Identity Story: from brand to movement — 5 questions for Maarten Jurriaanse
By: Interactive Storytelling
Tags: Brand Strategy, Storytelling, Design

Identity Story: from brand to movement — 5 questions for Maarten Jurriaanse

@Interactive Storytelling Meetup #3 –10 March 2016

Interview by Femke Deckers

Maarten speaking at Interactive Storytelling Meetup #3

Maarten Jurriaanse is communication designer and owner of Ping Pong Design. After years of experience in creating brands and stories, he discovered that real branding starts with the employees and the people around it. A succesful brand is not a logo, but a community or movement.

At the Interactive Storytelling Meetup #3 Maarten presented ‘Identity Story’: a model created to help organisations change from brand to movement.

We asked Maarten 5 questions about this model and his point of view on the future of brands.

5 questions for Maarten Jurriaanse

#1) What triggered you to create the Identity Story model’?

I was working on an elevator-pitch for a client when I looked up Campbell’s classic (1949) storytelling model. It suddenly struck me how the underlying structure resembles principles of organizational vision, identity and motivation models (i.e. Collins & Porras). So I tried to integrate these into one model that could potentially be used to describe a process of organizational change, to help incumbent organizations become more community oriented.

2) Can you explain the relation between Campbell’s Hero model and your Identity model?

The Hero story structure describes the recurring stages that Joseph Campbell found in most heroic histories across many different cultures and continents. According to Campbell these storytelling structures are engrained in our human psyche.

Campbell’s classic storytelling model (1968)

In short it describes how the protagonist is challenged to embark on a journey with a following crowd or army, to fight for a good cause, to defeat the evil antagonist and to bring rescue to the beneficiary (the oppressed, the underdog, a princess etc.) and consequently receives recognition.

Also Star Wars follows the classic hero’s journey

In my model (see image below), I replaced the protagonist with organizational vision, the cause with organizational identity/community, the enemy with organizational habits and the beneficiary with customers.

Identity Story Model for organizations by Maarten Jurriaanse

Well-balanced organizations are steered by a vision (top of circle) that incorporates lasting values with specific goals that can be measured and achieved. But these goals can never be reached if the organizational habits (bottom of circle) are destructive.

The vertical axis connects visionary intent with actual habits. The horizontal axis connects internal communities with external customer-needs.

These are — in my mind — the four most fundamental aspects of organizational brand-behavior. If mastered — and that really is a continuous cycle — it should lead to an integration of visionary intent with positive behavior on a daily basis. A good balance should also motivate internal as well as external communities to coordinate for shared goals and to collaborate for preferred futures.

“Hairy goals can never be reached if organizational habits and patterns are destructive.”

Unfortunately, there are not yet enough organizations that do this or even strive for such behaviors. But Zappos Shoes, now a subsidiary of Amazon, specifically developed its internal culture as well as its surrounding communities to ‘deliver happiness’.

The strategic vision of Zappos Shoes became a management philosophy, rooted in positive psychology, that can be applied anywhere. The core of their business is not ‘shoes’ or ‘web-technology,’ but great service as an ‘operational habit’. Delivering happiness works as a fractal-principle in 1:1 employee-customer-interaction, but also applies when engaging with the local community about the development of their new headquarters (adding cinema, day-care etc).

“The core of Zappos Shoes is not shoes or web-technology, but great service as ‘operational habit’.”

#3) Why is it nessecary for (big) companies to change you think?

I am worried about the survival of large service organizations that serve fundamental public needs. Currently there is overwhelming interest for (tech) startups who promise to disrupt the status quo.

Firms like Uber and Airbnb will not only cherry-pick the most profitable customers, but also export their profits to shareholders who are out of reach of the communities they operate in, taking as little responsibility as possible for the negative sub-effects of their operations on the local societies.

“Organizations need to move away from creating wasteful output that no one needs.”

Incumbent organizations do have to change fundamentally though, away from production management that is focused on creating wasteful output that no one needs, towards meaningful business communities who are capable of creating economic as well as social value; for all stakeholders.

#4) Why is storytelling important to brands?

I see brands as representative concepts for products and services made by people. I am not interested in brands as ‘stickers’ on a pizza box or on an anonymus building. I cannot connect to that and I think most people don’t.

“First we make stuff and then we dump the stuff. Branding used to be a matter of distribution.”

Just as we need stories to become engaged, we need people to identify with. The traditional marketing idea of brand stems from neoclassical economic thinking and a fundamental orientation towards production: First we make stuff (embedding raw materials with value) and then we segment markets where we dump the stuff. Branding used to be a matter of distribution.

#5) What’s the benefit of creating a ‘movement’ above ‘just being a brand’?

Organizational movements are attractive because they choose to build a culture first. They find their resilience through the fabric of the relationship networks that they develop within and around the enterprise. This relational capital enables them to endure difficult times but also allows them to challenge the social, economical and environmental crises that we are facing.

Brand movements mobilize inspiring crowds around engaging goals that seem to address more than instrumental needs. It becomes an open community of people who collaborate for shared goals and dreams that seems to fulfill every ladder in their personal hierarchy of needs, from basic safety to aspirational, higher-order needs: it serves people’s identities and self-esteem: “I am part of something bigger”.

“Communites serve people’s identities and self-esteem: “I am part of something bigger.”