Your ‘brand story’ doesn’t matter if no one else can tell it back to you

Every brand loves its own story. Stirring vision statements. Emotional launch videos. Slides polished to perfection. But here’s the brutal truth: if no one outside your leadership team can repeat that story in their own words, it’s worthless. Case in point: We once worked with a fast-growing tech firm. Their “brand story” filled forty slides and a glossy manifesto. The problem? When we asked ten employees, “What does your company actually do?” we got ten different answers. Some talked features. Others talked values. A few mumbled jargon so dense even the CEO wouldn’t understand it. If your own people can’t tell your story back to you, what chance does the market have? We stripped that bloated manifesto back to one line: a simple, human explanation of the problem they solved and why it mattered. Suddenly: Employees were saying it consistently. Investors started quoting it back to leadership. Customers shared it with peers -- unprompted. That’s when the story stoppe...