Public Narrative: What Obama can teach us about storytelling

Read time: 90 seconds

In his book “This is Marketing”, Seth Godin shares the Public Narrative framework created by Marshall Ganz - a Harvard professor and the architect of Obama's first presidential campaign.

Obama used this framework to create the speeches that helped him win his first election.

Now, public narrative isn't only for presidents.

According to Godin, every brand story should include the three elements of the public narrative framework:

A story of self - the story of an individual

Most startups don’t spend enough time on this. People connect to people and the key to good marketing is to establish a connection with your audience.

A great way to do this is with the founder's personal story. *Or yours, depending on who you’re speaking with.

This story should reveal the personal motivations for starting or working at a company and answer: How did you get the idea to build this company? What motivated you to pursue it?

The goal is to humanize the speaker, establish credibility, and build trust and rapport. Once the audience connects with a person, they’ll trust you to expand to the“Story of Us,” and finally to the “Story of Now.”

Example from a personal finance app: “I started this company because one day my wife was checking our credit card bill and noticed that we were overpaying $100 every month on something we didn’t need. That’s $1200 a year. I couldn’t believe it. I spent hours trying to correct this charge and didn’t get a refund because it was too late. I decided then and there to help protect people from this type of experience.”

A story of us - the story of your customers

“Obama was never the protagonist in his speeches. The protagonist was America” - Sarada Peri, one of Obama’s speechwriters

This is where you talk about your customers. Nothing moves people to act more than feeling threatened or inspired. So what are your customers’ challenges and desires? What does their day look like and how will you improve it and help them reach their goals?

Bring together stories of your target audience - people who could benefit from your product as well as people who have used your product and benefited.

The goal is to make your audience feel seen and understood.

Example from a personal finance app: “I know I’m not the only one. All of us are trying our hardest to work and make money and spend it wisely and save. And so when we get mischarged and don’t notice it, that’s not ok. That’s money going down the drain and we don’t even know about it. Take John for example…”

A story of now - the story of the world

This is where you talk about the big picture - what’s going on in the world right now that makes your product or service matter?

Why is it urgent? And why should your customers care - i.e. what will happen if your customers don’t use your product/service?

The goal is to establish a sense of urgency and invite the customers to join your journey.

Example from a personal finance app: “People are paying for X more online services, and have X more credit cards. Our money is getting out of our control, and it’s only going to get worse. We created X to help people like us take control of our money.”

My takeaways:

• Spend time crafting a founder story that’s inspiring and relevant- this is super important. Also, a good reminder to craft your own personal story so you have a good answer to the dreaded “so tell me about yourself” intros.

• Always have these three elements in mind - the individual story, the customer story, and the big picture story - and remember that you’re taking readers/listeners on a journey through storytelling, from the personal to the macro (and vice versa).

Thanks for reading!

Natali

P.S. This is the first part of a series I’m doing on strategic frameworks. Next week I’ll cover Andy Raskin’s “Promised Land” framework.

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