How a Strategic Narrative Turns Brand Failure into Redemption
The fall from grace has been an essential ingredient in stories since humans first started telling them. Whether it be the fall of man or Prometheus stealing fire from the gods, we have always associated the story of humanity with falling and failing. The most popular stories today continue to echo these rhythms. In sports, we love underdogs: beaten athletes or teams that pick themselves up and do what no one thought they could. In literature and entertainment, the most memorable heroes are often those who started as villains.
Most would probably agree that the climactic moment in the original Star Wars trilogy is when Darth Vader turns his back on the dark side and saves his son from the evil emperor. Through three movies we are following Luke’s journey, so it only makes sense that he should get the moment of glory. But it’s Vader, not Luke, who delivers the final, epic, emotional punch. We care about this moment with Vader so deeply because there is something about his fall and ultimate redemption that speaks directly to the human condition.
Every person will misstep at some point in their journey through life. It’s that conflict and those trials that make the victories so much sweeter. No one wants to read a story about someone who always did everything right and never felt any pain. Not only is it boring, but it just doesn’t feel real or human.
The same truth applies to companies and brands.
Unless you are extraordinarily lucky, your company is going to make a mistake—probably many—as it grows and develops. And yes, there is little doubt that at some point, your business will fall from the path it was meant to be on.
Identify What Made your narrative get off track
It’s very rare that a month goes by without news of some major company who failed epicly in some respect. Whether it be a toxic culture or a thoughtless commercial, these falls from grace have dominated the narrative in 2017.
Those are just the biggest and loudest examples of companies that lost track of who they are. They are lessons of what happens when the fall is at its most extreme. Chances are that your company isn’t dealing with anything so dramatic, but the root of these problems — a failure of culture and a brand, to audience disconnect, are widely applicable to any company that feels like it has gone off course.
There is nothing quite so deadly to companies as when culture gets off track. A culture failure can infect everything else from retention to work quality to public image. Today, culture is practically synonymous with brand. It’s just as much the reason why people want to buy from you as why they want to work for you.
As businesses grow, it’s easy for culture to get out of control. Uber is a particularly nasty example of what happens when the wrong sort of culture takes over. Without even noticing, your company can become something completely antithetical to what you were trying to build in the first place. Still, the purpose and values that every member of the team internalizes almost always come from the top.
Lead Through Example to Correct Your Story
If your company culture took a wrong turn somewhere, you change that by leading by example. Just as it’s important to show, rather than to tell, when you are sharing a story, culture change can’t happen by mandate and command. If your team is unenthusiastic and apathetic, be a nexus of enthusiasm. If the team has lost track of the values that you feel should define your culture, be an exemplar of the ideals you want to see reflected.
If the message comes across, your team will start doing the work of instilling purpose and buoying morale. Just listen and be aware of what they have to say. The same is true if the message isn’t sticking. Staying connected to your team is the best way to ensure that your culture doesn’t get off track.
It’s a lot of work to course correct on culture, but no good redemption story—the type of story that will inspire others—is supposed to be easy.
You may not have disastrously miscalculated what your audience wants to see, like Pepsi did, but chances are that you’ve struggled at some point to reach your audience effectively. So much time, money, and energy is spent on audience personas, focus groups, and piles of analytics; but all these guides on reaching your audience lose the thread of what’s actually important: the strategy motivating the tactics.
Restore Your Narrative By Focusing On the Customer Journey
Companies often start with the product and they look for the audience that it’s supposed to fit. They think of their product and their company as the hero delivering some good to the world when the truth is that the audience must be the hero of the story. Your prospects are at the center, and your product should be built purposefully to help them on their journey.
Start with audience and build from there. Don’t build a product and try to make it fit somewhere. When Kevin Systrom and Mike Krieger started out, they made an app called Burbn. It was essentially just a knock off of Foursquare. But by listening to their audience closely, what they found was that the part of the app their audience loved most was photo sharing. They built a whole new product dedicated to that feature and called it Instagram.
This story provides clear proof that you can do great things when you listen to your audience. Your prospects are the heroes and there is so much value in emphasizing first on who they are and what they want. Every company has something about it that sets it apart — something that it does really well. Chances are that ditching the extra features or products, and going all in on the one thing you do best will put you in the best possible position to succeed.
Rebuild Your Authentic Brand Loyalty
It’s also proof that redemption is always possible. You may be stuck in a rut—trying to stick to the mold and not quite succeeding — but you can always break out and do so much more. Nothing is final and no failure is so total that you can’t grow past it.
It’s okay if your company makes mistakes. That just means it’s human, and there is no doubt that we connect more to brands that feel human. It’s okay to get off course, and it’s okay to be honest about any failures along the way. Those are just the trials that make your company’s journey so much more meaningful. So long as you are dedicated to that eventual moment of redemption, every misstep will just make the story better.
Frequently Asked Questions
A strategic narrative is a precise, documented articulation of what a company believes, who it serves, and what it has committed to deliver. In moments of crisis, that document becomes the organization’s North Star. When Johnson and Johnson faced the Tylenol poisonings, the Credo made the decision clear: the company’s first responsibility was to consumers, and nothing, including profit, came before that. The recall happened almost immediately. The product was redesigned. New packaging standards were developed. Every decision aligned with the same story the company had been telling since 1943. Thirty years later, facing its role in the opioid epidemic, Johnson and Johnson made different choices. Without the Credo guiding its response, the company prioritized short-term financial outcomes over the customers it had promised to put first. The result was a fall from 9th to 57th place in a ranking of the 58 leading pharmaceutical companies and a doubling of terms like danger, harm, and unethical in public conversations tied to the brand. The difference between the two outcomes was not the severity of the crisis. It was whether the organization had a story precise enough to guide the right decision under pressure.
Learn how a strategic narrative keeps your organization aligned when the stakes are highest.
When a company’s actions contradict its brand story, audiences notice before the company does. Customers, employees, partners, and investors do not need to read the fine print to sense when a brand is being less than authentic. The gap between what a company says and what it does erodes trust faster than almost any other force in business. Johnson and Johnson’s Credo promises that its first responsibility is to consumers. When the company fought a $570 million court judgment related to its role in the opioid epidemic rather than moving to resolve its mistakes, that promise was broken in full public view. The company had spent decades building trust through products designed for the most vulnerable populations, infants, children, patients in recovery. That trust, once broken, proved extraordinarily difficult to rebuild. A brand story is not just a marketing asset. It is a commitment the organization makes to every person who chooses to trust it, and the standard against which every decision will eventually be measured by the people who believed in it.
Learn how Woden builds the foundational story that gives your organization something to live up to.
A successful brand partnership is built on a genuine alignment of values between two brands, not just an overlap in audience demographics or a shared interest in short-term revenue. The New York Times and Everlane partnership worked because both brands had independently built their identities around the same core belief: that transparency and truth-telling are non-negotiable. When Everlane customers put on a Climate Collection t-shirt, the partnership felt like a natural extension of something they already believed in rather than a commercial transaction designed to introduce them to a new logo. The USPS and Forever 21 collaboration failed for the opposite reason. The brands shared a customer in the broadest demographic sense but had no shared belief to anchor the partnership to. One was built on utilitarian stability. The other was built on disposable trend. There was no story both audiences could see themselves in, and without that story, the partnership produced publicity without producing loyalty.
