Bernadette Jiwa - The Fortune Cookie Principle: The 20 keys to a great brand story and why your business needs one.

For Moyez, Adam, Kieran and Matthew,
who are the best part of my story.

Contents

New Marketing: A recap

The change in the way businesses must now work is not exactly news anymore. Author Seth Godin has been discussing the changing business landscape, New Marketing, and the importance of stories since 2002 (see Purple Cow, Free Prize Inside, and All Marketers Tell Stories). Just in case youve been out of the loop, though, heres what you need to know:

Attention is harder to get and keep now. We live in the opt-in age, a time when people can scroll on by, ignore advertisements, change channels, and avoid your marketing if they want to. In theory, people are easier to reach, but in fact, they are harder to engage. And while there are new ways of connecting with everyone and anyone onlinethrough email, blogs, Facebook, Twitter, and so onthese tools can bring their own distractions.

Advertising is not marketing. A double-page spread in the weekend newspaper is not marketing. A promoted tweet is not marketing. A billboard at the train station is not marketing.

Marketing is not something thats tacked on at the end. Its no longer good enough to say, Weve invented this new kind of software; now lets hire a really expensive creative team to tell a story about it.

Real marketing is built into what you do and why you do it. Its part of your story, something that you do organically when your business is aligned with your mission and values. Kept promises, free returns, obsession with the details, returned emails, clean tables, and attentive staffall of this is your real marketing. Real marketing creates a deeper impact, leaves a lasting impression, and is as powerful as a smile.

Having the markets attention is not enough to guarantee success. According to Brian Solis, just seventy-one companies from the original Fortune 500 compiled in 1955 remain on the list today. And generations of families capturing Kodak moments on film couldnt save Kodak from its downward spiral. The company filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy in 2012. That same year, the four-person team who built the photo-sharing app Instagram, and gave their product away to millions of people for free, was acquired by Facebook for a record-breaking billion dollars.

Everything we knew about brand equity, it seemed, had finally turned on its head.

Introduction

In 1997, a young CEO was launching a new product, and heres what he said to his team:

Marketing is about values. Our customers want to know what it is that we stand for. And what were about isnt making boxes for people to get their jobs done, although we do that well. [Were] about something more than that. we believe that people with passion can change the world for the better.

Then he played the Think Different advertising campaign video, which began with the words, Heres to the crazy ones.

The ad, of course, was for the Apple computer, and the crazy ones were people who dared to think that they could change the world. Steve Jobs went on to lead the company as it developed the iMac, the iPod, the iPhone, and the iPad and, along the way, made Apple the most valuable company in history. Apple changed how we buy and listen to music and the way we work and shop. How we consume media and the way we live and communicate. Apple even changed how we wait for the train in the morning, white ear buds in, fingers poised over screens.

Steve Jobs didnt give us a 32MB music player. He gave us 1,000 songs in our pocket. He didnt give us video calls. He gave us FaceTime with Grandpa. Apple forever changed how we feel about technology by becoming part of our story. That, in turn, changed how we think and what we do. Not many people accept boredom as an option these days. They are connecting to friends on Twitter while shop assistants check out their groceries. I saw a girl at the gym yesterday check Facebook between tracks in a Body Pump class.

The way in which Apple communicates its brand story at every levelwith a big purpose, good leadership, great design, and a user experience that people loveis what makes their products magical. The whole story, including that of the Mac user who sees himself as a non-conformist creative, or the teenager who wants to be connected to her social graph 24/7, combined with cutting-edge technology and Apples design genius, is what makes people not just buy, but buy into, the Apple brand. Yes, Apple changed our relationship with technology. But more importantly, the company changed how we feel about ourselves in the presence of their products.

This isnt another business book about Apple, though. Its about shining a light on some of the things that companies like Apple do to tell a great brand story. And its about setting you on the path to telling your brand story and doing it well.

HOW WILL YOU MAKE ME CARE?

Even a four-year-old entrepreneur with her first lemonade stand knows that it doesnt matter how good your idea is if nobody knows about it. Its not enough just to set out your stall. And yet in business thats exactly what we do. We take our idea, our product, our innovation and expect people to pay attention to it. We try to change what people think (using the facts), so that we can change what they do (buy our products and services). Today, people have more choices than they need and they can simply ignore the things they dont care about. Changing how people think and getting them to act isnt so easy anymore.

How did Apple succeed where so many other technology companies have failed? I think what Steve Jobs hit on back in 1997 was the secret to spreading ideas. I call it The Fortune Cookie Principle. Every idea, every innovation, every product and service has two elements: the cookie and the fortune.