The Power of a Good Brand Story

Call it cavalier, but my first question to Fortune 500 CEOs and startup entrepreneurs alike is, “What's your story?”

What strikes me is not how different, or how similar, the answers are… but how hard it is for nearly everyone to answer that question in the first place. Before reading any further, and before casting any stones, pause for a moment and ask yourself the same question.

It's not so easy, is it?

Well into the age of the soundbite, we're still hard-pressed to summon the elusive 60-second description of what it is we do, what our brand provides to those we serve and why it matters.

And this, of course, is only the tip of the iceberg. Our fixation with the “elevator speech” (or martini monologue) derives from the need to “sum it all up” for audiences with notoriously short attention spans.

But before we can sum it all up, we need to have thought it all through. Like the concert pianist who makes Chopin seem easy, there's a whole lot of unseen effort that goes into the public performance.

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