You have your brand position, now what?
Developing your brand position is a smart move. It narrows your focus. It lays the foundation for all your brand communications. And it gives you an invaluable tool to evaluate all your brand communications going forward.
Now that you have it, what do you do?
Build a story framework
Positioning is great to capture all of your brand’s crucial strategic information in a rational way. But a great position does not automatically translate into a great story. As I said, it’s a rational exercise. And great stories are not rational. They are emotional.
The positioning does help us capture an emotional benefit. But we need to know how to incorporate that emotion into a compelling story. In order to do that, we need a tool designed for telling compelling stories.
Enter the Thrust Story Framework.
I developed the Thrust Story Framework while working on my book Big Audacious Meaning – Unleashing Your Purpose Driven Story. I knew we needed something more than positioning if we were to take advantage of all the potential that a purpose can bring to a brand.
The framework takes all the good work you have done in your positioning and puts it in a structure that helps inspire a story. It does this by helping you speak your story in terms of a hero (that person we hope to serve), a villain (the challenge our hero faces), a triumph, and more. Here is a post that goes into detail about all seven components of the Thrust Story Framework.
As that post states, “It gets you thinking in a narrative form, helping you to harness the power of storytelling to communicate in a way that is more engaging and more memorable. Most importantly, it focuses the story on those you hope to serve, improving your ability to communicate with them in a way that they will find captivating (who doesn't want to hear a story about themselves?)”
Create a story matrix
Once you have your position and Thrust Story Framework, start writing your stories.
I recommend you start with your journey map. After all, this details everything your hero goes through. There are six stages of the journey - Problem/Need, Discovery, Evaluation, Decision, Review, and Advocate. Write a short story for each stage.
Start by thinking about your Thrust Story Framework. Then craft a story to address what your hero is thinking, feeling, and doing at each particular stage. Each of these doesn’t have to be long. It can be the length of an email. Do this for all 6 stages.
This gives you a simple matrix. You have a heading for each of the 6 stages of the journey. And under each stage, you have a story example. You can use these as a starting point as you start to roll out your brand communications.
Positioning is invaluable for laying the strategic foundation of your brand. But it is the stories that will ultimately move those you hope to serve. This is why the Thrust Story Framework is so valuable. It creates a bridge between your positioning and the brand language that they will find irresistible.
For more on journey mapping, check out How to get to a better brand? There's a map. And for even more on the Thrust Story Framework, check out The irresistible formula for creating your purpose-driven story.