Children who did badly at school, like me, were once threatened with career prospects as a street sweeper or garbage collector, among other things. Although I thought it was a very interesting offer to be paid for riding in the back of the car, the other jobs on offer held little magnetism for me. Partly because of the weather. Nevertheless, I didn't achieve any learning success.
This was partly due to my wide range of interests, which filled my day to bursting point, even though it only consisted of 24 short hours, and required me to allocate strict hourly quotas to each of my individual projects. Besides reading, playing the guitar, failing at drawing, playing table tennis and theater, watching TV and similar invigorating activities, there wasn't much time left for school.
And when you think that as a pupil of Pippi Longstocking, I knew: "Being lazy is nice. And then you have to have time to just sit there and look ahead of you." you can understand what stress my young life had in store. Doing nothing is easy, as we all know, but you can never do it. There's no such thing as a free lunch.
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So I understood that my best years were over on the first day of school anyway, and in my mind's eye I could already see myself gliding through Salzburg's sleety rain in an orange jumpsuit, ready to give the garbage a run for its money.
Everything turned out very differently.
I did not switch to the waste disposal business, but to the opposite side, so to speak, and produced with great success and even greater joy, with heart-blooded enthusiasm even, as an advertising man not garbage, but something similar: waste products of my possibilities, which I neither recognized nor used at the time. Because I simply lacked the courage to accept myself and therefore my own life, to follow my call, which I naturally heard but did not understand, and consequently basked in the shadow of what I should have given life as an answer to its urgent questions to me. I also lacked someone to lovingly point me towards what would nowadays be called potential. A mentor, after all. It's hard to be King Arthur without Merlin showing up to tell you about Excalibur.
So I tied my plow to stars named David Ogilvy, Bill Bernbach or Leo Burnett, drew a straight, fertile furrow and sprouted vigorously as a nightshade plant. In fact, for decades, with a juicy tomato on my mind's eye, I ran in circles around myself, guided by a conviction that was as solid as it was stupid, I would produce brilliant ideas. A MadMan, not on Madison Avenue, but going astray.
Where do ideas come from?
I remember back then there were many, many constitutional rules on how to generate effective campaign ideas on command. And vice versa: "If you don't have an idea, do a testimonial campaign!" is one of these old advertising rules. This refers to celebrity testimonials.
This rule applies, just as all the old advertising rules apply: always and never, but most of the time it does, and it still does today. And when it does, it does it right. After all, the lack of ideas is still rampant in most testimonial campaigns: they have no idea at all, apart from putting a product alongside a well-known personality. The vast majority of perfume campaigns are tinkered with in this way. A nice celebrity photo and a bottle. Zackbumm - whistles already.
Accompanying this, something about "image transfer" and "borrowed interest" and so on can be heard from the agency beaks.
Of course, if they are well crafted, such campaigns do something for the product, provided you spend enough money on them and you don't want to build a long-term resilient, activating brand. Yes, attention, increased awareness, image reflection of the celebrity - a thousand roses. Yes, of course it says different things about a muesli bar whether Conchita Wurst or Adriana Grande bites into it, or whether Keith Richards smokes it. And this is precisely one of the problems with such idea substitutes: the personality of the celebrity is so huge that it overwhelmingly kidnaps the knee-soft personality of your brand.
Or the other way around and seen all too often: the awareness of your celebrity ends just at the border of his closest family circle and you therefore have to add the name of the superstar to every subject. The advertising money is therefore mainly used to build up awareness of the testimonial.
God has a variety of methods in store to show that you have too big an advertising budget. A testimonial campaign of the type described above is one of them.
This is no way to build a brand. Because brands that live only and only from the charisma of the advertising figure, i.e. mainly from communication and not from the vision and mission, are illusionary brands. That can be fun for a long time. Until the celebrity is no longer there one day, which will definitely be. (Spoiler alert: one hundred percent of all immortals are already dead.) What then?
Do you then look for a successor celebrity with the same value profile as the veteran? Do you relaunch the brand, I correct: the "brand"? Or do you finally realize that something very substantial is missing, namely the brand story?
How does storytelling work without a story?
Only when you have a brand story, a real brand story, is the ground tilled, the humus built up, the values defined and the vision, concerns and mission of the brand described. Only on this platform can implementations of all kinds for the different audience groups be developed effectively and in a multi-faceted way, in which each appearance benefits from the other and all together condense into a nutrient ball for the brand. Testimonial campaigns too, by the way. I've written down a few thoughts here that will help you to take a healthy look at your brand story.
Only when the inner story is in place is the profile framework for a suitable testimonial drawn up. The relevant awareness of the person in the target audience group is only one component of this, but awareness is not everything. Donald Trump's name recognition is likely to scratch the 100 percent mark, but I can't think of any suitable products apart from Tesla andstraitjackets, even after thinking about it for a while.
Here are three guiding stars to show you the way to successful brand work with (celebrity) testimonials.
- If you don't have a genuine, value-driven and cause-driven brand story, the testimonial's story will inevitably become yours. From now on, you'll be wearing the captain's hat, but you'll be a stowaway on your own ship. In short: you don't have a brand at all, even though you're shelling out a lot of money for it.
- The testimonial must not only be optimally known, i.e. eye-catching, but also relevantly known for what you actually want to break down from the core story of your brand in the campaign. The lived values of the brand and the testimonial must intertwine.
- Display communication is good and important, but it is only by bringing the content to life for the audience that a narrative becomes a brand story that can call itself bulletproof. This always applies - with or without a testimonial.
For example like this.
Here in Vienna, one of my favorite brands is currently demonstrating how this can be done, namely the municipal waste collection and street cleaning department 48, known locally as Die 48er. And stayed! Yes, the garbage collection, of all things.
Why is that?
I suspect it's firstly down to flawless performance and then to skillful communication, which, as I see it, started a few years ago and definitely needs to have a very strong inward focus.
At some point, people there understood that this was not about clearing away other people's dirt, but about a pivotal point in the gears of coexistence in the city and the associated quality of life. The people have been made aware - also through a light-footed, good-humored external appearancewhich naturally radiates inwards - has given people a new perspective on their own work. The brand story has changed perspective and focus: from being at the bottom of the list of desirable professions for poor students to being a producer and maintainer of quality of life in the city. From unavoidable to indispensable, so to speak. Everyone who works here can understand: No matter how the fourth grade geography test turned out - we are relevant!
I notice this again and again in occasional encounters with people from the refuse collection service, who I always perceive as friendly service providers who have internalized the value of their work, i.e. experience meaning.
Some time ago, I shared a few thoughts on how the right inner story can improve and strengthen your view of your own work so that you can find meaning even in jobs that don't seem to have much to offer at first glance. in the blog article "Why we work for stories and not for money".
The 48ers are currently running an image campaign in which the comedy magicians Siegfried & Joy appear as testimonials. Under the campaign claim "We can't conjure it away"they promote consideration and personal responsibility in dealing with your own waste. I think this is an exceptionally successful piece of work by the clever minds at the Viennese advertising agency UniqueFessler.
- The brand value of solidarity is activated.
- The testimonials address the important, rather young audience group.
- With 2.7 million followers, the testimonials are real social media celebrities.
- Even if you don't know Siegfried & Joy, the campaign idea and message work.
- The 48 sound with humor is optimally tuned.
- The campaign interweaves with all the other appearances and measures that have appeared for fifteen years on various topics and occasions - from garbage cans and garbage carts to waste separation and dog waste disposal, in public spaces and in all types of media.
And most importantly: you can experience the brand - beyond the direct benefit contact - in its mission. Whether in two markets for the actively operated sale of used goodsWhether in repair cafés or composting campaigns etc. etc. - the good wisdom "One man's trash is another man's treasure" comes to life unspoken and with it everything that involves recycling, waste avoidance and reuse on one's own responsibility.
Solid brand story enables diversity.
And once again, because it sounds profane but is ignored at every turn: there is no magic behind it, but a strong story built on values, a vision of a perfect world and a mission based on it. This does not restrict, but enables resilient diversity.
That's why the 48ers have been doing this for a long time in a colorful range of variations, which ultimately contribute to the brittle municipal department growing close to the hearts of the Viennese as their 48er and maturing into a Viennese original. What's more, the "dirt disposers" of all people probably contribute more to the positive, likeable image of the city administration than almost any other department. It goes without saying that this is backed up by excellent service.
Even if storytelling without a brand story can have positive effects, it has nothing to do with brand communication, but is just another word for advertising. The birth certificate of these brainchildren is already their death certificate, you just have to insert the date.
Because, even if storytelling without a brand story screams at us at every turn, it is nothing but noise before defeat - hazardous waste.
Incidentally, this applies in full to your personal brand, your founding and start-up story, for B2B, B2C, solopreneurs and global brands alike. And it's especially true for your employer & recruiting story, because every(!) story starts on the inside and works its way out, not the other way around. If you have a problem with your employer brand story or can't find it, this is a mercilessly accurate indication that the problem is in your brand story or that you don't have one at all. I can guarantee you that.
What else helps?
If, like many people, you are now saying: "Damn, that's exactly what we do all the time: Brand storytelling without a brand story", or "My recruiting story is shaking menacingly", then we should discuss how I can support you with my programs and tools from the New Story Academy.
With our exclusive tools, programs and methods, we at the Academy support people who are striving for real brand work and want to make their brand story bulletproof. This often succeeds quickly, sometimes even very quickly, because thanks to a great deal of experience and intensive learning from successful projects and the opposite, a nutrient-packed powerhouse is available.
At the New Story Academy-website you will find, among other things, a special offer for a quick vitamin kick, the PowerHour. There are also detailed workshop programs for extensive tasks, all of which have one goal: to enable you and your team to quickly and efficiently find a better brand story and tell it better than before. So that your team and your customers quickly understand what they have and get from you, how they can develop their potential, why this is relevant for them and so that they come to you and stay with you. The bottom line is that simple.
If you have a specific question, just send me a reply to this email. As a member of our Story Inside community, you can also book a free check-in meeting directly here in my calendar to book a free check-in meeting (online).
Why is this so important to me? Quite simply because I am convinced that most people want to and can do more with their companies and brands than just mindlessly sell their stuff to the affluent society.
They want to do meaningful work and convey the meaning of their work to their team - regardless of whether they wear a doctor's coat, pyjamas in the home office, orange overalls or something else.
Most in our community are attuned to this pitch. They understand that we in the so-called economy have the powerful leverage to transform the dark narratives of our time about duality, dominance and destruction into a new story - the New Story. This is the story of connectedness, unfolded potential and found, experienced meaning. We write this New Story when we support each other. Please spread the word!
If that works, we'll all feel better and join in the chorus of Müllionaires, for whom the funny Heinz Erhardt wrote the following rhyme:
Come! Let us hurry from barrel to barrel!
We want to give the garbage a rebuff!
Let's go! Let's make every barrel empty!That's what we're here for, because we're Müllionaires!
Müllirallala, Müllirallala!
Incidentally, my grandmother, old Story Dudette, loves these verses almost as much as those 100% recyclable, compostable and always fresh words: "New Story. New Glory."