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April 23, 2008

Situation, Action, Results Stories in Branding

Came across a fantastic article by Ray George on brandchannel.com about how and why stories work in branding.

George kicks off the article by declaring: "If brands are an experience, then stories are an effective way to describe this experience to others." He adds:

Brands are also a balance between left brain and right brain thinking—they combine functional, rational aspects of the category (left brain) with a more emotional connection (right brain).

He compares two example organizational stories – one a vague a platitude-filled bit typical of what most organizations tell, the second a specific story that shows (instead of telling), the brand story the organization wants to convey.

Moving on to what makes a good story, George cites the common formula, Situation –≥ Action –> Results, which interestingly, is also a frequently recommended formula for job-interview and other job-search stories.

Thus, it becomes interested to apply George's concepts to personal branding. For each of the Situation –≥ Action –> Results (SAR) components, he offers these criteria:

Situation should be significant and specific.
Action should be brand-relevant and authentic.
Results should be both rational and emotional.

Let's analyze a job-interview response story from my book, Tell Me About Yourself: Storytelling that Propels Careers, to see how these criteria apply:

Situation: Recently my firm was facing a huge turnover problem, especially in our technical staff because of lack of growth within the organization. No defined path was shared with the employees. To address the situation, I not only had a huge task of defining grades and identifying and compartmentalizing our employees’ growth needs but also a race against time.

George notes that the protagonist of the story, in this case the job-seeker, should hold some significance to the audience, in this case the interviewer. In this case, the candidate is interviewing for a position in human resources and has described s situation significant for an employer hiring an HR pro. George also asserts that the story must be specific, and here the job-seeker has detailed a very specific situation.

Action: I knew the tasks would be time consuming, but I set a deadline for each piece. I aggressively collected information on the employee growth needs by sending questionnaires via emails and reaching out to the workforce. I compiled the data and determined short-term and long-term achievable goals. I developed a small-projects subset of the bigger project. I designed a system so that we could track each other’s project and meet every day. The most prominent finding was lack of challenge at work. I decided to implement a leadership program, effectively identifying the top 10 to 25 percent of workers suitable for the program based on the performance reviews, peer-reviews, and qualifications. I set an aggressive target of 15 days each for each zone to complete this part of the survey.

George says that the action must be brand-relevant, summarizing key tenets of the brand. In the job-search situation, brand-relevant means summarizing key skills that comprise the personal brand. In the action segment above, the candidate has described his brand-relevant skills of goal-setting, organization, and innovation, among others.

George also notes that the action taken must be authentic – something that the audience can relate to. The candidate's description rings true to what a good HR manager can do in this situation.

Result: I met the deadlines, and by the end of a second month, we were ready with the budget for the training program, targeted pilot training group, location, and a trainer selected. We rolled out our first training on effective leadership, and by the end of the quarter, data showed that employees were now engaged and challenged. As a result, turnover was cut in half.

George offers the interesting dichotomy that the result should be both rational and emotional. Rational results are often quantified; in this case, the candidate reduced turnover by half. The emotional element is that employees were now engaged and challenged.

Posted by Katharine at April 23, 2008 12:40 PM

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