The first mistake brands make is they fail to focus on the aspects of their offer that will help people survive and thrive.
All great stories are about survival-either physical, emotional, relational, or spiritual. A story about anything else won’t work to captivate an audience. Nobody’s interested. This means that if we position our products and services as anything but an aid in helping people survive, thrive, be accepted, find love, achieve an aspirational identity, or bond with a tribe that will defend them physically and socially, good luck selling anything to anybody. These are the only things people care about. We can take the truth to the bank. Or to bankruptcy court, should we choose to ignore it as an undeniable fact.
Mike said our brains are constantly sorting through information and so we discard millions of unnecessary facts every day. If we were to spend an hour in a giant ballroom, our brains would never think to count how many chairs are in the room. Meanwhile, we would always know where the exits are. Why? Because our brains don’t need to know how many chairs there are in the room to survive, but knowing where the exits are would be helpful in case there was a fire.
Without knowing it, the subconscious is always categorizing and organizing information, and when we talk publicly about our company’s random backstory or internal goals, we’re positioning ourselves as the chairs, not the exits.
“But this poses a problem,” Mike continued. “Processing information demands that the brain burn calories. And the burning of too many calories acts against the brain’s primary job: to help us survive and thrive.”
from “Building a StoryBrand: Clarify Your Message So Customers Will Listen” by Donald Miller
