We wanted to share an example of a brand backstory. For a full explanation of the backstory as a tool and expression of brand, check out our episode on the matter. This backstory is laid out as we would present it- one paragraph per slide.

This is how we present an Archetype to a client. Every presentation and process is unique, depending on where we start, what we have to work with, and the vision of the company. And, we do not always use archetypes. This is, however, a robust presentation. It should give you a clear idea of the background information, the flow, and the ideas we share, to help clients wrap their minds around the archetype concept and get excited about putting the archetype to use.

A brand’s personality can derive from many sources. In working to define a personality, we’re likely to explore several. These might include the tone and manner of existing communications, facets of the company culture, attributes of key stakeholders, corporate archaeology that might extend to the way workspaces are designed and decorated, cues from society and the marketplace, and more. Not that a brand’s attributes need to be grounded in its past or present reality. Authenticity in the narrow sense isn’t the only source of credibility; a well-crafted brand story answers to its own truth and logic. Personality attributes can also be aspirational—fictional, even. What matters is that the personality is interesting, distinctive, broadly consistent in spirit, and usually at least a bit charismatic.

A Power Tool for Brand Storytelling: Meet the Brand Wheel

04 November 2020 | Eric La Brecque

When we set out to build a foundation for telling a brand story, we develop and organize the building blocks of the story with a specific framework in mind. We call this framework the brand wheel. It’s something we cooked up for ourselves back in the late 90s, a good decade or so before the idea of storytelling as a marketing activity really took off, because we needed a tool that simply didn’t exist at the time. The brand models of the day, some of which still enjoy wide circulation, weren’t based on the underlying idea of the brand as a story told in the marketplace.

While we’ve refined the brand wheel in many ways over the years—and others have gone on to adapt it to their own sensibilities—the current iteration of the brand wheel would still be intelligible to our earliest brand strategy clients (some of whom have remained with us for the duration). If anything, in a world that increasingly sees the value of storytelling applied in a market context, the wheel seems more useful than ever.

We’ve had good results with the brand wheel. A number of our peers have also put it to good use. Our clients, too, have found the brand wheel to provide welcome clarity. Many have internalized it. Yet we’ve been remiss in sharing it widely. With the advent of our podcast, Brand Frontlines, which considers the brand wheel in depth and explores brand storytelling more generally, we can’t shirk our responsibilities any longer.