Your Brand Narrative Is a Waste of Money

Before working together, a client of mine had just thrown away a massive brand narrative initiative. Scrapped the whole thing. This wasn’t some plucky startup. It was a global organization, with thousands of employees. Tremendous amounts of time, money, and energy went into this new narrative, yet it was all tossed in the bin. Why?

They conflated artifact and belief.

Artifacts are what you produce.
Belief is your willingness to act on it

Most brands only focus on the former. And when they do, they waste millions.

I wanted to understand what had happened, so the client pulled their brand work out of the dust bin and let me have a look. On first glance it looked decent enough. They had built a thorough brand narrative that tied together their origin story, core beliefs, and brand ideals into a thoughtful articulation of who they where. All presented in a slick, well-designed document of about 100 pages. If it failed, it certainly wasn’t for lack of effort or workmanship.

Why isn’t this working for you? I asked.

This is why strategic narrative work should never be about the artifact itself. It should always be about changing the way an organization thinks: to build shared belief about who it is and who it wants to become.

The problem was that no one believed in the work. Because the narrative was created in a vacuum. It was built by a recently formed “global team,” charged with capturing the brand’s essence across the variety of countries and cultures where they worked. But this “global team” had little connection to the organization itself. It operated in a silo, with little accountability and even less ability to actually drive change across the organization.

They did their job. Mission accomplished.

But it was the wrong mission. This “global team” was simply asked to produce an artifact. Which they did. Once completed, the group was disbanded, leaving their work without an owner or any plan to implement it. The result was an orphaned artifact. It represented the views of a committee that no longer existed, and had no owner to shepherd it to execution.

This is why strategic narrative work should never be about the artifact itself.

It should always be about changing the way an organization thinks: to build shared belief about who it is and who it wants to become. Brands don’t live out a strong point of view because the artifacts they produced had that extra bit of polish. They do so because they put in the effort to decide who they really were. The artifact is simply a way to capture that.

Now, I’m working with the client on starting over.

But our focus isn’t on the document itself. It’s on the intangible belief-building work that really matters. That work doesn’t come from clever copywriting. It comes from hard conversations. Difficult questions. Forcing choices. Challenging thinking.

Every business reaches points where it needs to realign on its aim.

When that time comes for you, remember: the artifact is simply a way to capture the identity, beliefs, and points of view that you’ve already solidified internally. Rushing straight to the artifact is certainly easier in the moment. But you’ll only end up with wasted time, less cash, and a fancy document that no one ever reads.

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As the founder of Flag & Frontier, John Rougeux partners with executive teams to align on their strategic narrative, build belief in the market, and win the next chapter of their business. You can chat with John here or connect with him on LinkedIn.