Beyond Storytelling

Your company probably has some kind of a core message or promise for your customers. And if you’re like most, it’s probably based on the art of storytelling, which means it guides what you say and not necessarily what you do.

We push to develop something that goes beyond mere storytelling, what we call a platform idea. A platform idea works across multiple channels. It tells your employees how to behave and what to do, and it becomes symbolic, iconic and visceral.

General Electric, for example, developed a platform idea based on an internal insight. People who worked at GE used their imaginations to come up with solutions that would profoundly change everything from the quality of health care to the quality of the air. This behavior was and still is at the heart of everything associated with the GE brand, from low-noise jet engines to energy-saving wind turbines to med tech capable of detecting the onset of Alzheimer’s.

Based on this internal insight, GE’s communications strategists and outside agencies created a powerful platform idea for the brand: Imagination at Work. That idea guides not only what they say in their marketing communications, but how GE employees should behave at work every day.

A platform idea is more than just advertising copy or some kind of internal theme line. A powerful one, like Imagination at Work, can integrate what the company says in marketing, inspire what its workforce does and engage its customers across multiple channels.

And a brilliant one, like Nike’s Just Do It, can last for decades and insert a company’s brand squarely into popular culture.

« Steve Wehrenberg is CEO of Campbell Mithun, an instructor in the U of M’s strategic communications graduate program and co-author of The Successful Marketing Plan.