Simon Sinek discusses how narrative shapes brands and organizations. Using examples (Coca-Cola name-on-cans, Anheuser-Busch employee framing, Marines identity), he argues that embedding story into product, internal culture, and public speech creates consistent thematic flavour that people recognize and that leaders should cultivate and repeat.
Chapters
Do you remember a bunch of years ago, one of the soda companies, I think it was Coca Cola, they put people's names on cans and you just would go, remember, just for a while. It was just a marketing thing. I mean, you could write things on cans.
That capture the spirit of what cheers means. I mean, you could write cheers, but you can actually write statements like, this is for. This is because I. This. Cheers because I love you. Cheers because congratulations. Like, you can write those things on the cans and you can start to do it in product. That's narrative. You're starting to tell your story through your product. Also, the way you talk about your jobs, quite frankly, if I ask the average employee at abi, if I were to sit next to them on a plane and say, what do you do? The dreaded question. Right. What do you do? Oh, I'm marketing manager at Anheuser Busch. Okay, Right.
What would it mean if they were to actually say something at a higher level than that? Oh, I get to help find new ways to bring people together to celebrate each other and take care of each other. That's amazing. How do you do that? I'm actually a marketing manager at Anheuser Busch. Right. Where when narrative starts to seep into the culture, people start talking about the cause before they start talking about their jobs. You know.
Marines. If you ask somebody in the army, what do you do? They say, oh, I work in the infantry, blah, blah, blah. If you ask a marine, what do you do? They say, I'm a Marine. That's what comes first. It's the global right. It's the membership.
I think every time you go give a. Every time you show up on television and every time you give a public speech goes back to that story of Phil Knight. And I'm not proposing you tell Phil Knight type story, but the point is, you're going to go on squawk box and they're going to say they're going to ask you a question and your ability to talk about your cause, not sometimes in the literal words, but sometimes in interpretive words, and how you imagine the company coming to and what bold means, what dreaming big means and sharing some of those dreams. We're a company that says we dream big. Let me tell you what we mean by, let me tell you some of the dreams we have. And you can talk about how you're changing your incentive structures. You can talk about how you're challenging old notions of business. You can talk about how the world is changing, and you're not going to follow the change you're going to lead the change. This is all narrative, and it all is based on the same core. So to answer your question, there's no right answer. But if you listen to all of the different narratives, they all have a flavor. It's like somebody asked before, how am I an effective preacher? If you go watch any video I've made, and if you go read any book that I've written, you can feel that there's a theme. That theme is always there. And people are smart. People can discern themes. And so the more consistent you are in all the different ways you bring it to life, people start to understand what that theme is. Like Disney, it's always there.
