S07.E13 - Why Story Still Wins in Brand Building with Park Howell

22:50Matt Davies:I particularly agree. I think brand narrative, the hero, is always the customer of the brand. Oh, yeah. People get that so wrong. And, you know, I guess you always probably come across this, but I do as well, where people talk about brand narrative or brand story. And it's all about the history of the company. And you're like, you're like, no, no one cares when you were founded. You know, it's called chest pounding. Listen to me. I've got all the answers. Bye now. Put the customer at the heart of everything. And that's like the number one rule. So it was great to hear you kind of set that out at the start as well as a kind of an overlying, overlying foundational principle.

23:25Well, the other thing I'd add to that, Matt, is you're exactly right. Customer is the center of the story. And number two, your story is not about what you make, but what you make happen for your customers because they don't really give a crap about your SaaS product or whatever you've made. I just want to know what does it actually make happen for me? I love that.

23:44Matt Davies:Right. We're going to go way over time on this podcast. Perhaps not in such detail, but maybe just give us a sense of the other two frameworks that you use because I know one of them is, well, I think both of them. All right. So the second one is the five primal elements of a short story for big impact. And I learned this framework from a company out of Melbourne, actually, called Anecdote. And they teach leaders how to tell an anecdote. And there's five beats to that anecdote. And in fact, I used it on you when I was telling you the facetious story, Larry and Thog that became Jacob and Matt. I started with a location stamp to Savannah.

24:24I gave you a time stamp. I said, 70 ,000 years ago. I introduced Larry to you. He's the central character in this story. Thog just plays kind of a bit role, actually. A story is always about one individual and something happening to them, even with other people in their supporting cast. Then action and surprise. The action is, oh, my God, what are you doing here in this doorway with a crumpled up fishing pole? You look terrible, Thog. Well, and then now it goes deeper into the action. I'm fishing. The cyber tooth tiger shows up. And the surprise learning moment is I give salmon to tiger. It likes salmon better than thog, Matt.

25:00And therefore, I'm safely back here with you. Aha. The aha moment. The learning, the moral of the story. So let me just try this on you guys. And either one of you here or both of you. But one at a time. I want you. So we just wrote an ABT for your show about why people should listen. So now it's one thing for us to say that. Jacob, I'm going to start with you, and then I'm going to let Matt tell a story. Jacob, take me to a moment in time that you maybe heard from a listener or a viewer, or maybe one of your customers really learned something from the show, or maybe you learned something from the show as a co-host that then you apply to a customer.

25:44but I need you to take me to a moment in time that illustrates that you are a go-to podcast for branding. One thing that came to mind, it was like, it's a negative that turned into a positive. Can we do that? Yeah, absolutely. All right. So I got an Instagram DM. Someone said that I put the wrong cover graphic on one of our podcast episodes. So that was a couple of weeks ago on Instagram.

26:11Matt Davies:You idiot! Yes. Who it was, it was someone I had never met before. They just sent me a DM. They loved the show. They just wanted to let us know about it. The name was Jude. And the action I took was quickly fixed up the podcast cover graphic. And then I said, can I be a little bit cheeky here and ask for a review? You sound like you've been enjoying the pod. And he said, sure, no worries. And he sent the review in. So that was the five primal elements, if I got it correct. Awesome. Okay. So let me add one more thing to that. I love it. So I want you to set that up. What is the moral of that story?

26:51Tell me what is the moral? What did you learn from that little interaction? The moral is that you can tap into your big fans to, I don't know if that's the moral, but it's like, I'm not sure what the moral is there. What I read into the moral, Jacob, was in branding, some of your most powerful moments come at the worst times. And so you might say that. One thing I've learned in just branding is some of the most powerful moments for brand building comes at the brand's worst times. Let me give you an example. Two weeks ago, I'm on Instagram, and this guy by the name of Jude, who I don't know, did tell me that they were active listeners and loved the show, but that we had blown it.

27:29Notice the word blow or butt in there to get to you. But we had blown it. We put up the wrong graphic for that current particular episode. And I was very appreciative that Jude would actually take the time to do that. And I said, thank you very much, Jude. Obviously, you are a committed listener. Could I mind maybe be a little cheeky and ask for a review from you? And Jude says, sure, of course. And that's what happened. That's where not a great moment in the Just Branding podcast life, because we all make mistakes. You've probably been there yourself, but instead of apologizing and being embarrassed about it, I said, thank you very much.

28:08You must be a committed listener. And now I probably have an even stronger listener who gave us a review. There you go. Yeah, well said.

28:17Matt Davies:Well done, Jacob. Great work. Great work. Loving your work, Jacob. Loving it. Anybody can listen in and say, I've had that happen to me. And yeah, I know that, you know, Jacob's right about that. That must be a good show that that guy would actually take time to comment on it to Jacob. So now you're making a business point through a story, a true story that nobody can argue with. They can argue with your opinions and your assertions and your expertise. They'll argue with that all day long. But they can't argue with a true story well told that makes that business point for you. Thank you. Well said.

28:53Matt, how about you? Do you have one?

28:55Matt Davies:this is hard so so what do you need you what do we want what do we need i need a moment in your life recent it could be whatever actually it could be 10 years ago something that was kind of an aha moment for you and we're talking about just branding podcasts because sharing that abt is not enough you know i mean it sets you up what the podcast is now you got to show you got to prove that premise of what you made in the ABT that this is one of the go-to podcasts in the world on branding. And just a little anecdote like Jacob just shared, says, oh man, this thing must be legit if he's got people taking the time to reach out to him.

29:34Do you have something similar? It could be a negative, a positive, something in between.

29:39Matt Davies:Well, I don't know. Okay. I'm going to throw one out there and see how it lands. So we had a gentleman on called Rory Sutherland. um oh famous famous uk marketer right and uh i think he's uh yeah oh he's fantastic and he shared some some some ideas around problem framing with us and how like the immediate problem that you're presented with may not actually be the problem that you need to solve in fact sometimes it's helpful to rethink the way that we're thinking about a problem if that makes sense so reframing the problem so i had a client and i'm working with this client and they are trying to work through a problem so i had a client so let's give it a time stamp it was about i don't know three weeks ago something like that and they're trying to work through a problem in as a strategy team around the way that they were positioning a solution this is in a building industry for fire doors right and the way that they were thinking about it was i'm not going to get all into the technical thing but they were thinking about the actual door frame and it turns out that when we reframed the problem the issue actually was the level of the floor right so that's that's kind of uh where we went with it i don't know if that's getting into too much detail no that's okay the point was if i hadn't had rory's thinking around problem framing then excuse the pun we may not have been thinking about the frame uh we we may have been continuing to think about the frame rather than the floor right so that was and then that kind of put a put us in a completely new strategy in terms of how that we would sell their their solution that that they were offering the market so i don't know if that makes any sense whatsoever but the point here is is rory's ideas from the just branding podcast helped me put a workshop exercise together for them that helped them rethink the problem that they were taking to market and solving for and they then have done that and they're now working through that solution.

31:44Matt Davies:So there we are. That is awesome. So what is the moral of that story? What's the aha moment for you or for your listeners? Really, I want you to be thinking about because you're going to be sharing this with potential prospective viewers and listeners. Okay. So the aha moment would be that we don't always have to take what is presented to us as the initial challenge. We can interrogate that. the moral of the story is not to accept things on face value. Yeah. All right. So I'm going to take it even deeper. Don't accept things on face value is a generalized moral, which is fine. It's a good moral, but I want it to be very specific to your viewers and your listeners as to why should I spend any time on just branding podcasts?

32:28Why should I invest? What am I going to learn? I would follow something along the lines of, you said you've been doing the show about nine years. You know, one of the great things about doing the Just Branding podcast for nine years is all the stuff that Jacob and I get to learn. For instance, don't take things at face value. We had Rory Sutherland on, and it was about reframing of a problem. And he did it in a way that I had never considered before. And so three weeks ago, I found myself in a situation where I could use that reframing immediately in my job. We did this, this, this, this, this, and this was the happy outcome.

33:05That's why I love, and this is why we do this show, you know, tirelessly for nine years because we get to speak and bring you experts like Rory Sutherland that we can all learn from. So thanks for listening.

33:19Matt Davies:This sounds amazing. This is one small correction. I do get pretty tired of Jacob. That's phenomenal. That's absolutely phenomenal. So they're the five, what did you sort of frame that as? Yeah, so the five primal elements of a short story, and here's how and why they work. I like to start with a timestamp because a timestamp triggers the limbic brain and it says, oh, something must have happened to these guys or to the storyteller that I, because they're giving me a point in time when things start, stories are always temporal. I better pay attention so I know what to do if whatever happened to the storyteller happens to me.

34:00That's a long way of saying that's how you hook him. Give him a time stamp. Then I like to give a location stamp because it fires up the theater of the mind. Were you in London? Was it downtown London? Was it in a high rise? Was it a beat up old fire station somewhere? Where were you? You know, and you could even say, and it was a hot, it was frigging hot day in downtown London, blah, blah, blah. You don't have to go into great detail, but all you're doing now is trying to fire up the theater of the mind. So they start picturing it. They go, I've been in London. I've been in a place like that.

34:31I know what he's talking about. And then you introduce the single character in this. In this case, it's really you are the character in it. And I know a lot of people will go, well, this sort of belies what you were saying earlier about you are never the center of your story. Well, a lot of your stories are about you, about ourselves. But in the telling, you make it about your audience. So they live vicariously through you. They can picture themselves and what happened to you so that the aha moment, the moral of the story is as powerful for them as it is, as it was for you of what you experienced in that.

35:08So then that central character, then the surprise, the aha, what went down? How did you reframe it? And everyone goes, oh, wow, that's amazing. It's like you magically came up with a new way to look at this problem. and that's way better than what we had before. Therefore, it leads to the final solution is don't take things at face value. If you really want to understand how to reframe problems, listen to our conversation with Rory Sutherland.

35:33Matt Davies:Nice, nice. Love it. So, Park, the framework there, it's like all children's books. I read a lot of children's books. I've got four kids at home. So at the start… He wants to read them because he really enjoys them. Just put it out there. Yes, that too. but like the framework that you just said there it's like once upon a time so it's like setting the location what did you say that i totally didn't hear i'm just saying you quite like the level of like age six that's kind of where your standard yes yes anyway just ignore me as usual as usual all right yeah but books they start like once upon a time in a land far far far away.

36:14There is this character. Yeah. So this is literally that order. So I've never really considered that, but it sounds logical to set that time, location, here's the character, and let's get into who they are. It's the tripartite structured story. You've got to know where is the story based? Who is this story about that you would care about? And what is it that they really wanted in life once upon a time. But all this horrible stuff happens, and it goes on for hours and hours and hours. Therefore, at the end, they bring it in and all, you know, they live happily ever after. I heard one guy once saying, I love these three words, once upon a time, suddenly, luckily, it's the same sort of three-part structure.

37:01I mean, it's the same three-part structure of the ABT or brand building, you know? Yeah.

37:07Matt Davies:when i looked at it a while back aristotle had like a three-part structure didn't he i think in the in the ancient greeks he sort of talked about that that sort of side at least that that frame thing you know his was as simple as a story has a beginning a middle and then then and everyone goes well duh you say that though right but like in in um you know i i think um there's a is it japanese culture they they kind of don't end stuff and then like everyone's just like it goes wild because like no one knows what's gonna happen it's so unsatisfying you know because they don't close the loop but and maybe that's um maybe that's wrong so you know forgive me all japanese well we want to close the loop because then the closing is where our call to action is right and that's where we want to get emotion and get kind of motion going so i've been right right in a children's book park and i've had to go through this whole scenario of like the story and the ups and downs and the even the page turns to make sure the flow works with the illustrations and everything so it's really fascinating to hear how you approach it but in the context of brand but it it really does apply to like the story of a children's book as well oh yeah well then it all leads up to the biggest story structure of them all and that's the hero's journey out of from joseph campbell Right.

38:25You know, the 12 steps or the 17, depending on how nuanced you want to get with it. And I learned about that first back in the early 2000s when our son was going to film school at Chapman University in Orange, California. Timestamp, early 2000s, Chapman University, Orange, California. Very prominent. I mean, it's now ranked among the top five film schools in the world. And while he was going to school there, I said, I was trying to still figure out the story thing. I said, you know, send me your books and your recorded lectures when you have them, since I'm paying for them, because I want to know what does Hollywood know?

39:01And then the first thing he said is, Dad, read Joseph Campbell's a hero with a thousand faces. And here's some videos to watch, too, of which I did. And I go, oh, my God, this is a customer journey. This is an agency owner's journey. This is every journey that we're all on. Why don't they teach this stuff in advertising and marketing schools? because this to me seems like the roadmap, the blueprint for every communication you ever want to build. And the hero's journey is simply a very large expanded and, but therefore the first part of it is the and section. You're setting the stage, the big long middle part where the audience or the, the protagonist goes into that weird world to figure out life.

39:42And they got all these trials and tribulations. That's the butt. And then the, therefore is that very short third act that is the closing that brings it all together and we learn something in the process. And it was when I saw that that I said, well, this would be amazing and brand building, but I'm afraid that a lot of business people might think it's too Hollywood woo-woo. So I took it and I mapped it to my 10-step story cycle system. It totally inspired the system, which is all about, you know, the very first step is what's your position in the marketplace? setting the stage, right? Second step, who's your hero?

40:19Who's the number one audience that makes up 80 % of your sales? Then step three, what do they want? Why is it important to them? And you move on to all the antagonistic forces that are against them and even against you as the brand, how to leverage those using storytelling to be kind of a jujitsu master to use those negative forces in positive ways for your brand, because again, nobody's going to buy a solution unless they have a frigging problem. So you want to really highlight that problem, make it hurt as much as you can possibly make it hurt, and then introduce the mentor or the guide, which is the brand.

40:56And then the journey begins on how you are going to help them do that. And so that became the whole basis for our 10-step story cycle system that is the overarching story framework that I use then the ABT and the five primal elements story within.

41:12Matt Davies:Amazing. Amazing.

41:22I had a question about the woo-woo thing because the storytelling does have that vibe when you say storytelling. It's like, well, you know, how does that work? It's from Hollywood. And like, how do you get over that in like a boardroom or with clients? How do you get over it? Well, number one, you never say the word story. You never say, let me tell you a story because their defense shields will immediately go up. I don't have time for a story. Story is bullshit. But they know how manipulative in a positive and or negative way a story is. So you never, ever, ever use the S word. You just simply hook them with a story.

42:00They don't even know what's going on. You just tell them a quick little story. So here's what I do. If I'm in a room and I really got to understand who my audience is, I try to think like I'm Spielberg and this audience is sitting in a theater. I'm going to start my presentation with an and, but therefore, I'm going to say it in under 15 seconds to hook them on that singular problem solution dynamic that we are going to be solving in that meeting or you're selling against in that meeting. And then I'm going to immediately follow it up with a little anecdotal story using my the five primal elements of story to show them that problem solution dynamic in action right now.

42:38So in under 90 seconds, I've used two story frameworks, the ABT and the five primal elements to wormhole my way into their limbic subconscious brain that says, oh, dang, he might be onto something here. And he just showed me the impact of what's going on. Then you start leveling up into the logic reason-driven brain. Let me now show you the numbers by why this is so important or that is supporting the context of my stories that I've shared with you. So don't even tell them the magic you're doing on them, but they're homo sapiens just like you are. It doesn't matter how smart they are. Their limbic brain runs the exact same way.

43:21Help it make meaning first and then bring the numbers in to create the context and support around that meaning. Makes sense.

43:31Matt Davies:You know, we said at the outset you're exploring AI, etc. And, you know, we've already hinted at, you know, there's a general sort of fear factor of AI around the place. And I know you're sort of you're dabbling. So tell us a little bit about that and how you're sort of using that alongside storytelling and all of the thinking that you have been working on over the last few years. Yeah. Well, let me tell you, it goes way beyond dabbling. I mean, we have now almost three years been in the process and we've brought to market the Story Cycle Genie, which has taken our 10 step Story Cycle System process from my book and the work that I've done with it over 20 years.

44:12and we've been able to use artificial intelligence and leveled it up to becoming artful intelligence because with inside the genie, yeah, we've got API calls going out to chat GPT and Claude, but the way we have programmed and built it and prompted, it's more like you are just simply sitting down with a brand consultant next to you or a colleague next to you or yourself, I mean, with the genie and you collaborate with it to create what used to take us three or four months and$100 ,000 to do, you can literally now do in a couple of hours and have the same, if not even greater impact because you are using the power of AI in a very artful way with our IP, the Story Cycle System, to be able to create, refine, and define your brand stories.

45:02Matt Davies:Well, I've got to tell you, folks, before we came on the show, um park a couple of days ago sent us through kindly um the like a like a review i guess it was like a not we weren't working with the story cycle genie you kind of just said look i'll feed you it your website feed it to your website and um it it kind of gives you a full comprehensive report of where we're at right now i was super happy with mine because it said all sorts of very nice things like i just give everybody a flavor right it said so overall brand strength eight out of ten I suppose I've got some improvement to do to get to get up to scratch but it did say some stuff like Matt Davis occupies a well-defined niche at the intersection of brand strategy leadership alignment and organizational energy meaningfully differentiated from the typical brand consultant so that sounds nice there's a ton of great stuff in here around my positioning all sorts of things around audience confidence what I found really really insightful is it had a load of stuff around um my core differentiation and particularly um it it came up with some some stuff around competitive positioning and i just thought i'd mention this part because i think it kind of it kind of almost went deeper than just story so for example it said um for example my services versus a big four mckinsey type firm matt wins on speed leadership proximity and direct access that clients get to Matt.

46:32Matt Davies:Not a junior team, no partner bait and switch. And there's a few other things. Now that is so insightful. I don't think I've written that specifically that I can think of in my website or on my social media specifically. I've not compared myself to a big, say for a big four McKinsey type firm, but it kind of picked that up. And then there's loads of stuff around opportunities for my brand story kind of telling, stuff that's high priority, medium and lower. And it just goes on and on. And I mean, there's 14 pages of real deep, good, gorgeous stuff with suggestions on brand narrative and all sorts.

47:12Matt Davies:So it absolutely blew me away, Park. And I just want to kind of encourage folks to kind of, you know, have a look at it. What can people do? Like, I assume there's, you know, that they can jump on. Can they access it, you know, themselves? Is it a paid for service? Like, how does it work? Yeah, so what I sent you was the beginning of the building of the brand brain as if you were a user of it. People watching this and listening to this right now can do is you can get a free brand story grade. Just go over to storycyclegenie.ai, click on the red button. It's going to ask for your name, your email address, and the URL, whatever brand it is that you want to run through.

47:52It could be yours. It could be a competitor's. It could be a prospect's or whatever. and in about two minutes, it's going to run a complete assessment for you and it's going to give you a grade from A plus to F minus on how well you're showing up in the world. It will validate what you're doing well. It will reveal the gaps and that you can quickly fix and even inspire you with new ways to think about telling your brand story and that is all delivered to you through a 14 point storytelling assessment. Totally free, no credit cards, no nothing. Just go check it out. what I sent to Matt is I took it to the next step.

48:29So I just asked the genie, and I didn't know anything about Matt's brand at all, so I didn't iterate or do anything. I just went into the genie. I said, here's the URL. I want you to now create a deep dive assessment. It goes deeper than what Freemium does. Give me an assessment, and then write up a complete narrative strategy of how he is currently appearing in the market. So what I like to have you think of it, Matt, is like mirror, mirror on the wall, how is my brand showing up for all? And that's what that document is doing for you. So you said you were pleased, you know, eight out of 10 is not too bad.

49:08You have probably some room for improvement, but you're doing pretty good. It is parroting back to you some of the things that you wrote in there, but it's also revealing some other gaps in there and how you could fix it. And then when I ran the brand narrative strategy, it made the assumption that its assessment was at least 90 % accurate. And it said, all right, here's my recommendation on how you are showing up in the market and maybe some different things that you could do. As a user, then you would just be sitting and working with it. Say, ooh, I like that. I don't like that. I want to change this audience to that.

49:44Not sure where you got that. If it gave you some bad information, it means there's intel on your website that's not serving you because it's pulling it right from your website. So that's when the beginning of building your brand brain. And over the course of a couple of hours, it builds your foundational brand narrative. It then writes the version of it for your three audiences that it identified. You can even add more audiences to it. But we start with default to three because we don't want you to get too far flung with your audiences. and then it brings it all together in a content playbook.

50:17Once that's done, you use it for all of your strategy, building your campaign creation, your blog post writing, all your content creation. And it's always going to be on brand because that's what the genie was designed to do. No generic AI, not out there flattening your brand story. It's learning with every iteration you make with the genie about you, your brand story, and how to precisely tell that in the market. We call it story sovereignty, finding the story that only your brand can tell and then owning it.

50:51Matt Davies:No, it's truly mind-blowing. Jacob, I know Park sent you one as well. Have you got any sort of? Yes, I got 8.4, just to rub that in a little bit. No, that's got to be wrong. But yeah, just to expand on what you guys have already mentioned, there's other things in there as well. Like I was reading, there's some ABT statements as well that come through as well. Unpacking the audience in greater detail. UVP gets into brand personality traits I'm looking at. And it actually picked up quite a few of them, like Flair, I use the Flamingo and the promise there. And also things like the emotional promise, like the brand archetype it gets into.

51:38Matt Davies:What archetype were you, Jacob? It was three, actually. It was creator. Surprise, surprise. That's number one, right? So that's your primary archetype. 65 % is the creator. 100%. Yep. A bit rebellious and a bit magical. So 22 % rebel, 13 % magician. Brand purpose statement, brand narrative it gets into. Why don't you read your purpose statement to us, Jacob? What does it say your purpose is? And this This is what you stand for beyond making money. Yes. Okay. So the brand purpose statement declares what Just Creative does beyond making money that elevates the lives of everyone it touches. Focus on people and human transformation, not organizational achievement.

52:18So that's the premise here. Just Creative exists to enthrall people by enabling them to live into and prosper from their most powerful brand stories. So it then has a whole other, a larger paragraph, but it goes into our key tagline of stand the flock out, which combines with our flamingo. And it breaks that down even further, but there's quite a lot of text there. Yeah. Yeah. And the idea is this is what builds out the brand brain. And then the one part in there that you didn't mention that I'd like to talk about real quick, because it's, people don't know of it. The OO exercise, OOO. And those are nine one word descriptors in three categories, OOO, organization, offering, and outcome.

53:04So three one-word descriptors for your organization, they are what, Jacob? Courageous, authentic, meticulous. And you use these as story prompts. So for instance, Jacob, I would say, it's one thing to say you're courageous, show me you're courageous, and then tell me a quick little anecdote about how courage shows up with your customers or your clients or in a campaign you did and so forth. Yeah, it pulls out me being a digital nomad traveling across 88 countries and the brand exists as proof of that courage, not conformity. And then for an authenticity, it talks about the organizing principle of standing the flock out as a methodology and that insists that genuine distinction requires excavating what is genuinely true about a brand before ever designing its expression, which absolutely.

53:59And then meticulous, it goes into logo design awards, industry coverage, and clients like Disney, Nike, San Francisco, and years of experience. Yeah. So then for the offering, this is what people actually experience when working with you, Jacob, what are the three it came up with for you there? It's come up with transformative, distinctive, and strategic. Transformative, sorry. Transformative. And then outcome. What do they get? The outcome is freedom, authority, and flair. All right. So, and of course, if you were working inside the genie, you could change any one of those. You could say, I like transformative, but I'm looking for a different word that's more like this or whatever.

54:41And you would work in it to find those nine one-word descriptors there. Think of them as character traits. but more importantly, they are story themes that you are going to now go out and tell true stories about each one of those themes and that becomes your story marketing. And they go on your website and your content and your social posts or whatever, but they are now triggers to have you go and find stories so that you're not just selling features and benefits, you're selling impact here is how you have actually touched the people in the world that you worked with

55:19Matt Davies:so good so good brilliant well park you know we i just want to be i think we had a plan folks like to go through and it's just completely been blown out of the water because we've just been there we've been storying we've been storying what can i say um i was just going to kind of say just just kind of circle back almost like close the loop and then i want to do a quick fire round with you and then we'll finish but i just want to close the loop on our sort of discussions that we we started the episode with and that was mainly around like the relevance of storytelling today right like particularly in today's world of of ai and all this stuff so you've shown how it it can kind of help frame things but where where do you see the the real value do you see do you see storytelling you know and the way that we see the world changing ever like like give us a sense of Why storytelling is so powerful and so needed in today's world?

56:11Well, storytelling hasn't changed, but the storyteller is going through an immense evolution with AI. And I think the biggest challenge and opportunity for agencies out there right now is this concept around operationalizing a brand story. So this is why it goes back to meaning. We've got AI that is taking all the stuff you've got out there in the world, and it's probably somewhat fragmented because everybody's telling your story a little bit differently. And what is it doing? It's making your story more impotent. It's flattening it. You're starting to sound like everybody else out there. So we are looking at this thing called story ops.

56:51You know, big, large enterprises companies have marketing ops. They have sales ops, HR ops, fin ops, supply chain ops, but nobody has story ops. Someone whose full position is to make sure that not only is that story defined, but it is automatically implemented across the enterprise through tools your audience or your colleagues are already using. So why is that so important? Because we are completely being bombarded with AI slop, with just unbelievable amounts of information that our brain was never built to equip or equipped to be able to make sense of. So what does it do? It bats all that stuff away.

57:34And if you are the signal in that noise, starting with things like the Anbut, therefore, a crystal clear brand story that's been completely operationalized through the enterprise, you are not going to get drowned out. We call it narrative entropy. When you don't control it, AI bots are going to control it, and they're going to destroy that story. It's going to go into complete narrative entropy. The only way to stop that is through story ops because storytelling is not going to change. From Thog and Larry, Jacob and Matt back in the Savannah to where we are today, it's still the fundamental tool that we homo sapiens storytelling apes use to make meaning out of the madness of being human beings.

58:18Matt Davies:Boom, boom, right. Final quick fire round. I'm going to start, then I'm going to go to Jacob. So are you ready for this park? Yes, sir. things up right so number one best brand story ever told patagonias just go and look at fact i'm coming out with an article on that very thing they do a brilliant job in storytelling amazing one brand that understands storytelling better than anyone else virgin sir richard branson his whole life is one big unbelievable narrative very well told he plays that over into everything he does at Virgin. Slight aside, did you get to meet him when you went to Necker? Yeah, I worked with him.

59:00Yeah, I got to spend a week on Necker Island, and they had a whole bunch of automotive dealers in from around the country, and I did a whole storytelling program with them on how to use stories for their industry. So a great guy.

59:14Matt Davies:So jealous. If he ever wants to get on a podcast, just mention us. One storytelling myth you'd love to kill. that you think you're telling a story and you never get out of and, and, and, and, and. You are and, and, and in your world to death. You get one and, insert the but, and then resolve the pain with a therefore. All right. And a book every brand builder should read, besides your own, of course.

59:45Christopher Vogler's The Writer's Journey. Now, it's written for screenwriters. it's in its fifth edition but it is one of the most marvelous explorations of the hero's journey and how it works in our life and how you and that he doesn't talk specifically to branders but it doesn't it's not a leap for you as a brander to be able to take everything hollywood knows

1:00:08Matt Davies:and start applying it in your world all right so next one ai friend or foe to storytellers Friend, don't approach it as artificial intelligence. Approach it as artful intelligence. And it is going to scale your storytelling abilities way beyond where you currently are. It's not going to do it for you. It's going to do it with you. Amazing. One word that defines a great brand story.

1:00:40That's great. You know, enthrallment. Enthral, it was used in your own brand positioning right there. you know, the word, the term enthrallment, and I use it a lot with the Story Cycle Genie means capturing the fascinated attention on something. That's the term, that's the, for, you know, the, what am I trying to say? The definition of enthrallment. Well, isn't that what every brand wants to do is capture the fascinated attention of their core audience on what they can do in their life.

1:01:12Matt Davies:That's the word of today, enthralling. Etch that in your brains, folks. Learn it, digest it. Right, I'm going to move us on. We're going to have two more. So if every brand did one thing differently tomorrow, what would it be? If you could make them all do something different tomorrow, what would it be? Assemble all of your leaders in the room. That could be two, it could be 20. Ask them each to write an and but therefore about your brand story. compare the notes. You're going to find one in five actually know your brand story and then start fixing that. Nice. Jacob, do you want to end the quick fire?

1:01:55Yes. Last piece of advice for brand builders who want to become better storytellers. Oh, man. Study what Hollywood knows. I mean, read that book. Go get Christopher Vogler's book, The Writer's Journey. That's the first place to start. Really understand that story is all about setup, problem, resolution, just like Aristotle said, a beginning, a middle, and an end. And don't be fearful of including that middle because that's where all the grimy, disgusting conflict is. And if you don't have a conflict, you don't have a story. If you don't have a problem, they don't need your solution. Find out how to communicate that problem.

1:02:36I had a customer once tell me, he said, Park Sales is nothing more than find the hurt, amplify the pain, heal the wound. That is storytelling in a nutshell.

1:02:46Matt Davies:Amazing. And final thing as we wrap then, Park, first of all, thanks for coming on and sharing all your knowledge and being so generous. But if folks want to kind of follow up with you, like how do they follow you? I know you've got a great podcast. Do you want to just kind of give folks a sense of things? Yeah, sure. Hit my contact form at businessofstory.com and let me know that you heard me on Jacob and Matt's excellent show. Or jump over to LinkedIn. I'm there a lot, too. I think I'm the only Park Howell on LinkedIn. Reach out through there and connect. And, again, let me know that you heard me here.

1:03:22And then I will give you all kinds of content. And I just started a new newsletter on LinkedIn, Brand Story Ops for Agencies. And it's only three weeks in. I've already got over 1 ,200 subscribers. So I think I've hit a nerve.

1:03:36Matt Davies:Well, good for you. Good for you. I'm sure you have. Thanks so much, Park. That was Park Howell, everybody. What an awesome episode that was. I'm looking forward to seeing everybody's comments and hopefully feedback and reviews, just to tap into what Jacob said earlier. We are always keen on good reviews. So please do that. It helps us kind of keep the show humming along nicely. and finally if you do find this particular episode useful and you use anything that park has has sort of shared please do tag me jacob or park in anything that you use we always love to hear uh how we're having an impact in the real world so thanks for tuning in folks it's been a pleasure take care see you next time bye-bye thanks guys