Strategic Narrative Is Not Messaging

Too many teams (and consultants) confuse the two. One brings clarity, alignment, and competitive advantage. The other is a copywriting exercise.

If you don’t know what to do, it’s harder to do it.
Malcom Forbes

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I've been seeing a lot of posturing recently about why having a strategic narrative is a bad idea, especially when you're in a growth-stage business.

The thinking goes something like this: If you develop a narrative that frames the problem and shows buyers how the world is changing, but every other competitor in your space latches onto more or less the same ideas, then how much does that really help you? If you're essentially saying the same thing as everybody else, you're not conveying new information. And you certainly aren't doing anything to show why your brand is different, why it's worthy of consideration, or why it's likely to emerge as the leader of an emerging space.

That line of thinking is generally correct.

You don't have to look far to find spaces where competitors echo each other's messaging. Whether a brand intentionally did the work to develop a strategic narrative or simply asked a copywriter to come up with something clever, the result is often the same: an echo chamber of me-too messaging.

But a strategic narrative is not a messaging exercise at all.

When you conflate the two, you're likely to overlook the role of a strategic narrative and evaluate it on the wrong criteria. And that will really get you hung up if you’re trying to win your space.

The Real Job of a Strategic Narrative

Every time you're going to go through an exercise as a business, it's because there's a job that needs to be done. There's something you want to accomplish, and you're going through that exercise to make it happen.

Strategic narrative might seem like a messaging exercise on the surface, but the job it's performing is mostly hidden from view to the public.

When I get called in to help a team with its narrative, it's not because they need help figuring out what to put on their website. It's because they've reached an inflection point in the business. Something has changed, and it's unclear where to take the business next.

This leads to a lack of clarity and alignment:

• It's unclear how the business will compete.

• It's unclear if it needs to expand its market territory or claim a new one.

• It's unclear how the business will win and defend its territory.

This leaves all sorts of open questions. Not just for marketing, but for product development, R&D, business strategy, and more.

When the context around the business has changed, the team has to answer questions about where it wants to go and why it wants to go there. And it must be able to tell that story internally.

The entire team, from the CEO all the way down to the interns, must have clarity on the business's aim. That means understanding what problem the business is solving, how it sees that problem differently from the world, and how it will conduct itself in pursuit of solving that problem.

As it turns out, handing somebody a 200-page strategy binder full of reports, charts, and graphs isn't a good way to communicate that story. And it's definitely not a good way to remember it.

That's the job a strategic narrative does.

It captures the essence of where a company is headed and how it's going to win in a format that is digestible, relatable, and memorable. When you have your strategy laid out in a narrative, it's something you can refer to daily to remind yourself of where you're headed. It's something that you can feel with emotion, so that you can be the strategy, not just know it. When a narrative is done right, it provides a huge sense of relief to the team because they finally feel like they understand who they are and where they want to go.

Can you imagine trying to build a business or compete in a new landscape without that level of clarity?

Why Strategic Narrative Gets Confused With External Messaging

With that in mind, maybe it makes sense to clarify why this gets confused with external messaging. As it turns out, when you have a good internal story, it makes it a hell of a lot easier to tell your story to the outside world. So yes, the spirit of your narrative should show up in your content, your messaging, and everything else that you communicate.

But the narrative is not the communication itself.

It’s a guide: a lens for the ideas to communicate.

This is why I rarely work on external messaging myself. It's a different skill set, and there are plenty of people who are better at it than I am. It's also why I only focus on strategic narrative and helping clients rewire the business to make it a reality. Building the right narrative is a discernment process among the executive team, not a marketing exercise.

When Strategic Narrative Goes Wrong

If you go through the process of building a strategic narrative and land on the same generic point of view as everyone else, then the exercise was a shallow one. Doing this unknowingly is no excuse. It’s your job to assess the status quo and to dig deep enough to discover how you can be different.

But if you do this work well, you won’t just carve out a unique space in the minds of your buyers; you’ll also have conviction. You’ll believe in what you stand for, which means you just may have the guts to pull it off.

So remember… the next time you hear someone talk about strategic narrative: its main job is to build alignment and belief in your business’s aim.

It ain't messaging. ✌️