When it comes to search, Google dominates its competitors. In fact, its name is synonymous with search.
Nobody “searches” online. We “google”.

Last month, Americans conducted 18 billion online searches, and Google handled more than 65% of them. Yahoo’s search engine clocks in at 15.9% of all searches, while 14.1% were handled by Microsoft’s Bing.

Do the math. These three giants handle 95% of all U.S. search requests.

Now imagine you want to start a search engine. How would you do it?

Focus on the hole in the market. And make that your story.

Google does a lot of things right. But they don’t do everything right, for everybody. So if you want to compete with Google, you find something they don’t do well and figure out a way to do it better.

That’s what DuckDuckGo does.

Never heard of DDG?

DDG founder, Gabriel Weinberg, created a search engine that blocks content mills and sites jammed with advertising (improving the quality of results). DuckDuckGo doesn’t track search results and share them with advertisers. It doesn’t store search history or IP addresses.

This past January, DuckDuckGo got a lot of attention for a billboard in San Francisco that read: Google tracks you. We don’t.

Hit them where they are weak. Find the hole.

It’s a great brand story.

Easy to tell. Easy to understand.

But that’s not all.

DuckDuckGo does other things that customers like. All search results are displayed on a single page… just keep on scrolling. The name, logo, and site design are playful and clean. You can customize the color, fonts, alignment and other elements of DDG. And the search results are pretty darn good.

The DDG experience feels a lot like what Google was ten years ago.

DDG also does a nice job with disambiguation (they have something called semantic topic detection that helps narrow your search). Try searching for “Lincoln” and you get a box at the top of the page with several choices. Are you looking for Abraham Lincoln? Lincoln Automobiles? Lincoln, Nebraska? Novels, bands, films, or albums called Lincoln? It’s a nice feature that makes results more accurate.

Compared to Google, DuckDuckGo is tiny. Barely worth noticing.

And they’ve got a good  brand story.

Small companies disintermediate bigger competitors all the time. Google did it to Altavista, Excite, and Lycos (remember them?).

And somebody will do it to Google.

Someday.

Will it be DuckDuckGo?

From time to time, I receive books from authors who are hoping I’ll like the book enough to write about it. This is one of those times.

I write (and read) a lot about brands, story, marketing, and strategy, so when I get a book on one of those topics, I’m generally inclined to read it.

Such is the case with Peter Guber’s upcoming book, Tell to Win: Connect, Persuade, and Triumph with the Hidden Power of Story.

Mr. Guber has worked as a high-powered movie executive, political fundraiser, and a university professor, and he shares personal experiences from his life to show how stories sell ideas and move people to action.

The book isn’t about marketing (at least not outwardly). Or how companies can use stories to move the customers to action. But after reading it, the reader will have plenty of ideas that apply directly to telling any narrative, including brand stories.

Why do stories convey information more effectively than a recitation of facts, numbers, or other figures? Guber quotes Robert Rosen, the former dean of UCLA’s School of Theater, Film, and Television:

“Stories put all the key facts into an emotional context. The information in a story doesn’t just sit there as it would in a logical proposition. Instead, it’s built to create suspense.”

Among the many stories Guber shares is one about how Lynda and Stewart Resnick (owners of Teleflora, FIJA Water, and POMWonderful) spent more than $200,000 for a string of imitation pearls worn by Jackie Kennedy. So why did they do it?

“…owning them gave Lynda the right and ability to analyze and copy them, right down to ‘the sterling silver clasp and the three little cubic zirconiums and the silk cord and the seventeen coats of lacquer.’ More than 130,000 of these exact replicas sold at $200 apiece, for a net profit of more than $26 million—all of it told and sold through story… ‘The promise of the story has got to deliver. If it doesn’t deliver, who would care?’”

Lynda tells Guber: “I don’t do companies that don’t have a story, because if they don’t have a story, they don’t have a business.”

Tell to Win is jammed with stories from and about Bill Clinton, Deepak Chopra, Steven Speilberg, Pat Riley and many others—all to illustrate how stories work to motivate, inspire, and sell. In fact, there are so many interesting stories in the book that sometimes it feels a little disjointed as you jump from one to the next. But all in all, it still makes a pretty good read.

One more quote from the book (from Steve Denning) that relates to telling stories in a marketing environment:

“The goal of story telling is to get the listener to take over your story. You want your story to become their story. Then they’re going to create a new story from your story. It’s going to to be adapted, changed, adjusted.”

Order Tell to Win at Amazon.
Click here for the Tell to Win website where you can find a free chapter of the book.

The real power of a good brand story is that it communicates an idea in an emotional way. Listeners immediately get your message and if the story is good, they internalize it and may even share it with others.

For example, you can tell your customers that you provide outstanding customer service. In fact, many brands say exactly that in their advertising, mission statements and their web sites. And it’s all completely forgettable.

Or you can “show” your customers a story.

No doubt you’ve heard about the woman who returned a set of snow tires to Nordstrom (or maybe it was a toaster). The salesperson gladly refunded her money and took the tires off her hands. The hook is that Nordstrom doesn’t sell tires. But they did what it took to make a valued customer happy.

That story is almost certainly an urban legend. But it is told and retold by Nordstrom customers to illustrate how great the customer service is at Nordstrom. It feels true.

Another example is the pizza story told by Zappos CEO, Tony Hsieh.

This story has become a part of the Zappos narrative. This story has been told by Tony hundreds of times. It brilliantly demonstrates to what lengths Zappos will go to serve their cusotmers. And each time he tells it, Tony says that he hesitates to share it because he doesn’t want people to call his company to order pizza. (Given that Tony has shared this story over and over, we can assume that he isn’t hesitant to tell it in the least, and this is just part of his approachable delivery.)

Here’s the story (excepted from his book, Delivering Happiness, at the Huffington Post):

I’m reminded of a time when I was in Santa Monica, California, a few years ago at a Skechers sales conference. After a long night of bar-hopping, a small group of us headed up to someone’s hotel room to order some food. My friend from Skechers tried to order a pepperoni pizza from the room-service menu, but was disappointed to learn that the hotel we were staying at did not deliver hot food after 11:00pm. We had missed the deadline by several hours.

In our inebriated state, a few of us cajoled her into calling Zappos to try to order a pizza. She took us up on our dare, turned on the speakerphone, and explained to the (very) patient Zappos rep that she was staying in a Santa Monica hotel and really craving a pepperoni pizza, that room service was no longer delivering hot food, and that she wanted to know if there was anything Zappos could do to help.

The Zappos rep was initially a bit confused by the request, but she quickly recovered and put us on hold. She returned two minutes later, listing the five closest places in the Santa Monica area that were still open and delivering pizzas at that time.

Now, truth be told, I was a little hesitant to include this story because I don’t actually want everyone who reads this book to start calling Zappos and ordering pizza. But I just think it’s a fun story to illustrate the power of not having scripts in your call center and empowering your employees to do what’s right for your brand, no matter how unusual or bizarre the situation.

As for my friend from Skechers? After that phone call, she’s now a customer for life.

Tony could have said, “Our service is the best,” or “We’ll do anything for our customers.” But by telling this story he doesn’t have to. Instead, he shares an experience that a listener can relate to. And we draw our own conclusions.

What stories are you giving your customers to tell?

In case you’re interested, here’s a longer version of Tony talking about Zappos (and the pizza story) from the Business Innovation Factory:

When it comes to telling a compelling brand story, nothing is more powerful (or more effective) than letting your customers do the talking.

That’s exactly what Patagonia has been doing for three decades.

Every year, customers send more than 80,000 photographs of themselves doing the things they love—wearing Patagonia gear.

And the results are stunning.

Rock climbers. Tree sitters. Alpine skiers. Hikers. Wild-life.

Thousands of photos taken in places with crazy names like: Suicide Rock, The Thrill is Gone, and The Asylum.

A recent issue of the catalog featured stories of failure—written by climbers who got tantalizingly close to a summit, only to have to quit climbing before reaching the top. Sometimes it really is about the journey (though not always by choice).

And between the customer stories are photos and descriptions of the gear that makes it all possible.

Visit Patagonia.com and you’ll see more of the same.

Customer photos and stories featured on the home page and blog.

And a microsite called the Tin Shed (harking back to the shed in which Patagonia first opened) where you can see even more photos, watch video, and hear audio from customers like Maxime Turgeon who rode his bike 770 miles around the Alps looking for new climbing routes to try.

Or check out the story of Fletcher Chouinard and several others who visit the Mentawai Islands off the coast of Sumatra to test their new surf boards.

There’s some really good stuff here.

Patagonia gets bonus points for its “Spread the Shed” feature which makes it easy to tweet, email, dig, and otherwise share these incredible stories.

Or check out Patagonia’s Youtube channel where you’ll find more of the same…

And their twitter feed. And their Facebook page.

The most important part of these stories is that they aren’t about Patagonia at all. No talk about the triple stitching or waterproofing of the jacket a person is wearing. Or the unique cut of a fleece liner.

Just aspirational images and stories about what their customers love to do.

And by retelling these stories in their marketing materials, Patagonia shows their customers that they get it.

They are a natural part of their customer’s world. A brand they can trust.

The reality is that customers often tell the story better than the marketing department. So why not let them?

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.

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?

BP has two big problems*.

The first problem is a well at the bottom of the Gulf of Mexico that has spilled an estimated 50 million gallons of oil in the past 48 days.

Until they fix it, nothing they do for the second problem will matter.

BP’s second problem is the story.

For almost a decade, BP has told a brand story about being the environmental leader among petroleum companies. Click over to BP’s website and you’ll find an entire section devoted to the environment. This tab talks about BP’s approach to alternative energy sources like solar, wind, and bio-fuels—and walks through how they are making the world better. BP has been sharing a similar message in their advertising for the past five years:

It’s a great message for an oil company, especially because it is very likely true. BP does spend significant resources on alternative fuels and clean technology. They have acknowledged climate change is a real problem. They are probably doing as much or more than any other oil company to develop renewable resources.

But none of that matters.

Because everything changed on the micro-level. Daily news reports of oil-covered wildlife and millions of page views for the video footage from the bottom of the sea overwrite the macro-story about environmental awareness.

It doesn’t matter why this catastrophe happened, or how many safety awards BP has won, or whether they were properly permitted.

What matters is the story that people are hearing today.

And that story isn’t about BP’s concern for the environment, rather it’s about how BP is a villain and there’s a million gallons of oil spilling into the gulf every day.

So BP is rolling out new ads to tell their side of the story and to apologize for the disaster. This is the exact right thing to do. But it won’t change anyone’s feelings about BP. Because until the brand’s macro-story is matched by the stories told on the micro-level, consumers will not trust the company’s message.

First BP needs to cap the leak. Then they need to clean up the mess. And at that point, consumers may be willing to listen to BP talk about the environment.

This is a problem faced by thousands of companies every day (not just BP). The bank that promises they care about you but then charges horrendous fees and raises rates. Would they do that if they really cared? What about the cable company that answers the phone with an automated message promising that your call is very important to us and, oh by the way, the hold time right now is 23 minutes?

When the story you tell isn’t matched by the story your customers experience, you’ve got a problem. And until you fix it, nothing you say matters.

The oil logo in this entry was “borrowed” from David Airey’s very good Logo Design Love blog.

My favorite part of almost every James Bond movie is the prologue, the dramatic opening featuring Commander Bond in a short, action sequence and a death-defying stunt.

Take Casino Royale as an example. The movie opens with a black and white sequence in which Bond earns his double-O status when he corners and kills a corrupt station chief. Then the credits roll…

Warning: the following clip is a bit violent. Discretion is advised.

The prologue sets the stage for the rest of the movie by introducing the actor, the action, and the back story. Now we are up-to-date and ready for the rest of the narrative to unfold.

Prologues have been used for centuries to establish context and understanding for the story about to be told. They are common in fiction, non-fiction, movies, and theatre.

Brand stories use prologues too.

Think about the brand story that Southwest Airlines (SWA) tells its customers: We give people the freedom to fly. They do this with no fees for baggage. Lower ticket prices. No first class seats. Faster rewards for frequent flyers. Quicker turns at airports to minimize costs. It all adds up to more freedom.

No other airline can tell this story like Southwest can. Why?

Because no other airline shares Southwest’s unique prologue—the events that led up to the story SWA tells today.

As Kevin and Jackie Freiberg write in Nuts—a book about the airline’s rise, “the history of Southwest Airlines is a story of courage and perseverance.” The character of the company is rooted in its dramatic beginnings. Braniff, Continental, and Texas International airlines all argued that there was no need for Southwest. They spent four years fighting in court and lobbying congress to pass laws to keep Southwest out of the air.

In order to compete with the bigger airlines, Southwest had to do things differently. They flew out of obscure airports (the competition practically owned the more popular airports). They focused on lower prices (while other airlines charged high ticket prices and fees). At one point they gave away a free bottle of whiskey with every ticket sold just to attract customers (while other airlines thought they were crazy).

There’s a lot more to the story… but without the struggle to get off the ground (literally), Southwest wouldn’t have had to do things so radically different from the rest of the airline industry. Southwest’s brand story today owes everything to its prologue.

The Chicago cyanide poisonings should have ended Tylenol’s existence. Instead, the way the company handled the crisis is a powerful prologue that demonstrates the quality and safety customers get when they open a bottle today. Bill Bowerman’s quest for a better running shoe is the prologue to Nike’s story of enabling athletic accomplishment at every level.

Does your brand have a history you can draw on?

Prologues add context to brand stories. What’s yours?

People have been writing about the greatness of Apple’s advertising since about 1984. These days Apple does a brilliant job of speaking to its customers in a unique and consistent voice—no matter what the product (and the voice differs depending on the product and audience). The iTunes/iPod campaign features people dancing with their iPods and reckless abandon. The “I’m a Mac” campaign is both fun and funny, pointing why Macs are better than PCs.

But the big winner for effectiveness in advertising is the iPhone campaign. Here’s why:

1. Beautiful product shots. The only thing you see in this campaign is a hand, or hands, holding a iPhone. That’s it. Of course, the iPhone is used to conjure up maps, photos, games, music and anything else the narrator talks about. But what we see is a well-designed iPhone on a plain white background.

2. Product demonstrations. Notice the ads don’t ever say, “Buy an iPhone” or “The iPhone will make your life better.” There are no promises. Just a simple, compelling demonstration designed to make the viewer think, “Wow, if it’s that simple to do all those things, maybe I should get one.” By changing up the demonstration in each ad (but not the product shots), you quickly see how versatile the iPhone is. Interestingly, the iPhone doesn’t do a whole lot of things you couldn’t do before, it just does them more easily from the palm of your hand.

3. Story. Give yourself a gold star if you saw this one coming. Every 30 second ad is a short story. Whether it’s the story of the person who found and adopted a dog, or the story of the backpacker who went to Spain, or the story of the guy who missed the train. And the hero of every story is the phone. It helps find missing reports, and book hotels, and post photos online, and makes the airport check-in process easy. Each story is nothing less than a testimonial about how the phone has improved someone’s life. The viewer is left to assume the phone can make their life better too.

This is a campaign that could run for a very long time. As long as there are useful aps to demo and human interest stories to build the demos around, there will be content for more iPhone ads.

You can watch all the stories in this campaign, here.

In a post from last year, Derek Sivers writes about a talk he attended in which Kurt Vonnegut explained why stories appeal to people. Check it out here. Vonnegut drew up a few common story arcs like this one, for Cinderella:

Note the dramatic ups and downs. This is what makes a story interesting. The twists and turns pull at our emotions and make us pay attention. Then Vonnegut sketched out the story arc of our lives:

And so it goes. Most people’s lives are pretty boring. We do the same stuff day in and day out. Normal things like answering emails, grocery shopping, and picking up the kids from soccer. Very few of us outsmart our wicked step sisters and dance with the prince at the ball. That’s partly why stories are so gripping.

That’s also why people are drawn to brands with great stories (or brands that tell great stories). Very few of us see ourselves as creative. But if I buy an iPhone (or even better, an iPad), I can borrow Apple’s story for my own use. Now my story is more creative and hip, because I have an iPad.

If I drive a Mini Cooper, I borrow Mini’s story and I perceive that my life is more fun, because now I don’t just drive, I “motor.” Even a brand of peanut butter can signal that one mom is “choosier,” and therefore more caring, than another.

Consumers use brand stories to say something about their own stories. Often to improve them.

Is your brand story good enough to inspire people to add it to their own?

UPDATE (4/29/10): I stumbled across another version of Kurt Vonnegut’s speech on story arcs, this one is written by Vonnegut himself. Just as interesting as Sivers’ take, though a little different. Check it out here.