Do so-called Hollywood movies have more to offer than good entertainment complete with popcorn, sports gum and m&m's accompaniment? Absolutely! The friendly breeze of entertainment is the perfect fuel for difficult topics to sail right into the heart of precisely those audiences who need inspiring impulses for their own reflection. At Fridays for Future, nobody has to talk about their personal options for reducing their carbon footprint. Neither do registered petrolheads. But with the many people in the space in between, a lot can be set in motion.
In the spaces in between, with the people for whom good impulses are useful because they are touched by questions that they also ask themselves, at least implicitly, sometimes also articulated, important topics can have a nourishing effect there because they come across as light-footed and are not instructive, but above all can be experienced emotionally. The power of story to tell the audience something they don't want to hear in a way that makes them want to listen.
TOO LAZY TO READ ON? THEN LISTEN TO ME:
In the blogcast, I read this recent blog article to you. With emphasis, of course!
Important topics are packed into the smiling Trojan horse and ultimately unfold their effect like fairy dust from a power cable. Pressure refueling with impulses for a successful life.
This is precisely the great opportunity to move people with encouraging, enlightening and insightful stories, expressly in the broad field of entertainment. Purpose placement instead of product placement, so to speak, but always respectfully and without falling prey to the seductive idea of manipulation. Because beware: moving narratives move in every direction, as history, including the prevailing era, bitterly confirms.
Even in entertainment formats, we don't need the illusion of simple answers to complex issues, but rather impulses through illuminating questions. As always: thinking for yourself makes you smart!
Encouraging people to think critically for themselves and thereby making them smart is, in essence, the task of artists in society. Which explains why autocrats and dictators immediately target artists and storytellers. The situation in the USA illustrates this in a highly topical and impressive way.
In all effective stories, whether in Hollywood, around the campfire or in your brand story, there is always a theme, a concern, an important question and it is served up in a variety of ways in different narratives, storylines and plots, just as it suits the audience.
Toy Story and Hangover each tell stories about friendship in their own way.
Cinderella and Rocky both tell stories about how we are unique, lovable people, whatever the circumstances. If we show it, we can experience it. So the theme is self-worth.
The legend of King Arthur is about accepting our calling, how we learn to recognize and embody our potential, and that life asks us questions, not the other way around, so we are responsible for the good answers. We encounter Arthur and his theme again as Luke Skywalker in Star Wars and as Harry Potter at Hogwarts, just as we encounter the wise mentor Merlin again in the form of Obi Wan Kenobi or Albus Dumbledore.
Does your brand story only have a plot or a theme?
The clever brand managers in companies and organizations of all kinds have understood this. They do the same, very often even intuitively, before they understand it themselves in retrospect, as I have experienced myself often enough and continue to experience.
All companies can expressly do this, not just the super brands, even if I am about to give some prominent examples, brands that we all know.
Apple has recognized the topic of self-efficacy through creativity as essential for itself.
Hornbach talks about the creative power and the will to create in us humans.
Red Bull 's mission is "Giving wings to people and ideas".
In most cases, these topics clearly show the image of humanity behind the respective brand and its stories. In Austria, for example, Raiffeisen talks about the positive explosive power of solidarity, summarized in the claim Wir macht's möglich, as an interpretation of Friedrich Wilhelm Raiffeisen's founding dream "What one person cannot achieve alone, many can."
On the other hand, there is Erste Bank | Sparkasse, which chose the power of the individual as its theme with the brand story #glaubandich. That is a huge difference. On the one hand, self-effective people in a strong community, on the other hand, lone wolves with an ego focus.
We're already back in Hollywood, although not quite, because the film I'm urging you to see here comes from the New York studio A24, which is currently one of the hottest production companies(Euphoria, Everything Everywhere All at Once). We are talking about Materialists, whose subtitle asks the question: "What is love worth?"
The screenwriter and director Celin Song, who caused quite a stir two years ago with Past Lives , wrapped the topic in one of the most difficult genres of all, namely a romance with a strong reference to the romantic comedy format. One of the reasons why this genre is particularly difficult to tackle is that everyone knows how a romantic movie ends, which is precisely why they go to the cinema, but still want to be surprised and entertained.
Celine Song has succeeded masterfully! This is also due to the fact that she tells the love triangle between Lucy (Dakota Johnson), the super successful consultant in an exclusive dating agency, and her two heartthrobs Harry (Pedro Pascal) and John (Chris Evans) on the burning contemporary theme of instrumental reason, thus conjuring up a romantic dramedy as a mirror of our times on the screen. In English, the claim to Materialists is: "Some people just want more."
Capitalism & calculation as un-culture?
We are talking here about cultural capitalism, about the narrative of necessary economic efficiency in everything that has gotten completely out of hand, about the postulate of profit and eternal growth as a source of prosperity, which is strategically confused with well-being. We speak of the exploitation of everything and everyone, of instrumental reason as a revelation of the prevailing image of humanity. Everyone is an object, everything is matter. More is better - greed is good. But maybe it's not capitalism that's the problem, but the capitalists?
In Materialists, even the ultimately unfathomable phenomenon of love is permeated with the common thread of calculation, because everything is nothing but matter, material for the generation of personal benefit. If the investment required for this does not prove to be sufficiently productive as desired, the potential partner is wiped away or the existing one is discarded and replaced as quickly as possible with someone who has better KPIs and performs better in terms of return of and on investment. Until the next bigger better deal is on offer and so on and so forth. At best, romantic relationships are valued as partnerships and partnerships for gain.
This attitude is now pervasive in all areas of life and especially in the narrower area of work - economy - business, call it what you will. Something pops up on every corner, something beeps, someone shouts the message "Buy me!" into everyone's ears. The guiding principle "What can I get out of this for myself?" dominates everything we do. Anything that doesn't serve personal gain is ignored. This begins in everyday life, where the basic necessities of peaceful, civilized coexistence have become so rare that they are conspicuous. What we (hopefully) observe with horror in the USA in terms of daily incomprehensibility can already be experienced up close in a reduced form in every subway. There is ranting, jostling, repression and exploitation - in everyday life, in business and on the big world stage. The egos have taken command. Dominance and destruction or dominance through destruction are tried and tested ways of getting something out of someone that benefits you. The broligarchs from Silicon Valley are the gloomy shining stars.
Does it have to be that way? No! I am firmly convinced of that.
We could do it differently: better.
When we tell ourselves a new, better story about what the economy means than "growth and profit maximization above all else", things start to move. Because it is always our stories that drive everything. The stories we tell ourselves and each other. Our beliefs, our mantras, about what is important to us, what we respect and what we ostracize, what we love and what we fear.
Ultimately, wars are fought over stories, religions and revolutions are based on stories, and so are our relationships - whether romantic, platonic or in business. And, above all, our relationship with ourselves: Who am I? Why am I here? And: Who do I want to be one day? These are the basic questions, the issues. These are the questions, our inner story, whose embodied, intelligent answer reveals itself as a hopefully successful life.
The most nourishing and truthful starting question, the prompt, for each of us, for every brand story, for everything is: What am I bringing to the party? What is better than before thanks to my work - for my stakeholders, for my customers and partners, for my employees first and foremost.
Once again: What am I bringing to the party, not what am I getting out of it? We need profit, yes, without a doubt. But healthy profit is always the result of a fulfilled and therefore fulfilling task. Without this task, profit is nothing more than heat that we sell to ourselves as warmth of the nest. Framen, as they say.
Because how else can we explain the fact that the highest rates of burnout, depression, frustration, substance abuse and broken families are to be found among the so-called successful? How else can we explain the fact that only ten percent of people in professions still have an inner relationship with their job, while the rest have already resigned or are working to rule? Presumably only - or also - because there is no room for a sense of purpose in a world where everything is geared towards profit.
To quote from one of the greatest collections of metaphors in human history, the Bible: "Man does not live by bread alone!" This is what Jesus said to the devil who tried to turn him into bread. It's not just about matter, it's about more.
We humans, companies, our society - we all need a why to live in order to stay healthy. What we like to call purpose and why these days, but that alone is still not enough. We need a why, ideally in combination with a for whom. Anyone who understands this has made a decisive leap. Because a strong why/for-whom ultimately gives rise to a cause that you have - as a person or as a brand. The purpose is transformed into meaning.
Meaning needs and creates relevance.
Is your brand alive, or is it just not dead?
You could draw up a formula: Meaning = Purpose + (relevance in action). Yes: in action, because talking about it alone is not enough, we also have to realize and embody our story, our purpose. Then it works. But how!
Very important: all this has little to do with socially romantic illusions, but really gets down to business. The Meaningful Brands Index has shown for many years that brands and companies that have and can convey meaning have significantly better key figures, a much higher share of wallet and a massively better stock market performance than those brands that lack meaning. Furthermore, this study shows that around 70 percent of brands could disappear from the market and nobody would miss them. Again, these are the brands that have no significance. They are there, but irrelevant and not only replaceable, but completely and painlessly dispensable. Where do you play with your company? Team relevance or team dead brand walking?
At the same time, research shows that the relevance of a company, what it stands for, is the number one deciding factor for potential employees. Relevance in action, and not just for the high potentials, movers and shakers. The story of when John F. Kennedy, on a visit to NASA, asked a janitor mopping the floor what he was doing here and the man who inspired him replied: "I'm helping to get a man on the moon!" has been repeated many, many times in countless other places to this day. Anyone who experiences that their existence, their work is relevant, has the feeling of a successful life - an experience of meaning. Conversely, there is now a lot of research on the fact that the lack of meaning/sense of purpose/relevance/task serves as a richly bubbling source for the explosion in the number of mentally ill people.
This applies universally, because the inner laws work the same for everyone: for you personally, for your job, for your company as a solopreneur or founder, for B2B and B2C, for local companies, NGOs and multinational megabrands: if you have no inner meaning in what you do, all you have left is the greed for more. "Some people just want more" - they even ask themselves "What is love worth?" We know which ones they are ...
Here's a practical tip on how you can check the relevance of your company and your brand story. Take five sheets of paper and write one of the following terms on each one: security, connection, development, meaning, relevance. Then write down what this means specifically for you and your field of activity and how it can be experienced(!) by you, your team, as a customer or as a partner. Multiple answers are allowed and encouraged, because the fields of desire of the people who unfold for you as fields of activity are interwoven.
If you recognize a vacuum here, then I can almost certainly tell you right now that you have a problem with your brand story. Or maybe not one at all, but just a lot of clever communication ideas.
The same applies if you are struggling to activate your brand story in employer branding. If you're struggling here, the problem is a weak or non-existent authentic brand story. Because a solid brand story always(!) works from the inside out. Please spread the word!
What else helps?
If you're now saying: "Yes, I understand, I've done the test, I've recognized the problem, it makes sense to me - but how do I tackle it now?" Or if you're like many people who say: "Yes, we're trying, but somehow we just can't get to the point ...!", or "My recruiting story is shaking dangerously", then we should discuss how I can help you free yourself from the materialist hangover with my programs and tools from the New Story Academy.
With the exclusive tools, programs and methods in the Academy, we accompany 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 values from successful projects (and also from the opposite), a nutrient-packed power pack is available.
On 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 it's that simple.
If you have any other specific questions, you can also get in touch with me directly here via the website.
Why is this so important to me? Quite simply because I am convinced that most people, in their jobs, with their companies & brands, want to and can do more than just mindlessly pour their stuff into the affluent society.
They want to do meaningful work and convey the meaning of work to their team, because they know that if you fulfill your very own task, then it fulfills you and you never have to fill yourself up again. And that's true to life and tangible, beyond wondrous 'live your dream' promises that mainly fill the account of the gurus in office but not your gaping hole.
In our community, most are attuned to this encouraging tone. 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!
And before I forget: My grandmother, old Story Dudette, wrote the legendary phrase in her dating profile: "New Story. New Glory."