CHAPTER 04
THE STORYSCAPING MODEL
Deciphering the Code to Creating Worlds
Roll up your sleeves; we’re about to examine the lay of the Storyscaping land. In Part Two, we will introduce and illustrate the structures, logic, terms, elements, pillars, and thinking that amalgamate an effective Storyscape. We will start with the model that illustrates how we codified the Storyscaping approach. This sets the frame for the following chapters, each of which covers in detail a section of the model. Ideally, you will walk away with a great understanding of how to begin thinking of your brand differently, marketing your business more effectively, and you’ll gain actionable ideas you can walk away with and immediately begin to implement for overall greater business success. These principles are applicable to the 10-person start-up or the 10,000-person multinational business. They apply to new brands and old.
Foundation for Real Success. Success starts with setting goals. Otherwise, how do you determine your level of success? Storyscaping is based on the principle that we are trying to effectively connect organizations (brands) with people (consumers). This is achieved across the Experience Space through the creation of shared values and shared experiences by making shared stories that build participation. Therefore, defining and understanding the lay of the land where you are preparing to work is fundamental. This foundation has two parts. First, we pinpoint your desired consumers. Who are you trying to make connections with? Who are you trying to attract? Storyscaping is about making connections with both existing and new consumers with equal importance. Second, we seek and define the “consumer to brand” business/marketing challenge. This sets up what your goals need to be, what you want to achieve, and what success looks like. It should be both inspiring and meaningful for the business.
Whether you call them consumers, guests, clients, or customers does not matter; what matters is that you very clearly define who they are. And, at all costs, please avoid referring to or thinking of these people as an audience or user. Doing so implies that they are passive watchers of your story or users of utility, instead of being engaged and participatory. We are looking to create experiences beyond the story, immersive experiences that change behavior; therefore, “targeting an audience” sets up the wrong premise from the start. The fact that these people create so much of your content, have such powerful influence, and actually control their interaction within your Experience Space makes calling them an audience or user just plain wrong. No matter what label you reference (consumers, guests, etc.), please always keep in mind that these are people—human beings. These are the very people who are defining, creating, and building their story through the acquisition and application of products and services. Ideally they are or will become people who interact and transact with your company in meaningful and immersive ways, so that your brand can become part of each person’s story.
When defining your desired brand story participants (aka consumers), keep it meaningful and relevant to your challenge. Avoid superfluous segmentation labels that relate to some proprietary study or trend book. Consumer analysis and research are valuable and encouraged, but be mindful of language and labels that make it difficult for everyone to understand who your consumers are and what they are like. Storyscaping is a team sport, so bringing everyone into the same understanding of your consumer is important. Anything or anyone who gets in the way of that goal can create an adverse effect. Make Storyscaping relevant to everyone you work with. You want people throughout your whole company and your extended company (your partners and your vendors) to own and share in the creation of stories and experiences for your brand; therefore, making it accessible and relevant is key.
Assuming you have identified the need for Storyscaping within your own organization, now it’s important to understand the perspective upon which it is based, the terms and definitions that apply, and the foundations of the development model.
No Void in the Experience Space. One of the biggest impacts technology has produced on consumer-brand relationships is the proliferation of and simultaneous convergence of opportunities to engage and connect. We can no longer think about this solely from a media channel and distribution channel perspective.
The potential experience space—the places and spaces where consumers and brands can engage in Purposeful connection—has become vastly extended and expanded by technology and so have the behaviors that technology enables. The Experience Space includes content generation and sharing, mobile commerce, applications, experiences that demonstrate brand utility (some kind of usefulness or functionality—a tool or a service), experiences that benefit the consumer, a media system, a social platform, or a physical space. Consider the Experience Space as the context in which the brand can better understand and service consumer needs, thereby creating a useful and Purposeful role for the brand in consumers’ lives. Doing so provides both emotional value and experience value. Think of it as the space in which you will create a world for immersive experiences.
One of the first things to do is map out the potential Experience Space. This will help you understand the full context and opportunities for connection between your brand and the desired consumer. We explore how to more deeply understand the Experience Space even further in the following chapters.
A Clear Perspective. Now let’s take our new appreciation for the Experience Space and look at how the brand and consumer connect across and through it. Let’s park the complexity of the Experience Space in the background while we dive into the foundations of connection in a structured and logical way. We have already shared some examples around experience and story, so now let’s look at how this maps out across the Experience Space.
To connect with consumers, the first thing a company must do is to stop referring to itself as a company and start thinking if itself as a brand. In its most simple (and we mean simple) terms, this is done with a form of personification. Why personification? When taking a very functional establishment (a company) and connecting it with consumers who are not always rational, a personification helps that company become more personable, even likeable to the consumer.
Once the personification is crafted as a brand, that brand is then applied to the products or services the company provides or creates. These products and services all serve a functional need. They provide a utility in some way, shape, or form.
Typically, we try to find some form of product or service differentiation—a unique selling proposition (USP) is what we all learned in Marketing 101.
Today, the smarter companies have discovered and now operate based on a Brand Purpose, the brand’s cause or belief.
Now shift to the other side of the Experience Space, where we consider the consumer. Consumers have functional and rational needs, such as to have clean clothes. These functional needs exist constantly and drive behavior.
Consumers also have emotions, and emotional needs or desires, such as to be viewed as a good mom. The satisfaction of these desires makes the consumer feel good or better. In reality, these are inextricably linked. However, for the purpose of exploring the dimensions of consumer needs and how their story of self is defined by how and why they use certain things in their life, we look at consumers from both angles, the emotional and behavioral.
This is all rather straight-forward, and understanding these shared connections is key to the foundation of Storyscaping.
When a brand thinks, acts, and shares from its Purpose, it will connect with the consumer’s emotional desires through the establishment of shared values.
This is not the company toting, “We have these values,” but rather transpires when the consumer emotionally connects with the same beliefs and values that the company displays when it delivers on its Purpose. Remember the TOMS Shoes example? It’s a good example of the difference in impact this shift in perspective and behavior provides.1
Across the other dimension, at the most basic level, functional needs are solved with products and services that represent the means by which consumers define their own story. This connection between a thing or form of utility and a person doing something creates a shared experience. Simply put, if there is a behavior, there is an experience.
As we have discussed earlier, some brands are great at connecting emotionally with story, whereas others deliver great products and build environments and things for great experiences. Our goal is to create a world for both, where shared stories exist as a Storyscape. Working from this understanding has unlocked much of our approach to Storyscaping and enabled our teams to effectively drive increased value on every dimension.
Good Things Are Worth Evolving. Much of this logic and theory isn’t necessarily new. We took what made sense and evolved it with today’s world in mind. Now, we have codified it into an operating model, thereby making this material more assessable to everyone. As part of the model, we introduce two new and key applications: the Organizing Idea and Systems Thinking as applied to stories and technology.
Our Storyscaping model is based on the concepts we just detailed, the perspective of connection and the understanding of Experience Space. Now that you have a basic understanding of where this journey leads, we will explore in greater detail each of the strategic pillars and elements mentioned in this chapter. Through the next four chapters what we call the four pillars to an Organizing Idea will be explained and illustrated with examples, tips, and approaches. Then we’ll take you on a deep dive into Organizing Ideas and provide tips on what to look for and what to avoid. This stabilizes your Storyscaping attempt with a good foundation around Organizing Ideas.
Then, the “new applications” section in the Storyscaping model come into play as we explore how you bring an Organizing Idea together with Systems Thinking to create the right story, Experience Space, connections, and enabling technologies. This is where the power of Storyscaping is realized—in an Organizing Idea, established from the pillars of understanding, which inform a Story System and ultimately create a world of immersive experiences (your very own Storyscape).
Given this model is not linear, you can start anywhere as long as you have an informed Organizing Idea and you apply it to an Experience Space. Equally so, at any one point in time, you may need to redevelop or create one aspect of the Story System (such as a new website). The model and principles still remain in effect, because the application of the model ensures that your creation is part of the larger system and is connected through the existing Organizing Idea.