Brand Narrative Story Arc Components and Elements
At Highspot, a B2B SaaS company, I helped the comms team draft a brand narrative. To inform a template for the narrative’s outline, I created a resource that outlines the story arc components and key elements that brand narratives should include.
As the brand narrative draft progressed, I edited the narrative that Highspot’s Comms Director developed in collaboration with the VP of Corporate Marketing and the CMO.
Narrative Story Arc Components
Describe the status quo
This is the backstory. The status quo is what the original situation was before a conflict erupted (or was identified). The status quo sets the stage for the change a brand goes on to create. Insight into the original context can help underscore why positive change was needed and how much change has been accomplished since the brand set out. To an audience, the status quo should be undeniably happening and happening independently of a company’s existence. The status quo should seamlessly segway into introducing the problem that a company seeks to solve. This is also a chance to give insight into the founder. What was the founder doing before they got the idea that sparked their business? This is a chance to describe the founder in a way that’s vulnerable and honest.
Example (founder backstory): Zoom founder Eric Yuan started out at Webex, a web conferencing startup, as one of their first 20 hires. In 2011, a few years after Cisco acquired Webex and Yuan was in a VP of engineering role, Yuan pitched a concept for a new smartphone-friendly video conferencing system but Cisco rejected the idea. Frustrated by Cisco’s attachment to the status quo of web conferencing, Yuan then left Cisco to launch Zoom.
Example (general backstory): Drift, a B2B SaaS company, had a lot of content marketing assets. Their content aimed to help and educate their customers. The content was also mostly gated and required customers to complete a contact information lead form to access it.
Highspot relevant material: Highspot’s Head of Product said that what led to creating Highspot was the challenge that customer-facing teams faced when they tried to find the right content they needed. He says, “My experience with organizing and finding content was universally bad. Every attempt you’d make to find something was met with a ridiculous list of results that never matched what you were looking for and I had just accepted that as the status quo.”
Highlight the conflict within the status quo
The brand narrative should include a relatable emotional journey. At the heart of that journey is adversity. A protagonist’s struggle to overcome that adversity is what makes the story relatable and inspirational to audiences. A good conflict makes people care about solving it. Brands should highlight the problem they’re seeking to solve and describe the challenge it takes to do it. Ideally, the conflict should be positioned as “good vs. evil:” there should be a “villain” that a brand’s products and services fight against. The enemy shouldn’t be another competitor but should be related to the old world that your competitors represent (the status quo). Having a villain that your customers understand shows your customers that you understand their pain and you want to help them and you’re here to save the day.
Example: Drift realized that the lead forms that walled off their gated content was causing its customers pain. Customers didn’t want to give away their contact info in exchange for what Drift promised was a free resource. Customers didn’t want to be emailed until they had to unsubscribe or buy. And customers felt irritated that they had to waste time and energy completing a form when they really wanted to immediately see the content. Lead forms were the enemy. Drift even borrowed from Salesforce’s “no software” playbook with its “no forms” mantra (software and forms were the villain).
Highspot relevant material: Oliver Sharp, Highspot’s Co-founder, has described if you’re a seller and you’re trying to find a specific case study to close a $50M deal, it’s a terrible experience, meanwhile, after work when your kid asks you to find a certain puppy video on YouTube, it’s a terrific experience. Sellers ended up emailing and messaging their colleagues to see if they had the case study, but when they wanted to look something up that was non-work related, they could just go to Google.
Highspot’s CEO Robert Wahbe has talked about how when he was at Microsoft, he was a CMO and had to enable the sales team. He produced a lot of material to help the sales team do their jobs really well, but when he would travel around the world to talk to prospects and customers about some of Microsoft’s programs, it was clear that the audience hadn’t heard of them or wasn’t using them. It was eye opening how marketing and sales struggled to work together to elevate customer conservations and for marketing to successfully enable sales.
Oliver Sharp, Highspot’s Co-founder, has described how sellers can deal with up to hundreds of thousands of pieces of content about their company’s products. A seller's life is a “constant, desperate scramble” to get ready for the next meeting. They’re not operating in a leisurely research-y phase; instead, they have to find what they need in a second to prepare for the next customer conversation. But since the tools they have to find content are terrible, they end up using the wrong piece of content or make something up hastily. So the notion of finding what you need to have the right conversation with your customer is a really hard problem and at most companies it’s a disaster. What ends up happening is sellers create a personal collection/ toolkit of content on their desktop that never gets updated and if they get asked about a product/feature that isn’t covered in their content collection, they’re in trouble.
Offer your solution
The solution to the problem isn’t simply the product itself but the future that’s possible because of a product. The solution should also provide the audience with an emotional benefit. The result should feel satisfying and inspiring. When the audience knows how your brand solves a conflict and forever disrupts a status quo, they should believe in your mission and want to advocate for your continued transformational impact. The solution should also invite people to join the company in the revolution that the brand is leading.
Example: Drift got rid of all their forms. And they built a product so other companies could too. Drift’s chatbot replaces forms so companies can practice what they preach: putting customers first and creating a delightful buying experience that’s based on a conversation, not a form.
Highspot relevant material: Oliver Sharp, Highspot’s Co-founder, says that Highspot “makes thousands of pieces of content instantly available right when you need them so you can get the right message to the customer.”
Robert Wahbe, Highspot’s CEO, says says that “companies use Highspot to increase the performance of their customer-facing teams. We help companies drive consistent execution and performance across sales reps and managers.”
The brochure Highspot Product Overview outlines Highspot’s product pillars: manage content, guide sellers, onboard and train, coach reps, and engage customers.
Describe the benefits
This is where you clearly state the compelling benefits of using your product. It’s an opportunity to describe how your solution makes your customers’ lives better without getting deep in the feature weeds.
Example: REI describes its main membership benefit as “one membership, a lifetime of boundless discovery.” REI positions its membership as “the best way to experience REI.” And it highlights the crucial detail of “your membership never expires—pay just once, enjoy forever.”
Highspot relevant material: Highspot’s strategic enablement framework outlines how Highspot equips teams with playbooks and resources, trains teams before the game, coaches during the game, and analyzes throughout the process. Highspot’s skills coaching and knowledge coaching enables managers to help reps apply training in the real world; Highspot’s training and practice features enables customer-facing teams to learn, practice, and demonstrate knowledge and skills; Highspot enables customer-facing teams to publish content and playbooks so teams know what to know, say, show, and do for every customer conversation; and Highspot leverages end-to-end analytics and AI so customer-facing teams have insight into what is working and what needs to be optimized. A more detailed explanation of the strategic enablement framework is in the Introduction to the Strategic Enablement Framework.
In the brochure Highspot Product Overview, it shares these stats related to product benefits: 5x increase in buyer engagement, 19% improvement in ramp time for rep onboarding, and 19% increase in number of sellers attaining quota.
Highspot customer quote: “In less than a year since implementing Highspot we have saved over half a million dollars giving us a 400% ROI. Highspot put Sales Enablement on the map at CCL and now it’s a common favored topic at executive leadership meetings, and we are involved in strategic initiatives. My advice is don’t hesitate to partner with Highspot.” - Center for Creative Leadership
Reveal the transformation
Good stories show character progression. The brand narrative should illustrate how the company has transformed throughout the journey of challenging the status quo and inventing and building the solution. A clear description of the brand’s transformation makes the company more trustworthy and relatable. It can also indicate that the company is well positioned to help other companies with their own transformations. You should reveal transformation by comparing life before and after your company’s product. Spell out how people’s lives have changed before and after using your product. In the “before state,” people are discontent (you can choose a specific emotion like frustration) and in the “after state,” life is better.
Example: Sara Blakely founded Spanx while she was selling fax machines door to door. She had failed the LSAT and knew she had to figure out another path to get out of fax machines sales. She launched Spanx in her bedroom with $5,000 of savings and worked nonstop as a one-woman show to grow the business (she even wrote her own patent). To keep 100% equity in her company, she decided not to take outside founding. When she had an opportunity to do a 10 minute pitch for Neiman Marcus, she dragged the buyer into the women’s bathroom to show her how Spanx worked. After landing the deal, she would man the store to demonstrate the product to women and get them excited about it. She also scoured her rolodex to find friends, family, and acquaintances to go to each participating store and buy Spanx in order to create a “buzz” around her product. Eventually, she landed on Oprah. Blackstone bought Spanx in 2021 for $1.2 billion. Her and Spanx’s transformation story reflects relatable lessons in failure and grit.
Example: Slack started out as Tiny Speck, a video game company. As they built games, they also created a messaging platform to use for internal communication. When Tiny Speck started to fail, Steward Butterfield realized that their messaging platform had potential. It was way more effective than anything else on the market and had the potential to be better than email. So Butterfield doubled down on the platform and turned Tiny Speck into Slack.
Example: Steve Jobs has said, “In 1984 we introduced the Macintosh. It didn’t just change Apple. It changed the whole computer industry. In 2001, we introduced the first iPod. And it didn’t just change the way we all listen to music, it changed the entire music industry.”
Highspot relevant material: [Need to complete SME interviews for this]
Look towards the future
The narrative should state where you’ve been, where you are, and where you are going. The last part is especially important. As a company, where are you headed? What new problems have you uncovered since overcoming the first major conflict? How do you envision the future? How will you continue creating and providing value? This is where you can show that your brand is future-thinking and will stay relevant throughout constant external change.
Example: SpaceX does this with a quote from Elon Musk on their site, “You want to wake up in the morning and think the future is going to be great - and that’s what being a spacefaring civilization is all about. It’s about believing in the future and thinking that the future will be better than the past. And I can’t think of anything more exciting than going out there and being among the stars.”
Highspot relevant material: Robert Wahbe has outlined Highspot's vision for the future of enablement across all customer facing roles. “We need to take the technology that’s focused on empowering marketing and sales and take that to all of the customer-facing functions…because all of those functions have a role in making sure that company delivers ultimate customer value. ”
Elements to Diffuse Throughout the Narrative
Incorporate your core customer
Throughout the narrative, include a focus on the core customer. A brand’s focus on a target customer can prove the brand’s empathy and understanding of the customer’s problems, pain points, needs, and aspirations. The brand should show that they have a shared sense of purpose with their target customer. It can also make the customer feel like the company is on their side and even represents their identity.
Example: Etsy keeps its focus on its sellers and buyers at the heart of its message. From its About page: “Our global marketplace is a vibrant community of real people connecting over special goods. The platform empowers sellers to do what they love and helps buyers find what they love.”
Highspot relevant material: Oliver Sharp, Highspot’s Co-founder, incorporates a large focus on Highspot’s core customer: “We’re dedicated to making people more successful, not replacing them. We exist to support sales people. We believe that great selling is the sharing of enthusiasm–human connection is magically powerful and in our business we don’t just help sales people but serve the team that teaches and supports them. So basically we help one group of people (enablement) help another group of people (sales) talk to a third group of people (customers) and to top it off, we have a sales-intensive selling motion ourselves and then we follow it up with a very people-intensive post-sale experience…The purpose of our business, the essence of our business, the job we perform for our customers is absolutely saturated in people…Sure, our focus is on helping sellers drive revenue but succeeding at that mission is fundamentally about helping people flourish. When you make somebody’s work better, you make their lives better and that ripples outward to everyone who depends on them and cares about them. It can transform the arc of their career and their life…That’s why it matters to me that I'm part of a business that helps other people and companies achieve their dreams.”
Give your customer a role
Beyond conveying that your company understands its customers and is customer-centric, the company should give its customers a role to play in achieving the company’s vision. When customers have a role to play, they feel like their actions matter and like they can be change agents. They have a stake in the company’s mission.
Example: Nike has a mission “to bring inspiration and innovation to every athlete in the world.” A huge part of Nike’s brand is that it encourages people to inspire each other. Nike’s “Just Do It” slogan is meant to inspire customers. But the slogan also defines the brand’s role and the customer’s role. Nike is saying that it’ll bring the shoes/equipment, but you have to bring your commitment to showing up. This way, the brand offers a partnership between its customers and its product to achieve the shared purpose.
Highspot relevant material: Highspot is all about helping companies to improve the performance of their customer-facing teams. We could give our customers the role of “set big goals” so we can help them get there (e.g, we’ve helped sales teams achieve a 19% increase in quota achievement, we’ve led to a 24% decrease in sellers ramp time, a 14% increase in pipeline generation, and a 5x increase in buyer engagement).
Integrate emotional impact
People feel emotional attachment to companies with beloved brands. Intellectually, people might understand how a company solves a problem, but if a brand lacks personality, it’s easy for people to forget the company’s existence. Companies should embrace a distinctive way that their brand aims to make people feel. This desired emotional impact should inform the brand’s mood, personality, culture, and behavior.
Example: Headspace’s brand exudes comfort and peace. On their About page they describe themselves like this: “Think of Headspace as your mind’s best friend. We’re here for you whenever you need us, wherever you are, helping you get through tough times and find joy in every day.” Those words evoke comfort and peace when you read them.
Highspot relevant material: Oliver Sharp, Highspot’s Co-founder, says, “The purpose of our business, the essence of our business, the job we perform for our customers is absolutely saturated in people…Sure, our focus is on helping sellers drive revenue but succeeding at that mission is fundamentally about helping people flourish…That’s why it matters to me that I'm part of a business that helps other people and companies achieve their dreams.” Based on that, Highspot’s brand could be oriented around the emotion of helping people flourish, empowering people, and helping companies achieve their dreams.”
Convey your brand promise
A brand promise describes the unique value a company delivers to its customers every time they interact with the company. It’s meant to develop trust and credibility with external customers. At the same time, it should also be an enduring idea that serves as a north star for the business. Brand promises should be simple, memorable, and inspiring.
Examples:
The judgment free zone (Planet Fitness)
15 minutes or less can save you 15% or more on car insurance (Geico)
Creating happiness through magical experiences (Disney)
Designed for the creative pursuit of being you (Vans)
Noise cancellation (Bose)
Highspot relevant material: Highspot’s CEO says, “companies use Highspot to increase the performance of their customer-facing teams. We help companies drive consistent execution and performance across sales reps and managers.” From that, Highspot’s brand promise could be, “Increase the performance of your customer-facing teams”
Oliver Sharp, Highspot’s Co-founder, says, “The purpose of our business, the essence of our business, the job we perform for our customers is absolutely saturated in people…Sure, our focus is on helping sellers drive revenue but succeeding at that mission is fundamentally about helping people flourish…That’s why it matters to me that I'm part of a business that helps other people and companies achieve their dreams.” From that, Highspot’s brand promise could be, “Enabling customer-facing teams to flourish.” OR “Empowering customer-facing teams to drive revenue for their companies.” OR “Empowering customer-facing teams to help their companies achieve big dreams.”