“We Don’t Have a Story” Is the Wrong Answer to the Right Question
Every human has a story. Unless your product was imagined by robots, created by robots, purchased by robots, and used by robots — and the robots were also made by robots — your business has a story, too.
The story was always there. Finding it is where the real work begins.
The problem is usually not the absence of story. The problem is that companies are too close to their own work to see what makes it vivid, resonant — even aspirational. They live inside the details. They know what they do, and are used to describing it in practical, accurate terms. That accuracy should be enough — but it never quite is.
Humans are also, by nature, a little funny about this. Most of us hate talking about ourselves. Maybe it’s humility, or maybe it’s that we really do not see the fascination in our own lives and the things we make and do, because those things feel normal to us.
But we love hearing the stories of the people around us. We’ve been driven to create narratives since — well, that first cave painting was probably illustrating a story that Ugg was telling Grogg about Snook. We love all kinds of human stories: origins, turning points, standards, obsessions, hard choices, near misses, weird convictions, everything that people care enough about to build a business around.
And nothing makes us care about a product, service, or company more quickly than understanding the human story that comes with it. Avis found resonant power in admitting to being a striving number two. Maersk turned container ships into social media sensations, drenched in the majesty of worldwide trade. Buc-ee’s built fierce loyalty around the most dreaded part of a road trip: the gas station bathroom.
None of those examples became compelling because their business categories started out with glamorous narratives attached. But story has never belonged solely to the glamorous, dramatic — or consumer-facing and marketing savvy. Story lives anywhere humans have built something with care, conviction, and consequence.
Story lives in B2B. In manufacturing. In professional services. In businesses that have spent decades doing excellent work while describing themselves in ways so flat and functional that the outside world never quite grasps why they matter.
A manufacturer may think it “just” makes a product. A service firm may think it “just” solves a problem. An industrial company may think it “just” keeps things moving. But underneath that functional description is always something more human: a frustration someone was determined to solve, a standard someone refused to lower, a need clients were desperate to have met, a risk that had to be reduced, a process that had to be made better, safer, faster, smarter, more elegant, or more trustworthy.
That’s story. And when you find that story and bring it to the surface in a way other people can understand, remember, and care about — that is what we here at Kwedar & Co. call The Thread™.
The Thread is our methodology for digging down to find the narrative truth running through a business and pulling it taut across communications and marketing channels so that other people can find it too. It is how we help companies move beyond the flat, functional description of what they do to find the story that makes them vivid, meaningful, and unmistakably themselves.
If a car rental company, a shipping giant, and a gas station rest stop can find story value in what makes them work harder, serve more widely, and provide unlooked for fantasies of cleanliness and comfort, chances are your business has more to offer than you think. The right question — what’s our story — deserves the right answer. Yours is waiting.
This is the first in a series exploring how manufacturers and B2B companies find, articulate, and activate the story that makes them unmistakably themselves.
About The Author
As Director of Story, Elizabeth crafts stories that get results for clients. After earning a degree in History from Harvard, Elizabeth honed her craft through her study of screenwriting, years of experience collaborating with other writers on various projects in Hollywood, and her job as a story analyst at a leading agency. With a penchant for research and uncovering the most compelling story angle, Elizabeth imbues each of her long-form pieces of content with the urgency, import, and strategy needed to not only achieve client goals, but grab and hold audiences’ attention.