Earlier this week, Robbin at the Brains On Fire Blog, wrote about a presentation by Steve Knox, CEO of P&G’s Tremor Unit, noting that the ultimate victory in marketing is cultivating advocates for your brand. Interesting post, you can read it here.

Mr. Knox suggests that one way we create trusted advocates is through disruptive experiences. He talks about how the brain is programmed to create models of how the world operates (called schemas), then uses those models as shortcuts to help us quickly analyze and assess the world around us. As long as experiences match the expectations of the model, we don’t think much about them.

Disruptive experiences don’t fit the models and require the brain to power up and try to understand what is happening. They refocus our attention and get noticed. Which is why disruption is such a powerful branding tool.

As long as the disruption is true to the brand ideals, it stands a good chance of being noticed, processed, and talked about.

Which got me thinking about a few brand experiences that break expectations:

• The enormous bag of fries you get from Five Guys (don’t order the large unless you’ve brought several friends).

• The way you are entertained while standing in line at the Magic Kingdom (compare that to all the other lines you waste time in).

• The unexpected overnight upgrade you get from Zappos (versus waiting for days or weeks for orders from other vendors).

• The Coca-Cola Happiness Machine (free Coke—just push the button).

By creating experiences that are unexpected, they break through our models of how the world works and get noticed. And we tend to share them with our social networks.

How are you creating disruptive experiences so your customers notice and share your brand stories?

Check out the basics of the presentation, here.

By now you know your brand needs a story. But how do your consumers, employees, and other stakeholders use that story? Here are four ways that the people engaged with your brand might use yours:

Brand stories as mission statements.
This is generally how most of us think about the narratives we use with our brands. It’s the story that gives purpose to everything we do (as brand owners). It is the story we hope our customers will relate to, and possibly adopt as their own. It’s the story most easily communicated in advertising and other big brand initiatives.

Stories like “We empower athletic accomplishment, overpower the obstacles, and encourage our customers just do it” as told by Nike. Or “We fight to make air travel affordable and fun for everyone, not just the privileged few” as told by Southwest Airlines. Or, “We deliver insanely great service” as told by Zappos (and Nordstrom).

At the very best, brand stories as mission statements inform every experience a customer has with a particular brand—reinforcing the narrative with each interaction.

Brand stories as proof points.
Not all brands use narratives that work as mission statements. Sometimes a brand story works better as a proof point to entice consumers to try the product.

A few years ago, I wrote about Buckley’s, a brand of cough medicine that uses a compelling story to turn a negative product feature into a positive reason to believe (you can read that post here).

The idea is, Buckley’s tastes so bad, it must work. No one would be dumb enough to sell something this nasty if it didn’t do what it claims.

Buckley’s story is a proof point and gives consumers a compelling reason to buy their product instead of other, better tasting options. But it wouldn’t work well as a mission statement. Buckley’s isn’t about making bad-tasting products. Rather, they make effective disease treatments, at least one of which just happens to taste bad.

Brand stories as a badge.
Other brands have stories that a consumer uses to imply very specific things about what kind of person they are. “Choosy moms choose Jif” is a great example of taking a commodity product and giving it a story that says using this peanut butter means you care more than moms who don’t choose Jif.

Fashion brands often use stories as badges. The same is true of many automobile, cigarette, and soda brands. Advertising infuses these brands with meaning and consumers use the brands to signal those meanings to their peers.

iPhone anyone?

Brand stories as props or tools.
Marketers don’t like to think of their brands as tools used by unengaged consumers, but often this is the reality. We use dozens of brands simply to get a job done. These are branded commodities and are easily replaced by a similar product as price or availability changes. The can of tomatoes, carton of milk, or pack of tube socks.

To be sure, some consumers will care, but for many (even most) these are simple props in their lives, tools to get a job done. The story matters very little.

A good brand manager works hard to lift his brands into one of the other categories: mission statement, proof point, or badge and as far away from tool as possible.

Have I missed any ways brand stories are used by customers? If so, please add them in the comments.

I have long been a fan of Harvard Business School professor, Clayton Christensen, having read several of his books: The Innovator’s Dilemma, The Innovator’s Solution, and Seeing What’s Next as well as many of his personal essays on his website. A few days ago, Dan Pink tweeted a link to this an article from the Harvard Business Review by Dr. Christensen called, How Will You Measure Your Life?. It’s a reworking of a speech that Dr. Christensen has given in a religious setting. This particular version is directed at recent graduates from Harvard Business School. It’s excellent advice and worth reading. Here’s a sample from the article:

Allocate Your Resources

Your decisions about allocating your personal time, energy, and talent ultimately shape your life’s strategy.

I have a bunch of “businesses” that compete for these resources: I’m trying to have a rewarding relationship with my wife, raise great kids, contribute to my community, succeed in my career, contribute to my church, and so on. And I have exactly the same problem that a corporation does. I have a limited amount of time and energy and talent. How much do I devote to each of these pursuits?

Allocation choices can make your life turn out to be very different from what you intended. Sometimes that’s good: Opportunities that you never planned for emerge. But if you misinvest your resources, the outcome can be bad. As I think about my former classmates who inadvertently invested for lives of hollow unhappiness, I can’t help believing that their troubles relate right back to a short-term perspective.

When people who have a high need for achievement—and that includes all Harvard Business School graduates—have an extra half hour of time or an extra ounce of energy, they’ll unconsciously allocate it to activities that yield the most tangible accomplishments. And our careers provide the most concrete evidence that we’re moving forward. You ship a product, finish a design, complete a presentation, close a sale, teach a class, publish a paper, get paid, get promoted. In contrast, investing time and energy in your relationship with your spouse and children typically doesn’t offer that same immediate sense of achievement. Kids misbehave every day. It’s really not until 20 years down the road that you can put your hands on your hips and say, “I raised a good son or a good daughter.” You can neglect your relationship with your spouse, and on a day-to-day basis, it doesn’t seem as if things are deteriorating. People who are driven to excel have this unconscious propensity to underinvest in their families and overinvest in their careers—even though intimate and loving relationships with their families are the most powerful and enduring source of happiness.

If you study the root causes of business disasters, over and over you’ll find this predisposition toward endeavors that offer immediate gratification. If you look at personal lives through that lens, you’ll see the same stunning and sobering pattern: people allocating fewer and fewer resources to the things they would have once said mattered most.

The rest of the article is today’s Friday Inspiration. You can find it here.

A big misconception held by many brand managers is that their product or brand needs a compelling story that consumers will adopt as their own.

The idea goes like this: Nike tells a powerful brand story about athletic accomplishment, which is summed up with their tagline: “Just Do It”. This idea is retold over and over in Nike’s advertising (visuals, copy, music, product design) and by the athletes that endorse Nike.

When consumers hear Nike’s story, they are enthralled and want to be part of it—to adopt it as their own. So they buy Nike stuff. Wearing Nike signals to everyone around them that they are the kind of people who “Just Do It”. That is their story.

Except it doesn’t really work that way.

Most of the time it’s the other way around.

Consumers don’t usually adopt a product’s brand story as their own.

Instead, they have a personal story and when brands fit into them, they buy those brands.

The reality goes like this: A runner is training for her first marathon. When choosing the shoes she will train in, she considers a couple of options—Nike, New Balance, Saucony… Which brand’s story fits best with her world view?

The brand story that supports her personal story determines which shoes she buys.

Which means the story your brand tells is important, but how it supports your customer’s stories is critical (it’s that old macro/micro thing again).

How do the stories you tell support your customer’s personal stories?

But that won’t stop them from trying.

Take canned tomatoes.

I buy Hunt’s Canned Tomatoes instead of Del Monte Canned Tomatoes. Why?

Let’s just say it has nothing to do with either product’s Facebook page or twitter feed. (Yes, they’re both on FB.)

But is there really a difference between these products?

Both are cans filled with cooked tomatoes. Both feature tomatoes on the label. Both will make decent spaghetti sauce, salsa, or casseroles.

But I reach for the Hunt’s. Why?

Not because they have a compelling brand story (if they do, I don’t know it). Rather it’s what mom used to buy. The same reason I choose laundry detergent, toothpaste, and dishwashing soap.

Habit drives a lot of purchases. Maybe most of them.

But that doesn’t stop brand managers from trying to attract customers with a story.

Hunt’s talks about flash steaming.

Del Monte talks about savings.

Does it make you want to buy?

Maybe.

A lot of commodity brands struggle to create a compelling reason to buy their product. They try positioning (fresh, cheap, easy to use, quality, natural, new and improved!). They publish recipes that call for their brands. They run coupons and promotions.
But in the end, there’s really no real story to share. And who wants a conversation with their canned tomatoes?

Selling tomatoes (and most other commodities) comes down to creating familiarity—seeing the cans in the pantry and on the store shelf—becoming a trusted member of the family.

There may still be a story there, but can Hunt’s own it? Can they tell it in a way people will pay attention?