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?

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.

This entry was originally posted on March 9, 2006 at the old Brandstory blog (link available for a limited time). I’ve made a couple of minor revisions to the original.

John Moore over at Brand Autopsy has written about Jack Trout’s recent article in Forbes which discusses the value of Word of Mouth as a marketing tool. Jack takes a decidedly old-school approach and gets taken to task for it by John, George Silverman, Olivier Blanchard, and others. I won’t deconstruct the article, others have done that already. But I do think that Jack’s column represents a fundamental misunderstanding about the way brand stories are created and shared.

Jack is a big believer in Macro-stories. These are the stories brand managers tell about their brands. They use company controlled marketing tactics like advertising, corporate websites, catalogs, direct mail, and so on to tell the story. Macro-stories are vital to communicating brand positioning and brand values to a huge number of potential and current customers. These are the stories a company can (to some extent) control. They are generally expensive to produce and distribute. And they are often ignored or distrusted by jaded consumers.

Where Jack misses the boat is Micro-stories. These are the stories consumers tell about the brands they love and hate. These are stories that are influenced by Macro-stories, but also include other elements like experience and satisfaction. They are created on an individual basis, one by one. These are stories that companies can only influence, not control.

Take the restaurant chain, Olive Garden, for example. Their brand story (reflected in their television advertising) is one about (large, loving) families gathering for great food, great conversation, and the kind of hospitality you would have received from your Italian grandmother. The company controls the advertising, from where it is placed, to how it is filmed, from the food that is shared, to the attractive people shown eating it. This is the Macro-story.

The Micro-story may or may not reflect this experience played out on TV. If a customer has to wait to be seated, is served cold food, receives poor service, or has mistakes made on his bill, her Micro-story isn’t likely to share many characteristics of the Macro-story. On the other hand, if this customer’s experience is similar (within reason) to the brand story told on the advertisements, her Micro-story will reflect the brand values the company wants to communicate. When she shares her experience, she won’t be talking about the handsome Italian family from the television ads, she’ll talk about her experience at the restaurant.

In other words, once a brand is experienced, the experience, not the advertising or positioning, is the biggest part of the brand story for that consumer. If the experience is compelling, she will share her Micro-story with others at work, at church, at the club, on her blog, and so on. It used to be enough to share the Macro-story and hope for the best, but times have changed.

The biggest difference, of course, is that consumers have so many more ways to share their Micro-stories now that they did just a few years ago. And, thanks to brand experiences disconnected from Macro-stories, more and more consumers no longer believe the brand stories companies “sell” them with traditional advertising. Jack (and hundreds others like him) may always favor the tactics they can control. But their clients will suffer as the power of Micro-stories grows.

That’s why word of mouth matters.