Why brands must offer hope in their stories
Brands must offer status and connection to be effective in their storytelling, writes Will Storr. But in an age of uncertainty, don't we also need hope?
You're a brand. What’s the best way to engage your audience?
Simple, writes Will Storr in A Story is a Deal. Offer them status and connection to shape their identity, their life story, their 'story-world', and in exchange, they'll give you their custom.
Or is it that simple?
With status and connection about the present, what about the future? We, as humans, are wired for meaning and survival – both of which are rooted in the future, not the present.
I do believe that in today's volatile times, to truly engage your audience, narrative also needs to be about possibility – hope.
Luxury brands: the masters of storytelling
Buy Barénia, the latest perfume from Hermès, and it transforms you into a femme Hermès, a "woman who stops at nothing ... driven by curiosity and passion".
Each spritz from the bottle – designed after the brand's iconic Collier de Chien bracelet –reinforces your place in the elegant world of Hermès. At £104 for 60ml, it's a snip compared with a Hermès bag for a five-figure sum.
"Connection and status are the hero's rewards. They're essential to life that feels successful and meaningful, and for the sustenance of our mental and even physical health"– Will Storr
But what about hope?
Once the perfume fades, and you step back into daily life, unless you're in a well-protected bubble, that gnawing anxiety and even a sense of fear start to creep back in with every rolling news headline, ping of your phone and bill in your inbox.
Put anxiety (an 'objectless fear') together with fear (a 'generalised fear', as defined by philosopher Bhung-Chul Han) and this leads perspectives to narrow, hope to weaken – and decision-making to freeze, including whether to engage with your brand.
Finding 'people-like-us' to create a shared narrative
This rise in a climate of fear comes at a time when our world has shifted from stories as tales to stories as a way of 'inhabiting' our own personal narrative – a move from storytelling to 'storybeing', as Storr calls it.
To build our story, we search for 'people-like-us', writes Storr. We identify them by their 'cloud of shared information', by the thousands of signals that we all emit, consciously and unconsciously – facial expressions, how we move, what we wear, how we talk, whether we make a noise when we eat, or not ... the list is endless.
Then, as we start to hang out with these 'people-like-us', our minds synchronise, to shape what becomes a 'shared reality', writes Storr.
"Everything we choose – everything we wear, eat or use; every belief we verbalise; every behaviour we endorse; every politician we support – adds to the story of who we are" – Will Storr
How I'm creating a Parisian identity in my story-world
I, too, am shaping my personal narrative. For example, I aspire to be Parisian, to be between "rocker and ho-hum bourgeois", as Inès de La Fressange, muse, supermodel and designer, describes Parisian style.
So, I add deliberate Parisian touches. I:
· Do yoga in an Arts-and-Crafts studio in Montmartre
· Cook with spices from a French Michelin-starred chef
· Brush my hair with ‘La Bonne Brosse’
And I'll swipe my credit card – within reason – for any brand that will help me build this identity, even if my idea of being 'Parisian' lives more in magazines than on the streets of Paris.
A lesson for founders: storytelling is about the audience
A common pitfall among founders is to project their own story-world onto their business, and to assume that their audience is a 'person-like-them'. Yet effective storytelling isn't about you – it's about them, the audience.
We need to be aware of how our personal identity differs from that of the businesses we run, or work for. Too often, we intertwine the two.
I once had a client who had fled the frenzied world of fashion to set up an eco-friendly building practice in the West Country, England.
The pages of his new website were plastered with seascapes:
"Why?" I asked him.
"I took them," he replied.
A pause. His voice lifted: "I like the sea."
But would seascapes convince clients to invest the five-figure sums needed to make their homes energy efficient? Unlikely.
Instead, these images reflected his own personal longing for calm and balance – but not necessarily the motivations of his future clients.
3 questions to ask yourself
Back to the book. A Story is a Deal isn't just about business storytelling, or storybeing. It serves also as a mirror for self-awareness.
After devouring the book over a rainy weekend, I came away with three basic questions in mind:
Do I want to become like the people that I spend time with?
A brilliant way to whittle down your contacts to keep only those who matter most.
What signals am I sending out in my 'cloud of shared information'?
Yes, I do want to put on my (Parisian) lipstick each time I pop to the shops.
What 'game' am I offering my clients – status or connection?
Likely a mix of both. But what about hope?
The need for a forward-looking vision – hope
What unsettles me is that the term 'people-like-us' implies that others are 'not-like-us'. Take that to an extreme, and you open the door to exclusion – even 'denationalisation', as German-born historian and philosopher Hannah Arendt once warned.
At the dawn of storytelling, when Earth's human population was the size of present-day Lisbon, our challenges were more immediate:
· Where to find water
· Which berries to pick
· How to use plants to treat an ailment.
Now, in a digital, global world, fear is pervasive, but this time about whether we have enough money to pay our bills, job security, climate change, war, the future, and more.
Extending Storr's framework: brands must offer hope
Hope isn't just optimism. Optimism is a lens; hope is a feeling – a vision of something better, complete with signposts and a sense of meaning.
That's why brands must go beyond status and connection. They must offer hope.
Take Patagonia: it isn't just about offering an outdoor lifestyle. By making the planet its sole shareholder, the brand also offers hope of a 'thriving planet'.
In the case of a smaller project, One World Flag offers hope of global unity through a single, world flag – a vision of something better.
So, the challenge for brands in 2025 and beyond is to move beyond purely identity-driven storytelling to narratives of hope that point the way to a future – and a better future at that.
In the meantime, what fragrance captures hope for you?
I'll go for Ffern's Spring 25 – a 'spring woodland filled with violets'.