Oh, the stories brands tell!

Yesterday. I’m on Twitter. A Tweet leads me to a blog post written by Hugh MacLeod. On the blog – some great quotes about entrepreneurship. One in particular, strikes a chord: “People buy your product because it helps fill in the narrative gaps in their lives.”

I tweet that line. Someone doesn’t get what it means. I answer flippantly. But what I should have said was: “I can’t explain it in 140 characters.” Let me tell you a story.

Here it is. It’s actually five, short short stories of how brands have “filled in the narrative gaps” of my own life.

Hope this helps.

July, 2002 I am on a train, Zurich to Berlin. A giddy, giggling couple sits across from me. They are trying to conjugate the word “Google”, in French. “Je google, tu google, vous googlez.” The couple laughs. They kiss. I am fascinated. What other brand name do people say *while they are kissing*? I can’t think of one.

Google had been around for a while back then, but I hadn’t heard “Google” used as a verb before that moment. I get back to the US, excitedly exclaim to people: “Google has made it!” They stare at me quizzically.

Flash forward to 2010. Google’s Superbowl commercial. A perfect example of a brand demonstrating how they “fill in the narrative gaps in your life.” It is my story, told in different words.

September 2009 Uh-oh. The convertible I had owned for ten years, 200,000 miles, drops dead in the middle of the highway. With the immediate prospect of two children in college looming; two tuition payments and a down economy, I swallow my pride and buy a used Honda Civic on CraigsList. My kids taunt me because it doesn’t even have power windows. I retort back that I am doing my “Civic duty”, saving on gas, saving money so they can go to the college of their choice. That’s my story, and I’m sticking to it. My kids stop laughing. I grow to love my new old car.

March 2009 But what about pasta?” my fellow Twitterer asks. “Can pasta really fill in narrative gaps or just fill you?” I think about pasta. I think when my kids were young, telling them stories about – yes — pasta. “Strega Nona”, about a pot of spaghetti that bubbles over, consumes a town. I think of my Italian Grandmother, serving her wonderful manicotti to my then fiancé. He eats plate after plate, not knowing it’s only the appetizer. Turns green when she brings out the pot roast. We tell that story forever, even after we’re divorced. I think of how my kids, when stressed and having a horrible day, will instinctively ask me to make Macaroni and Cheese. “Whole wheat macaroni, please, mom”. I think about how they want to know HOW MUCH. HOW MUCH better is wheat than white pasta? HOW MUCH better would the environment be if the packaging didn’t have all that air in it. HOW MUCH would giving back a nickel per box help the world? “Tell me a story, mommy.” But this time, here is what matters.

November 2001 The iPod has been out a year, I finally break down and buy one. It immediately and irrevocably changes my life. Songs – in any order I want – play for me – while I am doing housework. While I am at the gym. This is amazing. Chores that I used to feel, at best, ambivalent about, I now am excited over. It’s like I have won the lottery. Apple doesn’t talk about how their products will change your life, they just deliver one that does so. I am the one that tells the story. And when I talk about the iPod to my friends, I don’t say “hey, I just purchased a cool new product.” I say, “The iPod changed my life.”

March, 1999 and February 2010 It’s a blustery day in March, and I’m in a drafty warehouse. A woman named Stacy Andrus is showing me her pita-chip making machine. Stacy used to own a sandwich cart in Downtown Boston. The lines at her cart grew long and people would get cranky waiting for their sandwiches. So she would roast some leftover pita bread, season it, and give free samples to people standing in line. And those people, now happy happy, would say “HEY. These pita chips are good. You should sell these.” So she did.

But at that moment in the warehouse, it’s noisy and chilly. Stacy invested everything she had into this new machine. And she had underestimated the problems with the bagging process. The seal has to be perfect. It has to be perfect. She’s going on her third year of only making $20,000 in salary with 100 hour workweeks. And she’s worried. Over the din, she shouts the words “It’s harder than people think, you know.” She wants help from me re-designing her bag, but she knows she can’t pay me. Heck, *I* know she can’t pay me. She offers to share with me business plan advice if I will give her packaging advice.

Stacy and I walk to her office, put the current bag on the table, stare at it. The words “Pita Chips” are in large letters. I tell her to reverse the hierarchy, make Stacy’s the biggest thing on the bag. Brand *Stacy* not the generic word “Pita Chips”. And I tell her to put the story, the story of how she started the company, on the bag. I will write that story for her, email it to her the next day. It’s the least I can do. Then I shrug my shoulders, walk out the door. I never see Stacy again.

In December of 2005, Stacy sells her company, Stacy’s Pita Chips, to Pepsico. Sales at the time are $60 million dollars.

Cut to two weeks ago. I’m sitting in my car – er, my Civic — with my daughter Allie. She’s eating from a bag of Stacy’s chips – cinnamon sugar. Suddenly she looks at the bag, shouts, “Hey, Mom, do you know the story of how Stacy’s was founded?” She pauses expectantly, a chip in one hand, the bag in the other. She’s 18 years old. She looks like the bite and smile portion of a television commercial.

“Why, yes, honey.” I reply. “As a matter of fact, I do.”

What do you think?  Can you think of a single brand that is important to you that you can’t tell a story about?

by hugh macleod

by hugh macleod