The Confidence
Document

Talk it out. We can clean it later.

Turn on the recording software you use and simply talk it out. Hop on with a friend and walk through your Origin Story. Take the time to write about 500 words per story type. Most people come back and say, Chirag, 500 was too little. I started writing and I couldn't stop.

That's great. We can flesh it out and clean it later. Where did we start? What are we offering? Who are we doing this for? Where are we headed? Start with the stories you already have. The 8 Resonance Story Types give you places to begin.

Go back through and pepper in your echoes.

Once you've written the stories, go through and pepper in your echoes wherever you can. The idea is repetition and consistency, so that when someone asks, what do you think of this brand or this person, you've made it easier for them to find the words.

For your verbal echoes, I use a word-cloud exercise. If I take the document and make the words that repeat most often appear larger, I should be able to point to your echoes without you having to tell me. If an echo is a color, sound or scent, look at the touchpoints where it can actually show up.

Copy and paste from the same document.

Your CEO is talking to investors? Pull from the document. Your sales team needs collateral? Pull from the document. Your intern wants to know what to put on social media or the website? Pull from the document. A retailer needs language to explain your product? Give them the stories, too.

You could have people working in purchasing, marketing, sales and HR, all doing different things. Because they're referring to the same narratives and the same echoes, they're reinforcing the same stories across their unique touchpoints. That's the organizational alignment I'm trying to build.

The goal is internalization.

My confidence comes from the fact that no one on earth knows my stories better than I do. The goal is internalization and comfort in knowing where that information exists. When someone asks what I do, I can pull from my stories and give them an answer that fits the conversation.

Eventually, your team may no longer need to look at the document in the same way. The story travels with the work, from the moment the designer makes a choice to the way someone explains it to a customer. People across different touchpoints are using the same language.

Start with the stories you can tell today.

Once you know your stories, the next question is where and when to share them. That's where Brand Curiosity Theory comes in, matching the story to the question your audience is asking.