The worlds most industrious storyteller explains how brand bewitchery will build your business Part

Hello and welcome to Speak PR. My name is Jim James. This is a podcast for business owners to unlock the value in their company by using great PR tools and technologies. Today I'm joined by Park Howell. Now this is the second of 3 episodes with Park, and Park is the world's most industrious storyteller, and he's recently issued a book called Brand Bewitchery: The Story Cycle System. Now in his book, He talks about how authors are entrepreneurs and how as entrepreneurs we can break our lives into chapters. But there's also some formulas that we can follow, including heroes, stakes, antagonists, disruptors, mentors, joiners, and so on. Taking a leaf out of Hollywood, Park Howell shares with us how we can build great narratives for our businesses.

So let's listen to Park share more about So now you start thinking about leaping into Act 2. And Act 2 is where the conflict, the problem really arises. And I call that disruption. Chapter 4 is disruption. What has happened in your audience's, your customer's life that has disrupted their world and has shaken them out of status quo thinking? Because if they're in status quo thinking, they're gonna buy from the lowest price, you're a commodity. You want them out of that mindset and into things have changed and we're here to help you overcome that change. And when you deliver on that, you can charge more. You actually build greater loyalty when you deliver on those promises. So, in chapter 4 of Disruption, you wanna get super clear on what has changed in your audience's life. And do you see now, Jim, just with that question there, It makes you get out of your own brain. It makes you get out of, hey, we built the best widget and we're the best this and we're the best that. Nobody cares unless you demonstrate that you understand and empathize with what your customer actually wants, the problem you solve for in that disruption phase. Now, the trick with storytelling is it's not just you have a problem to overcome, but the universe starts pushing back whenever you go in to try to fix a problem. It actually gets worse quite often before it gets better. So, let's use that dynamic. And that is chapter 5, I call Villains, Fog, and Crevasses. So, what, you know, the competitive forces that you're up against both externally and internally with your villains, and this could be literally actual competition out there, or it could be not enough time, not enough money, I don't have a boss bought into it yet. You gotta think about all these things and then—

Regulations, for example.

Oh yeah, NGOs, any of that. And then internally, what's going on in their heads? What are they fearing? What is that voice of— is telling them, no, don't do this? To really understand this. And by the way, you can use, and I highly recommend that you use, the Story Cycle System on yourself and answer all these questions relative to yourself.

Absolutely.

And use it on your business and answer it relative to your business. And of course, use it on your customers and answer it there. You will find these worlds will start melding together, but you will have a much better understanding and empathy for your audience. And I say, you know, words create worlds and stories connect them. That's when you tell these true stories about the real-world impact that you make in their lives. So you've seen where we, in act 1, is all set up. You're introducing the protagonist, the backstory, the setting of what you do and what they're looking for, what they wish for and what they want in life. And then boom, you pull the rug out from underneath them. What has changed that makes you the most dynamic, urgent—

Gotcha.

relevant offering in the world. So any questions there?

In this time of COVID there's a global disruption, right? So that creates a massive disruption pretty much for everybody in every country.

Well, that's a really good example. Let me demonstrate the ABT that we talked about, the and, but, and therefore. I did this for a class the other day. Here's how you start thinking this problem-solution dynamic and the ABT is this very simple foundational narrative framework you can use. So just imagine this, I'm going to share it with you right now. Um, we were all looking for the promise of 2020 and what this new decade had in store for us.

Right.

But COVID struck the world. Therefore, we are reassessing who we are, what we stand for, where our careers are going, and how we can be in service over sales. Setup, problem, resolution. There is—

Very nice.

The perfect 3-act story structure that any brander, any marketer, any PR person can use to frame a point and then to go on. And you can use an ABT and tell that in under 20 seconds. And what you're doing, remember earlier when I said you hack through the noise and hook the hearts? You literally are using problem-solution dynamic algorithm of story of and, but, and therefore And a setup, but this problem, therefore, is the resolution, to hook into the limbic system, that ancient monkey storytelling brain of ours that is still very alive and kicking back in there to get it to pay attention.

Yeah, that's a lovely one. I'm sure your son will probably be making the movie, I should think, for that one. And then, so should we then move on? So you've got then these, I guess, then this moving on to the mentor, hence Chapter 6, the mentor arrives. The person, you know, with the new app or the new product or the new service arrives on the scene, the entrepreneur.

So right, ta-da! This is all about you, about the brand. And what we look for in the mentors, this is where you do your ooh exercise because everything leading up to this was all about your customer and what they're going through and what's happening in the world and why are they going to care about you and how can you help them. Now you have to talk about how you are uniquely equipped to help them, just like they were climbing Mount Everest and you were Tenzing Norgay to help them get to the top. That's your job. So you do the Ooh exercise to figure out what are those stories that proof out what your UVP is, what your brand is all about. I want you to boil it down to one word at this point, and that's your brand promise. What do they— what do you promise that they will get from you emotionally? by buying into your product or service? And this is customers, this is employees, this is partners, everybody you talked about earlier. What is that one thread of emotion that they all get by buying in?

Right.

And then you move on to the next thing is, what is the intrinsic gift? What physically do they get when they go through this? You know, so like Red Bull is a great example. The intrinsic gift of Red Bull is what? They sell a carbonated terrible Tasting carbonated beverage energy drink. That's what they make, but what do they make happen?

Well, I guess in English we'd say liquid courage or energy.

Or their tagline, we give you wings. We give you wings to take off. So brand storytelling is not about what you make, but what you make happen in people's lives. So I make the Story Cycle System and I make a measurable Proven training program that you can physically take and teach your people and use to grow your own brand. But what I make happen is I help leaders excel through the stories they tell.

Hmm.

So, even though you're buying the system, what do you really want? You want to be smart, optimistic, you want to own a room, you want to have the courage, you want to have the confidence, you want to have all these emotional things that come with being a really good storyteller. And that's ultimately what I'm selling, to excel through the stories you tell.

Nice, nice. And then, so is that the victory part?

Now, so now what we do is, well, think of Act 1, the and, the setup of backstory, heroes, and stakes. We then move into Act 2 with disruption, pull the world out. What's the problem? What's the conflict? Um, Act, uh, then Chapter 5 is the villains, fog, and crevasses. How do we amplify this pain? And what are they really up against that we know is just like Life or death. And now I'm getting melodramatic. Act 6 is how you were there to help them see it through.

Right.

Act 7 then, or chapter 6, now we are into Act 3. We have a lot of motion moving on and these are all kind of blurry lines, but you have this customer journey of what happens next. What, how do they understand you? Actually, I'm sorry, we are not into Act 3 yet. That comes in Victory. We're still squarely in Act 2 because this is where the action is going down. The journey, brand awareness, brand adoption, brand appreciation. How are you there to level up their life in every one of these steps? What do you give them of unbelievable value that keeps them coming back in? And that leads then into chapter 8 of Victory is, what are your little success milestones? You've got to just dial these in, be strategic about what your audiences experience in brand awareness when they first hear about you. Brand adoption when they first buy into you, and brand appreciation when they come back for more and they start telling their friends about them. You have to dial in like you're on a journey, the mileposts of successes so that they know that your story is progressing with them.

Nice, nice. And then, so you've got the victory where, you know, they, they come to the Champs-Élysées and they put their arms in the air and they've won the Tour de France, for example.

Yeah.

Well, then what about, um, The moral.

So think of the moral. This is chapter 9. When you're doing your brand story development, this is about your brand purpose. Why do you exist beyond making money? And you can just start the sentence by saying, my brand exists to help people do what? Again, I'll go back to mine. Mine's really based off my intrinsic gift. The Business of Story exists to help people live into and prosper from their most powerful stories. A quicker way of saying that is to excel through the stories you tell.

Yeah.

So, that's what I focus on. My job is to connect people with the power of stories so that they can connect their world with their audience's world for a better world overall. Use it for good, not evil. But that's what the moral is. Now, that's high-level brand strategy thinking. This is what our brand stands for and what we believe in value, which by the way, Also appear through those 9 one-word descriptors. But you also, as you are telling stories to your customers, you want to make sure you connect their shared beliefs and values with your beliefs and values. And that's where you use chapter 9 to really understand what that is.

Right. Okay. And that's— and then is that leading you then on to the ritual, which is kind of the reinforcing? Isn't it a bit like the sort of— I think about the Apple Store, you go in and you can have the free demonstrations, you know, the free training, it's only 20 minutes, it's remarkably short, half an hour maybe. But that sort of ritual, is that sort of binding in customer loyalty in a funny way or staff loyalty when you talk about rituals?

It is. It is really ritual, again, a metaphor about 2 things: building repeat business and the most powerful form of advertising there is, word-of-mouth marketing, as your customers tell your stories to the world, which by the way, it's free. So when I think about ritualizing a brand, I say, what is your call to action to get them involved? You're essentially inviting them into your story. Now making your story their story by— here's the magic of it— by understanding their story first and where you can have a decided impact on their journey. So you invite them in, they purchase something, they purchase something else, they now share it with their friend. You want to be able to trigger that. By, in your victory lap of showing them where they're having success with your brand, but then inviting them to share that story and showing them what to do online. Giving them the tools, giving them the little story elements of video and blog posts or whatever it might be, Instagram stories that they can then reshare because they have bought into who you are and what you're about. Now, they become a very active member in your story. And I think it's worth pointing out here, your viewers can't see this, but if you go to amazon.com and search Brand New Witchery, the Story Cycle System is a spiral.

Yes.

And my good friend, Dr. Randy Olson, who worked with me on The And Button, therefore, he calls it the narrative spiral. I call it the Story Cycle System, a narrative spiral. It's different from Joseph Campbell's hero's journey because that was a circle. Your hero starts out in an ordinary world. They get moved, answer a call to adventure, they go into this extraordinary world, they have trials and tribulations, they learn something, and then they return back to their ordinary world, but they're elevated. They return with the boom. They are better, smarter.

Right.

To me, it's a spiral because every time you go around this, you are actually elevating the customer experience and the customer engagement. So once you go through the story cycle once with a customer, Maybe that's brand awareness. Now you start it all over again, but from a different spot. They're aware of you. Now it's moving into brand adoption. And then you go through the same process again with brand adoption and then brand appreciation. And you can see how those concentric circles just keep growing and growing and growing as they become an active member of your story.

Nice. Really virtual— a virtuous circle. Pat, Hal, thank you so much for sharing really about the background and the story to the Brand Bewitchery process in this virtuous cycle. That'll be it for today, but then we're going to come back with another episode and you're going to talk to us about the impact of technology on storytelling and a couple of key case studies where storytelling has been great for business. Thank you, Park.

Thank you, Jim. Great being here.

So that was Park Howell, author of the book Brand Bewitchery: The Story Cycle System, which I encourage you to get on Amazon and to read. I'm doing that and enjoying it greatly and learning a lot about how as an entrepreneur I can take my business, make it into a story, and to make that story empathetic to my staff and my customers and to anybody that's interested in what my business is and how I can work with them. So thank you for listening to this episode of Speak PR, and until you tune into the next episode, I wish you the best of health, that you have a profitable business, And also that you keep telling stories.

Thank you.