Part 5 - The Resolution

Introduction

So now, we're coming up towards the end of the story, and what we need to do at this point in time is paint a picture of how their life could look once they've actually worked with us and, you know, also look at what's at stake if they don't do anything. 

In this episode of our build-your-own brand story sprints, Simon Harvey and Daniel Kleber are going to dive deep in and uncover the transformation that your heroes undertaken.  We'll look and see how experience has changed them as they've journeyed through your story.

To help you improve your marketing strategy, download the free brand script worksheet, which includes sections for each part of the storytelling framework we discuss in our episodes, here (or copy and paste the link below): 

wantauthentic.com/brandscript

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Episode Transcript

Whether it's good or bad, every story needs a resolution. So we've made it to the fifth episode in our build your own brand story sprints. And today we're going to dive deep in and uncover the transformation that your heroes undertaken. We'll look and see how experience has changed them as they've journeyed through your story. I'm your host Simon Harvey and welcome to the authentic marketing podcast in association with Demodia where we give you actionable advice that will help you create marketing that works. So welcome back to the special season that we've got at the moment where we're running through the whole of our storytelling process with you. We're doing it in short digestible chunks so that after each episode you can go away and you can fill in a section of that brand script yourself. So far we've covered the hero, we've looked at the problem that they've got, we've talked about the guide, and then in the last episode we looked at the call to action and how to create a plan to get people to actually do something. So now, We're coming up towards the end of the story and what we need to do at this point in time is to paint a picture of how their life could look once they've actually worked with us and, you know, also look at what's at stake if they don't do anything. If you want to join in as we go through this, don't forget that you can download the Brandscript document. So we've got a Word document that you can download or you can update it and play with it on Google Docs there. You just need to go to wantauthentic. com slash Brandscript. So that link will be available in the show notes if you want to get to there or you didn't catch it. As always, we've got Daniel here. Hi there, Daniel. How are you? Hello, Simon. So yeah, let's go and take a look at the resolution section in the brand script. So, you know, transformation, success and failure.

Yes, let's have a look. So, in the transformation step of the plan, you said, It's about success, right?

Yes, success is one of those steps. Yep, transformation we'll come back to in a minute later on in the document, but success is the first one we'll look at, yeah.

So, if I ask myself the question, how Do we describe success, you know, then it comes to my mind that we should detail the positive outcomes when the problem is solved for the hero, right? So as an example for a time tracking software, could it sound something like stop wasting your time with operational tasks and start using your time for strategic tasks?

Yeah, I think that's a reasonable statement of success there. So I think for success, what I would be putting in here, I would be looking for outcomes, basically business outcomes that they get from using your software or your service or buying your product, basically.

Yes.

So yeah, exactly right. You want to look and say, when you use my product, you can save so many man hours. We've managed to reduce the amount of time that we're spending on this particular thing. You can look at money. So you've managed to reduce the amount of money that you're spending on something. You can look at satisfaction as a success or happiness as a measure, something in there. So on the success part, it's really anything that you can talk about, you know, Really explains why your service is good or the results that somebody will get from your particular service there.

All right. So that's how we describe success, the outcome, the positive outcome. And, um, why do we have to paint a picture of how success would look like? What is the reason for that?

I think the thing is, if you don't tell people what success looks like, they're not going to know, you know, we're in traditional marketing. We talk a lot about benefits and this could be seen as sort of benefits in a way, but I think it's, it's a more personable version of just having pure benefits in there. You know, this is really. It's telling people what their life will look like at the end of this, basically, you know, if they do this, they're going to be able to save so much money, or they're going to be able to get more leads through their website, they're going to be able to get more customers coming into their business, they're going to have a better looking garden, whatever it happens to be. So it's about trying to inspire them to actually move forwards in here.

So we promise our hero a bright and nice future if he comes along with us, the guide.

Yeah, yeah, exactly. That's the half the idea in here. Yep.

So yeah, I get it. And what if we do the complete opposite, you know, have you thought about that? Like paint a picture of what happens if they don't take action.

Absolutely right. So that's why we've got the failure section in the brand script.

Oh,

so the failure part in here is. Yeah, describing exactly the opposite. So we want to say, okay, if your customer, if the hero of your story chooses not to follow your call to action, not to accept your advice.

Yes.

What will their world look like? Basically, at that point in time, you know, what does failure look like?

Very dark.

It can look very dark. Yeah. So, you know, it's going back and looking again and saying, okay, if you carry on doing this, uh, you know, to your time tracking example earlier, If you've got a whole load of staff that are tracking time and they have to go and fill in a sheet manually every day, inevitably something is going to go wrong. People are going to put the wrong times in there. So they're going to put the wrong hours in there. So your failure could look like people are entering the wrong numbers into their hours system, which could mean that you're going to get unhappy customers because the customer comes and says, actually, these people didn't work these hours. Or failure in that case could look like the fact that you're going to, you know, Not be able to invoice all of the hours that you actually had people working for. So you're going to be losing money based on that. So, you know, failure should look at the negative aspects of you not moving forwards, but one thing that it shouldn't do is to go too far. I mean, everybody could sit there and say that if you don't take my advice, your business will fail or you'll die or whatever, you'll lose your job. They're all things that we'd like to sort of sit there and think, well, if you don't take my advice, you're going to lose your job. You're going to be out of business, whatever. But it's a step too far in most instances. You know, you've got to be realistic about what failure looks like. Cause otherwise people will just see straight through it and say, ah, that'll never happen to me. And you've just lost them in the conversation there.

I think that's a good point, and we should also make sure that the good side, the benefits of Transcription by https: otter. ai If they follow us, should also stay realistic, you know, we shouldn't paint a too bright future for them, right? Yeah,

exactly. Realism is, I think, the key part of all of this section. Yeah, you don't want to say you're going to get thousands of leads or save millions of dollars if that's not the normal use case for your particular product. So be honest, be authentic in here as we always talk about. The other point, actually, just on both of these sections that I would say. It's important when you're filling in these sections of the brand script to refer back to the original problem that your customer is talking about, or that your hero has. One of the common mistakes that I see people doing here is they talk about a whole load of benefits or a whole load of challenges that don't relate to the original problem that you're talking about, so you end up getting a disconnect in the story. Over here we're saying that the problem with our gardening situation is the fact that I don't have the time to actually maintain my garden. Now, if that's the key problem in there, then down in the failure part or the success parts, it shouldn't talk about not having the tools and equipment to do that. The two different disconnected things in there, your failure should talk about the fact that your garden looks a mess and your success should look about the fact that it's good because you've not had to do anything with it yourself.

Good. That's a fair point. Yes, we shouldn't disconnect from the origins of the story. And, um, now we've talked about describing a bright future and what success looks like. And we talked about describing failure if they don't take our advice or services, but What would you say, Simon? Should we only use one of these two elements, like either success or either failure, or should we use both of them for our story?

I think normally I would use both of them in here, and the reason that I'd use both is because Is the fact that they sort of balance each other out. You know, I probably have more success than failure. You know, you don't want to be overly negative, but it's important that you do have some negative parts in there. You know, the example I usually give is it's a little bit like baking bread. If anybody's ever tried baking bread. When you make bread, you get flour, you get water, you get yeast, you mix them all together and the bread rises, you know, it produces carbon dioxide and bubbles in the bread and it rises and rises. So you let it prove and it rises. The thing is that if you Just do that. The bread will continue to rise and eventually it'll rise to such a point that the bubbles get too big in there and the whole lot just collapses back and you just end up with a big pile of dough again. And to stop that, you add in salt and salt is your failure. In here, you know, it's the bitter thing that you add into this sweet thing in the first place. But what salt does is it slows down the reaction between the yeast. And basically it means that instead of getting lots of great big bubbles where this whole thing collapses, you get smaller bubbles inside there and the whole thing can sustain itself. And it's exactly the same with your story. You can have too much success in there and it becomes unbelievable. And the whole thing just collapses. You know, people don't trust you. Whereas if you just add in a little bit of failure down at the bottom there, it evens things out, makes the bubbles the right size in there and helps the story to sustain itself. So definitely a case for both. I think.

That's a nice metaphor you used right there. All right. So we have to use both in order to succeed with the transformation part. But when we have this success and failure that we are describing, There is something missing in between, right? Like, where did they even start to get to the success or get to the failure? You have to have a transformation part in between that explains how you get there, right?

Yeah, so that's the final part of the brand script in here. The final part of this sort of resolution section is looking at the transformation to and from, and so what you want to put in these sections of the story, talking about where your character was, where your hero was at the very, very part of the journey that they went through. So their business was in this situation where they were spending lots of time doing these things, wasting money on this, etc. Um, And the transformation two says, okay, now that you've actually followed my advice, this is where your journey ends. So you've ended up with a more efficient system. In the time tracking example, you know, you've ended up now where times are tracked accurately and your staff are happy because they don't have to spend all day, every day filling in spreadsheets. In the case of your garden, you're in a situation where your garden was a mess. And neighbors avoided coming through, you know, the postman was tripping over weeds all the time to the transformation part. And the other side is the fact that your garden's now beautiful and winning awards in local flower shows, whatever it happens to be. So that's that sort of transformation. And that's actually, again, a key part in here. You know, it's sort of, it takes you from this sort of the success and failure idea and paints really a picture and a path towards the success. Thanks. And that's actually what every story is about. A key part of any storytelling is about transformation. Every story is about how a hero, how a character starts off at one point in their journey, and how they change through that journey, how they transform into something else, or how their way of looking at the world changes as they go through this journey. And so that's exactly what we're trying to do here in this part of the story is to explain how our hero will change, how their business will improve, how their personal life will improve, how people look at them improves, all of those sorts of things. And that's what we want to think about in this transformation part.

I see, yes, very well explained, Simon. So, to summarize We have to describe the success, we have to describe the failure, we have to also describe the transformation from the original problem. To success or to failure and this is everything that this section of the story is about.

Yeah, exactly. That's the sort of the main parts in there. So yeah, I mean, going back to your brand script, your task for today is in the next sort of 15 minutes or so. Take out your brand scripts and fill in the sort of the resolution of the results section of that script. So you'll find in there the section for success, you'll find the failure section, and then you'll find the two transformation parts in there that you can go through and fill in. If you haven't already done so, don't forget you can download that template by going to wantauthentic. com slash brand script. And there you can download something that you can fill in and I'll keep you up to date and send you a few pointers as to how you can fill this in as well. So if you want to go through later on and listen back to any of these, you'll have a reminder in your email of that too. And of course, also, if you want some help filling in your brand scripts, you can come and join my authentic engagement community. You know, there's a whole load of people, you know, small business owners, myself, Daniel, and we're here to listen to feedback and to give you a way of testing your ideas in a safe environment. So please come and join us. We'd love to see you there. So that's it, I think, for today's episode. In the next episodes, we're going to come up and wrap all this up. We've now gone through all of the individual steps. So in the next episode, we'll see how you pull all this together and how you can use that brand script. But thanks very much for listening to us today. And don't forget, you know, if this has been useful to you, then it's going to be useful to your other work colleagues or to other people out there that run their own small businesses. So please share the brand script and share the link to this website. Podcast with them and let's help each other. Thanks for joining us. And I look forward to speaking to you again on the next episode. Bye for now.