When story met strategy
When we set out to create Story + Strategy, we focused on building a consultancy that was made for the brand storytelling era. So what does that really mean?
Well…for years Shawn and I (Shawn’s my co-founder) worked on the brand side. Not just for any brands but for big portfolio brands. We were the ones on the side of the table taking meetings every day…everything from media publishers and influencers to agencies and studios…we heard every pitch, learned about every new platform, and got a front row seat to it all. It was an amazing experience, and we built some great friendships in the industry as those meetings often grew into projects. The big takeaway was that we learned firsthand what makes a brand say “yes”. What are the levers to pull? What does success really look like? And how does a team bring value to the table?
As more and more brands embraced storytelling, what we saw was a new industry emerging. Yet, storytelling quickly became an overused term attached to everything and lots of folks were gravitating towards it. As things progressed, brands invested in content marketing, editorial and entertainment and storytelling became less about replacing advertising and more about having another tool to breakthrough in the market and emotionally and effectively drive high-level brand goals. Brand storytelling was maturing and slowly finding its place and purpose in the brand marketing stratosphere. Leaders and teams that were early adopters and who excelled in the space had a rare blend of production expertise, brand marketing chops, distribution knowledge and a fundamental understanding of the entertainment world. Shawn and I stretched across all of these areas daily.
As interest in brand storytelling grew, we began to see a trend both within our own portfolios and outside with other brands -- a fundamental lack of brand objectives anchoring the storytelling. It’s this white space that inspired us to launch Story + Strategy.
The collective experience we bring to our partners each day was founded on the principles we forged while leading brand marketing organizations. We see tremendous value in bringing deep marketing expertise to the table early in the process to not only ground storytelling in brand objectives, but also craft a robust distribution plan and define success. With a roadmap to help guide the creative, we can then align with the top storytellers and entertainment experts in the industry who know how to work with brands.
It sounds easy and simple...but all too often these initial critical steps and pre-work are either overlooked or not well defined. This hurts the industry altogether as brands are turned off to the genre and miss out on a huge opportunity to emotionally connect with their target. So our focus at Story + Strategy is to help our partners navigate this world in a way that delivers meaningful value to their brand, company or studio. We build long lasting relationships based on honesty, real problem solving and a little bit...okay a lot...of fun mixed in.
