Brand Story Guide Workshop

Are you tired of countless content reviews that never go anywhere? How about the disconnects between Dev, Creative, Copywriting, Marketing, and Management? This gets partially tiresome when you’re about to launch since time and money are precious and the stakes are high if a launch fails.

We were tired of it too.

That’s why we created The Story Funnel and the first part of it, the Brand Story Guide.

The underlying concept of Story Funnel is applying the fundamentals of storytelling to your brand story, which will lead you to get the results you want. This is especially true when launching a new company, brand, product, or service. In fact, we’d venture to say that having a story-driven launch mindset is the only way to adapt to the ever-moving target of what works for your brand.

You Have a Style Guide. Why Not a Story Guide?

Most companies have a style guide that informs those involved of the color scheme, font, logo, personas, mission, vision, values, etc. It’s standard practice so that your brand’s look and feel stays consistent across your website, one-sheets, business cards, etc.

Imagine the same thing for your brand’s story and that’s what a Brand Story Guide (BSG) is all about. It keeps your story straight among all your team members so you save time in rewrites and money in wasted ads and A/B testing.

The first part of the Story Funnel process is to build a BSG so that everyone, from management to creative to development, is aligned to the brand’s story. This alignment frees everyone up to spend more time on creating great content and less time in the infinite loop of creative doom. Garbage In = Garbage Out.

You’ll Learn How To

The Brand Story Guide Workshop will take you through the marketer’s 6 core questions to create a BSG that you can use as the tip of the spear for all your PR, Marketing, and Communications. During the workshop, you’ll learn how to:

Identify the Core Values of your Brand as well as other brands.
Craft a Big Idea statement that aligns with your brand.
Understand the Wants/Needs of Prospects, Customers, and Advocates
Create the structure of your brand’s offering that aligns with your target customers.
List the Conventions and Requirements that customers will expect your brand to have.
Build a Brand Thru-line that keeps your story straight as you hook prospects, build customers, and payoff advocates.
Align your whole product launch team around your Brand’s Thru-line so that you spend time creating quality messages and stop wasting time on copy that does not align with your brand.
A draft Brand Story Guide for your chosen brand to refine with your extended team.
Shift your mindset from company mission, vision, and values to customer-centric Core Values, Big Ideas, and Storytelling.

Target Audience

The Brand Story Guide Workshop is primarily for PR, marketing, creative, copywriting, and communications professionals that are trying to get their story straight so they can successfully launch and scale their offerings.

Management, sales, and engineering professionals can also benefit from the workshop but it’s recommended that their marketing department take it first to ease the learning curve.

Prerequisites

Working knowledge of spoken and written English.
Access to the internet for Zoom and Google Docs.
A brand or company to create the Brand Story Guide for.

Workshop Schedule (6 hours Total Over 2, 3, or 6 sessions)

Introduction + Tell me A Story
Picking Your Brand to Work With
The Marketer 6 Core Questions Overview
What is Your Brand’s Core Value?
What is Your Brand’s Big Idea?
What are your Customers Wants/Needs
What is Your Structure and who do you Serve?
What are the Conventions & Requirements for your Brand?
What is Your Brand’s Thru-line?
Creating Your Brand Story Guide
Brand Story Guide Presentations
Questions
Wrap-Up + A Sneak Peek at The Story Funnel

Workshop Materials

All participants will have access to the following materials during and after the workshop:

Slide Deck
Videos for each session
Templates for all the exercises
Exclusive access to The Story Funnel Membership site with several examples of Brand Story Guides and Story Funnels.
Email access to the instructor(s) for any questions
One Follow-up Session to review any questions

Meet Your Lead Instructor

Jarie Bolander is an engineer by training and an entrepreneur by nature. He has over 25 years of experience bringing innovative products to market. Some of them include Bluetooth, USB, RFID, Semiconductor DNA sequencing, Smart Water Monitoring, and SaaS for Healthcare.

Over the past five years, he has been a reluctant PR Maven at JSY PR & Marketing — a full-service PR, Marketing, and Communications firm that specializes in IoT/Smart Home/Consumer Medical Device Companies. He is also the ED of JSY Giving, a nonprofit dedicated to his late wife Jane whose mission is to help organizations tell better stories.

Jarie has formed or been part of 6 startups in various management roles. He holds an MBA in Technology Management and a BS in Electrical Engineering. He is also the inventor or co-inventor on over 10 patents and has published six books — 8 Startup Dilemmas All Founders Will Face, 7 PR Secrets All Founders Should Know, The Entrepreneur Ethos, Frustration Free Technical Management, #ENDURANCE tweet — A Little Nudge to Keep You Going and Business Basics for Entrepreneurs.

He is also the co-creator of The Story Funnel, which is how to nail your launch by getting your story straight.