screenplays, novels, comics etc. He knows a thing or two about narrative.
Amongst a mountain of other really interesting stuff he suggests the following:
1. Stories are important because they help us make sense of life. The best stories have a meaning (a moral) that helps us navigate our way through the challenges we face.
2. That meaning is a story’s controlling idea.
3. The controlling idea or meaning is revealed through the choices the protagonist takes in dealing with the challenges he or she faces during the course of the story. It is most clearly and conclusively revealed by the resolution of the drama.
There are clearly some similarities between a narrative’s controlling idea and the thought at the heart of a brand, whatever you want to label it (wonder if that’s where Ingram get it from?). Both are a focussed idea or thought that everything around it (the story or the brand) should convey.
Basically, McKee's big idea is that character is revealed through action and that these actions or choices (that the author chooses for the character) are what defines the controlling idea, the meaning of the narrative.
So the parallel for brands is that to truly reveal what it is they stand for, they must do stuff - take action - to prove it.
This kind of makes sense, but it doesn't necessarily get you to a narrative in commonly accepted sense. But I'm not sure that matters.
(Geeky observation: Charlie Kaufman wrote McKee into Adaptation, played by Brian Cox).
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