Austria has elected. A National Council, not a government, even if some of the candidates still can't tell the difference, or deliberately confuse the two. Framing, after all ... Which plunges us right into the topic: What business are political parties actually in? "In the politics business!", one would like to shout reflexively. But is that enough to win over the electorate and achieve real social change? Probably not.
To be a leader, you have to share Purpose - as a brand and even more so as a political party. Purpose is even the product - or would be ...
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In the blogcast, I read this recent blog article to you. With emphasis, of course!
You must be able to communicate to your audience a reason beyond power & money or price & value for your political action and appeal to shared values. This creates a shared desire - meaning and relationship - and attraction for your brand.
In politics, this longing is for a better life for all of us. Opinions differ on what "better life" means and which path is the best one, because not every value is equally valuable to everyone and means the same. But once you have found your purpose, you can start to enter into your true business.
The parties campaigning for elections are now celebrating or mourning the harvest cast in percentages for their (non-) story sharing. With my story magnifying glass, I take a look at the core narratives of those who want to sell us their version of a better life and pick out one or two aspects that also provide us who do not work in politics, for us, our companies and our brands, with many a morsel of insight with learning value.
NEW is new and not just different.
If you have NEW and renewal as a founding kick and even carry it in the name of your company/brand, then that gives a lot away. On the one hand it obliges you to offer more than just change, on the other hand it has a lot of potential.
1) NEW is a better message than OTHER, because change hurts, is tedious and implies that I did something wrong before. New is simply new, leaves the past behind and gives me a new option. Not improving the mp3 player, but inventing the iPod. Not a change in dietary habits, but the new XYZ-success diet ... This is super-important when you yourself are new to the market and thus have to draw your potential from other suppliers, but the market is practically not expanding, apart from those who are growing up in age.
2) For innovation, we have known at least since Buckminster Fuller said: "You never change things by fighting against the existing reality. To change something, build a new model that makes the old model obsolete". Some things are just too worn, worn out, out of time. New things are needed - for example education, tax system, economy and environment, social partnership, pensions, style and culture in dealing with each other, open society ... Does the list ever end?
All this offers enormous story potential, which is important several times over in the market for political concepts. Because communication, brand experience and story sharing - activating and sharing a common desire - are part of the core business here. NEW content and NEW form go hand in hand with a brand like NEOS.
If Astrid Lindgren had written a brand guideline for the NEOS, it would have been entitled: "The Children from the Noisemaker Street". Freedom, imagination, cheerfulness, fearlessness, wings - with F for Future ...
The insight bite: If you have a strong, clear brand core, use it and tell everything explicitly and implicitly from that perspective. Everything. If you're new, be it and be rigorous. If you have a niche brand, fill the niche. It's usually bigger than you think.
Apple would say, "Think different." Samsung would say: "Do what you can't." Story sharing is when you don't just say it.
The story engine: Overcoming the monster.
Even if the causes are absolutely unpleasant: If there are winners from the current circumstances of our time, then it is THE GREENS, which was also underlined by their brilliant comeback. The demand for the core product is increasing worldwide and there was a new election just when it was needed most.
In the world of stories, there is a successful plot structure that is as old as storytelling itself: Overcoming the monster. "Beowulf", "Jurassic Park" or the entire Marvel Universe build on it. A superior, antagonistic force threatens humanity and must be overcome by clearly inferior protagonists. - Am I the only one thinking of the climate crisis and THE GREENS? Or of Apple, their Big Brother competition and the "1984" launch of the Macintosh?
But while our heroes from Cupertino, "Jaws", or "Harry Potter" have very concrete and attackable monsters to overcome, The Greens have had a hard time visualising their monster since their founding. That has changed. The bogeyman of the climate crisis and thus the demand for their core story is fed daily by all media and relevant to a broad audience (= all people). The environmental drama is - as cynical as it may sound - a strategic stroke of luck and the (solar-powered) turbocharger on the way to becoming a broad popular party.
The insight bite: If you have a strong, clear brand core, use it and tell everything explicitly and implicitly from that perspective. Everything. If you have a niche brand, then fill the niche. It's usually bigger than you think, can grow explosively and make you the market leader. Let's think of Apple again and watch Annalena Baerbock & Robert Habeck in Germany ...
The Greens have a current additional kick for their story engine, which they are using cleverly: The comeback in the underdog story. We love that in films and books in particular: whether Cinderella, Rocky or Donald Duck, the Oakland A 's from "Moneyball" or Eddie Edwards from "Eddie the Eagle". Comeback and underdog stories generate empathy - after all, in our own life narratives we are often the underdogs ourselves and feel unfairly left out.
It's amazing what a brand can withstand.
"You will be surprised what is possible," said FPÖ-Hofer once. Nobody has been surprised about that for a long time. However, I am surprised about what brands can endure. Some brands disappear after scandals like News of the World. Others, like VW - a brand that stands for trust and has been the talk of the town for years because of the opposite - seem to be unaffected. The FPÖ brand is a similar special case, because by human standards there shouldn't be much left after the series of scandals directly directed against their self-narrated brand essence as representatives of the small, decent people. If Katja Ebstein were to sing a song about the election results of the FPÖ, it would be: "Miracles always happen". - What might be the reason for that?
Perhaps it's because the FPÖ has perfected over decades to plant a core narrative at the centre of all its stories: "We - and thus all people who feel they belong to us - against those up there, the evil elites." Or against them out there. Or against the press, the establishment, etc. The list can be continued indefinitely for each individual victim myth, and even a few hours after the "Ibiza video" became known, the party was already consistently staging itself as the victim of an attack from outside. - Us against ... Or much more: them against us ...
There are three basic framings of the understanding of politics:
a) Politics is neutral in developing rules for all groups in a society.
b) Politics has to help the weakest groups.
c) Politics has to help my group.
The FPÖ always serves C. Always.
Their central values and the reason on which their political existence is based are spread so consistently that their how and what are almost completely irrelevant. Their why apparently activates very deep-seated reflexes and instincts in very many people and thus outlasts any scandal that would mean instant death for other parties.
The insight bite: Simon Sinek is always right, and once again here, because values are value-neutral. For brands - no matter what industry - the following applies: every antagonist is the protagonist in his or her own story. Values and virtues are not the same thing, neither are strategy and tactics, and emotion is not instinct - even if the consistent confusion of the terms can sometimes give the impression ...
Brand stories need updates & upgrades
Sometimes brands lose their relevance. Not because they become irrelevant, but because they fail to reinterpret their story in such a way that it remains relevant in changing times. Often this goes hand in hand with a loss of innovation and a vicious downward spiral spins, others beat you with (d)a more relevant story in your core business. Let's think of Kodak, BlackBerry, Abercrombie & Fitch. And let's think of Apple, because with it lives the hope that this trend can also be reversed.
Ah, hope ... yes ...! - Jyn Erso said in "Star Wars: Rogue One" the beautiful phrase: "Rebellions are built on hope." - Isn't that what politics is all about? The hope that tomorrow will be better than today?
This brings us to the SPÖ and its sputtering story engine, which in principle has everything to serve a - naturally - growing counter longing in society: Togetherness & solidarity + everything that has been confused with justice there for many years. In principle, this story engine hums so strongly that it triggered revolutions in the history of its running time, but somehow the horsepower doesn't get on the road today, although there is even a sympathy grenade at the wheel of the car. Some corporations still talk about the car, others have meanwhile understood that it has always been about mobility and freedom ...
The insight bite: If you fail to give your story engine the upgrade it needs, then at some point improvement won't help, you'll need a completely new option, see Apple in 1997. The story - the concern, the purpose - was still the same then as it was when it was founded: unleash people's creativity using technology. But the interpretation in product and narrative was a completely new proposition.
Keep the story of your brand alive and never forget: hope does not die last, but lives first. It germinates inside your company and from there transforms into the soul of the brand. Because Peter Drucker will be right until the end of time: "Culture eats strategy for breakfast!
Story is what would come before "new" and "I".
If the theory is correct that a real story needs a plot as well as a main character, then the turquoise story is about everything but story. At least not in the real sense. In terms of storytelling - narratives, framings and storytelling - there is, however, quite a bit of noteworthy stuff in this campaign.
For example, anyone who wants to know how to create spin, set themes (or stage a - as they say in Austria - G'schichterl) or make a competitor's theme their own and even surpass their success in a new packaging will find a lot of learning value here.
Or, if you want to know how to craft a movement well - and every brand should know that - you have been well educated by the New People's Party since 2017. Speaking of New, if you set up "New" as an essential pillar of your narrative, you can work out when that pillar will buckle. New is a disease that resembles that of youth and fashion: it gets better every day.
And anyone who wants to know what happens to a brand that lives only from its form will have to wait a little longer, because this turquoise chapter is only just being written.
Politicians must be the beacons that show us the way, projectors and not projection screens, because we humans are always in search of value orientation and belonging.
The insight bite: Form follows function. If no sustainable values can be experienced in a (political) brand story that can be translated for all relevant audiences, tasks and topics in the long term, you have a camouflage brand, a Potemkin brand, but no story. You can tell, but not share. Your brand lives from its presentation. This can work very well and successfully for a while. That worked for many decades - just think of the golden age of advertising and publicity - today it is nothing but the noise before the defeat. And the fairy tale of "Hans in Luck", in contrast to the Brothers Grimm's version, also has a return course in real life.
Every person, but also every company - regardless of whether it is a global corporation or an SME (small and medium-sized enterprise) - and every organisation needs a purpose, a goal, a great common truth and a story that is activated by it and around which everything revolves.
And every person, every company can gain relevance and generate resonance in this way and only in this way, even if it often looks and sometimes seems quite different in times of election campaigns.
To all those who say, "It doesn't apply to me or my brand!", take heart in the words my grandmother, old Story Dudette, exclaimed at the storming of the Bastille: "No Story. No Glory."