Brand Core · Brand Narrative · Module
The tellers
Who actually carries the narrative — employees, customers, partners, media — and whether they have been given a version they can use.
The idea
How it works
Employees do more narrative work than any campaign, in conversations nobody counts. They can only tell the version they were actually given, which makes internal communication the primary brand channel rather than a supporting one.
Customers and partners retell a shorter version still, and it is the one that carries most weight because it did not come from you. What they can retell is determined by what they were given, not by what was published.
Working with it
In practice
- 01
Give employees the short version first
Not the deck. The two sentences they would use if asked what the company does.
- 02
Check what they actually say
Ask ten people to describe the organisation. The variance is the finding.
- 03
Make it easy to repeat
A story requiring context, caveats or a diagram will be replaced by something simpler that you did not write.
- 04
Equip partners and media deliberately
They will describe you either way. What they have to work with is your decision.
One level in
The components of the tellers
A component is something that exists afterwards which did not exist before — a deliverable or a mechanism, not an intention.
Ask ten people inside to describe the organisation. The variance between their answers is the narrative’s real state.
The other modules in brand narrative
The story
The narrative itself: where it starts, what the difficulty was, and what it is actually about — short enough to be retold and honest enough to be believed.
LearnMessage architecture
What is said beneath the story: the one thing that must land, the supporting messages, and what changes by audience without contradicting anything.
LearnEvolution
How the narrative changes as the organisation does, without breaking continuity — which parts are fixed, which may move, and what a change costs in recognition.
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