For lack of a better story

Martyn Gooding

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I bought a OnePlus One recently.

It’s a smartphone from China with iPhone 6 level specs.

It’s the best phone on the market in almost every way - screen, camera, looks, price.

It’s not out in the UK so no one has really seen it, or knows anything about it.

Which means it has no brand equity to speak of.

So when people ask what it is in the pub - I can’t explain it what it’s all about.

I’ve not been given the spiel to trot out.

Or more specifically - the people asking haven’t been pre-prepared with whether this is a good product or not.

They’ve heard of Google and Apple and know what they stand for.

But OnePlus don't have a widespread brand so all the stories are functional ones – just listing the specs.

There’s a reason apple don’t sell on specs.

It’s too rational.

But that’s all I have to fall back on.

I can’t talk about about a company belief.

Or an ethos.

There’s no mythology.

No iconography like a logo of the forbidden apple from the Garden of Eden.

So I make it up.

And this for me is what we do as a creative agency.

Make up stories for consumers.

Or better still, find and dramatise stories in an authentic way.

Because without them you’re leaving your customers to rationalise their own decisions with nothing other than specs.

This is actually where I find real value in planning departments.

They find the truths of the brand.

When I worked on Ford, we had document called ‘The Book of Truths' produced by Ogilvy.

Each page was a single image and a simple, compelling truth.

For example: the drag coefficient of the Ford Focus is the same as a bullet.

Now that’s an exciting start point for creative story telling

Hollywood does it too.

They have companies that find amazing human stories and sell them to scriptwriters.

Ben Affleck’s award winning film Argo came from approach, as do many others.

Maybe creative agencies need to behave a bit more like this.

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Martyn Gooding

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