The DNA of Brand Storytelling with Park Howell

IN CLEAR FOCUS: Park Howell, founder of Business of Story, and author of "Brand Bewitchery," explores the DNA of brand storytelling. Discover why narrative clarity must precede the creative brief and how to use the 10-step Story Cycle System™ to build compelling messaging. Park explains the AND, BUT, THEREFORE (ABT) framework, why brands must make the customer the hero, and how the StoryCycle Genie™ uses AI to elevate brand narratives rather than flattening them into "a sea of sameness."

Episode Transcript

Adrian Tennant: Coming up in this episode of IN CLEAR FOCUS

Park Howell: Don't talk about the brand. Nobody cares about your brand. Talk about your audience and how your brand can help them. And don't talk about what you make. Talk about what you make happen in their lives. What's in it for them.

Adrian Tennant: You're listening to IN CLEAR FOCUS, fresh perspectives on marketing and advertising produced weekly by Bigeye, a strategy-led, full-service creative agency growing brands for clients globally. Hello, I'm your host, Adrian Tennant, Bigeye's Chief Strategy Officer. Thank you for joining us. Most brands invest heavily in content, yet much of it fails to hold any attention. The oldest architecture we have for holding human attention is story, and the argument today's guest makes is that narrative clarity has to come before the brief, not after it. Park Howell is the founder of the Business of Story and the creator of the StoryCycle System, a 10-step brand narrative framework adapted from the mythic structure that underpins the world's most enduring stories. An Emmy Award-winning advertising veteran with more than four decades in the industry, Park ran his own agency for 20 years before pivoting fully into teaching brands how narrative actually works. He's the author of "Brand Bewitchery," the co-author of "The Narrative Gym for Business," and most recently the co-creator of StoryCycle Genie™, an artificial intelligence platform built to put that whole system to work in minutes rather than months. To discuss why story structure has to precede the brief, and why artificial intelligence without it just amplifies the noise, I'm delighted that Park is joining us today from Northern Arizona. Park, welcome to IN CLEAR FOCUS.

Park Howell: Adrian, thank you very much. Thanks for having me.

Adrian Tennant: Park, you spent two decades running your own advertising agency before closing its doors to focus entirely on narrative. What was it that you consistently saw brands getting wrong that convinced you story structure was worth building a whole practice around?

Park Howell: Well, it really started halfway through that two-decade tenure. I was running my agency, Park & Co., out of Phoenix, Arizona, where we raised our kids. And it was about 2003, Adrian, when people started talking about story and the importance of story and advertising and marketing and leadership and whatever. And to me, it was just like, "Well, yeah, doesn't everybody know this? I mean, what's going on?" And so I started really following that trend and thought, "Why, all of a sudden, this interest in storytelling?" And then I realized that even our own agency, we were not being intentional storytellers. We were being intuitive. And I thought to myself, "Could we have more success?" It actually came on the heels of a campaign that we launched for Goodwill of Central Arizona in 2003, our very first TV campaign for them. We had two 30-second TV commercials. One of them polled remarkably well. In fact, increased same store sales a month later by 42%. And people were actually coming in talking about the commercial. The second 30-second spot in that campaign didn't work at all. Did just nothing. Flatline. We just stopped running it. And I looked at it, Adrian, and I go, "Why does this one work and why does this one not work?" And it wasn't until I really started studying story structure did I realize that first one was an absolutely beautifully written story: set up, problem, resolution in 30 seconds that everybody could really relate to and have fun with. The second one was just a creative 30 second spot that we're like, "We're so good, we're such a great advertising agency, we'll put this out," but nobody got it. And that's when I realized how many people in our world are intuitive storytellers -- as we all are, as homo sapiens, we are intuitive storytelling apes. But how that can bite us in the butt if we don't become intentional about story structure, narrative frameworks, and so forth, to use our creativity to build upon, so that we are speaking to that limbic buying brain. And that's really what got me studying story. And the more I studied it, the more clients came to me and said, "Would you teach my people what you are learning about story so we could all be more effective?" Arizona State University showed up and said, "We would like you to come and teach a master's course on storytelling in business for sustainability," which I did for five years. That's when the universe basically said, "Okay, Park, I'm done with you as an ad agency owner. I need you to go out into the world and teach leaders how to tell better stories so that they can be more effective in communication."

Adrian Tennant: In your books and on your podcast, you talk about The Hero's Journey, not as a storytelling metaphor, but as a functional brand architecture. What does it mean to treat it as the blueprint for a brand?

Park Howell: Yeah, I first learned about The Hero's Journey when our son Parker was going to film school at Chapman University in Orange, California, a very prominent film school. And this was back in 2006 to 2010. I said, "Parker, send me your books and your recorded lectures when you're done with them, since I'm paying for them! Because I would like to know, what does Hollywood know about storytelling?" And one of the first books he gave me was The Hero with a Thousand Faces, you know, Joseph Campbell. And when I looked at The Hero's Journey, it just hit me, Adrian, like, you know, a ton of bricks. It was like,"This is a customer journey. This is an agency owner journey. This is a journey that we are all on. Why don't they teach us this in the advertising, marketing, and sales world?" So I looked at it, and to make it un-woo-woo, take the 'woo' out of Hollywood with it, I mapped it to business and created my 10-step StoryCycle System. And I tried it on my very first customer as a science project to see if what I felt intuitively would work would actually work. And that first customer, we used it, she embraced it. It was called Adelante Healthcare, a community health center here in Arizona. They ended up, over the next six years, growing by 600%. And Avin Sathe Tafoya, the CEO at the time who I worked with, said it was simply because they got their story dialed in through our StoryCycle System process. And it became the operating manual for everything they did. And that is when I realized, "Okay, I'm onto something here." I didn't invent storytelling, but now I can see how agencies can apply it in, you know, the B2B and the B2C world actually.

Adrian Tennant: Another key concept in your work is that the brand is not the hero of its own story - the customer is. Park, walk us through that reframe and why it matters.

Park Howell: Yeah, and that's something I think people are hearing more and more about. 'StoryBrand' was really the first one to popularize that. And a lot of people will say, "Oh, are you just a knockoff of 'StoryBrand?'" I go, "No, I was actually doing the StoryCycle System eight years before 'StoryBrand' became anything." I wanted to mention that because I'm probably telling your listeners something that they've already heard. But it was a major paradigm shift for me, is that when you are telling a story on behalf of your agency or a customer, client or whatever, you always want to put your audience, that prospect or that customer at the center of the story. They become the protagonist, the hero of the story, if you will, and then you show up as the Yoda mentor or guide. You, as the brand, are simply helping your customers, who are on their own hero's journey, get what they want out of life. So it's kind of the first thing that I tell people. "Rule number one, you are not the center of your story. Your customer always is." Because if you don't tell a story from their point of view, what's in it for them? They don't care about you. And then the second rule of thumb is, "Your stories are not about what you make. but what you make happen for your customers." They don't care about your widget. They don't care about your SaaS product. They don't care about your brilliant technology or your AI. They only care what that actually produces for their benefit. It's the same sort of thing. It's the major shift for any sort of agency or brand out there. Don't talk about the brand. Nobody cares about your brand. Talk about your audience and how your brand can help them. And don't talk about what you make, talk about what you make happen in their lives, what's in it for them.

Adrian Tennant: Park, when a marketing team accepts that the customer is the hero and the brand is the mentor, what needs to change in a brand book or in a campaign brief?

Park Howell: Well, first, they're thinking, number one. And I've got a tool that anybody can use. I'll walk you through it really quick right now. And if you've got a piece of paper there or whatever, or mark this on the show and come back and listen to it again, it's called the AND, BUT, THEREFORE framework. It's a little messaging framework that absolutely has you place your audience at the center of your story. And it's great for storytellers out there because it gets your brain thinking from the audience's point of view. And so how that works is just follow these very quick steps. You're selling something, right? So I want you to think about the specific audience persona you are selling to. One audience persona per ABT framework. Write that audience down. Name them. Be as specific as you possibly can. Then follow that with what do they want relative to your offering. They may not even know what your offering is yet, but that you're kind of foreshadowing what your call to action is going to be. So who's your audience, what do they want, and why is it important to them? You're raising the stakes. So it's not that they just physically want something, but they emotionally want it to do something for them. We call that the AND statement of agreement. Audience, what do they want, and why is it important to them? Now, let's go to act two, or the problem that you are going to solve for the conflict. We call this the BUT statement of contradiction, because without conflict, you have no story. Without a problem to solve, you have no customer. So here's what I want you to do. While still thinking about that audience, I want you to say, but. Then name the negative emotion they are experiencing because of the problem that is keeping them from getting what they want. But you're frustrated, you're overwhelmed, you're fearful, you're whatever it might be because of this problem. And it's really important to use that conjunction word because in there. Harvard did a study back in 1978 about the power of "because," the cause and effect nature of "because" to get people to do things. But you're frustrated because of this problem. Now you move on to the third line. And literally, this becomes a three-line paragraph, but you're using the three forces of story of agreement, contradiction, and consequence. Line number three. Therefore, now I want you to create a contrast from that negative emotion in your BUT statement of contradiction with a positive emotion directly following the THEREFORE. THEREFORE, picture how excited you will be. Picture how relieved. Imagine whatever that positive emotion is when you do this with us. So now you're introducing the brand and your product or service that is going to help them overcome that problem. In the second part of your THEREFORE statement, the brand gets introduced at the very last. Now you can do this very, very quickly. It's set up that you get an ABT down. You can share it with someone within 15 seconds: set up, problem, resolution. You get them nodding and they're saying, "Wow, you understand who I am. You appreciate what I want and why it's important to me, and you are empathizing with me as to why I don't have it. Therefore, I am building trust in you that you have a way forward." So it's a really, really powerful storytelling tool. We call the ABT the DNA of storytelling because essentially it is the building block for every story, any story ever told.

Adrian Tennant: Park, you've also said most brand messaging fails a simple test by collapsing into what you call an AAA narrative, "and, and, and." Why is that pattern so deadly for a brand trying to be remembered?

Park Howell: Well, because you never get out of exposition. And by exposition, I mean, you never get out of setup or act one. "And then this happened, and then this happened, and then this happened, and then this happened, and then this happened." And you are boring the limbic brain. Now, the limbic brain sits atop, you know, it's back here hidden in our subconscious. It is pattern-seeking, and, but, therefore, "and, and, and, and, and" is a boring pattern to it because it's not solving for anything. It is a problem-solution center of our brain. It's our survival mechanism. So that's why it likes, "you want this," and "it's important because of this, but here's why you're not surviving the problem you're currently going through." And then the THEREFORE, it is speaking directly in the way the limbic brain wants to make meaning out of the madness of being human beings. "And, and, and." Or is it, there's nothing to solve for and it dismisses you.

Adrian Tennant: Let's take a short break. We'll be right back after this message.

Adrian Tennant: Welcome back. I'm talking with Park Howell, founder of the Business of Story and the creator of the StoryCycle system. Let's talk about artificial intelligence, or as you reframe it, 'artful intelligence.' Now, you spent roughly two years building the StoryCycle Genie™, rather than just using an off-the-shelf AI tool. Can you tell us about the StoryCycle Genie™, what it is, who it's for, and how someone gets started with it?

Park Howell: Sure. Well, it is based off my 10-step StoryCycle System. I've got a whole textbook on "Brand Bewitchery." I have been using this process for over 20 years. And one of my customers came to me -- this is back in 2017 -- his name is Sean Schroeder at an agency called Blue River, a digital agency. And they had built out a SaaS platform called Mira. And they were trying to brand the two for one overarching brand narrative. They'd worked with a couple agencies, got nowhere. They were frustrated. After a couple of years, They brought me in and we walked through the StoryCycle System. We were able to find that beautiful brand narrative for them. It took a few months. They ended up growing exponentially and sold both the agency and the Mira platform. He came to me then after COVID, and he goes, "I love the StoryCycle System. It just is too hard if people don't really understand the theory of it, and it takes too long. We could expedite it with AI." So he was the guy that inspired me. And he built a proof of concept, and I'm like, "Wow, this is amazing!" What literally used to take months, you can now do in an hour or two, following the IP of the StoryCycle System with the AND, BUT, THEREFORE built into the Genie at its core. So it was built by agency principals, myself and Sean, another gentleman, Matt Levine, who was Sean's partner at Blue River. So, it was built by us agency principals for agency professionals to be able to white-label it and bring it into their agency and become AI-ready immediately -- with how the Genie does everything from help define the brand story, to creating marketing strategy off of that brand story, to then every possible piece of content you could imagine based on that story. And I was speaking with a marketing consultant, Brian Burkhardt, and he's been using the Genie. And I said, "You also use Claude. What do you like about the Genie over Claude?" And he goes, "Well, the Genie finds my blind spots in my story, in my narrative that Claude doesn't. Claude's too general." The Genie is the only narrative native AI platform, and I like to say artful intelligence because it collaborates with you and you collaborate with it to bring like, remember the old Bionic Man and Bionic Woman TV shows? It helps you become more bionic with your own storytelling, with your own smarts. It doesn't replace you. You have still retained the identity of who you are as a marketing professional, an ad professional, branding person. It just helps you expedite that professionalism, your creativity, and your experience like no generic AI can do.

Adrian Tennant: As you know, there's real anxiety among brand marketers right now, with some observing that using artificial intelligence flattens creative work into a sea of sameness. How can leading with a disciplined story structure change what artificial intelligence tools produce?

Park Howell: You're absolutely right. Generic AI, ChatGPT, by their very nature, are flattening your world out there. The Genie doesn't do that because we spent two years building it on the narrative structure. It has one job and one job only: that is, finding your brand story, helping you refine it, and then operationalizing it across your enterprise, across your client base, or whatever. It is specific to that function and outcome. Where generic AI does a little bit of everything pretty well, ours is specific to brand storytelling operationalization. And we call it Story Ops. It's like, how can you make sure that story that only your brand can tell -- we call that Story Sovereignty -- that story only your brand can tell has actually been revealed to you, has actually been crafted in a single source of truth way in one platform that can then be shared with all other members of the team. And so they're all working from that same single source of truth. That's the difference between us. Generic AI flattens everything and mumbles about your brand. The StoryCycle Genie™ was built specifically to make your brand story sing.

Adrian Tennant: Your 10-step StoryCycle System grew out of studying the film curriculum your son brought home for you from film school. Park, how did that self-directed education turn into a trademarked framework you could apply to a real business?

Park Howell: That's an awesome question, Adrian. No one's ever asked me that before. Well done. How did it come into it? When I first learned about it, I had 20 years of work in the advertising branding world. And my core thing, I'm a writer by trait. I've learned a lot of great design skills from working with wonderful designers, but I'm a writer and a strategist. And my superpower is branding: taking a complex message and making it simple. And it's just something that I didn't know until I started working. I go, "Oh, okay." It was when I saw The Hero's Journey, it just, like I said, that whole strategy, my whole writing brain came together. I'm like, "Why don't we use this as our roadmap?" That was the first thing. It was a few years later that I learned about the AND, BUT, THEREFORE from Dr. Randy Olson, who was a Harvard PhD evolutionary biologist, turned USC film school grad, turned storytelling trainer and coach to academia and to the science world, basically, because of his science background. There was another time it hit me like a ton of bricks. I go, "Here's the DNA." And I called it "The DNA of storytelling" to Randy. And he goes, "Wait a minute. I'm the evolutionary biologist here. I should have come up with that!" But I'm the brander, right? And it just totally made sense to me. It was something that I was missing as a marketer, where I was winging it more than winning it because I was not intentional about how story structure worked because I didn't really understand it. We go way back before that. I actually studied music composition and theory in college. I started seeing the similarities between story composition and theory that I had learned in music composition and theory and realized that there was a great white space within the marketing advertising world where I could help agency owners and principals become even more effective with how they run their agencies as well as land business when they use a story approach. So they stop pitching capabilities and start demonstrating abilities by, again, placing that prospect at the center of the story and what you can do for them. And it just all came together. It's kind of like the universe was saying, "Dude, this is what I want you to do next." And it was 2016 when I closed the doors of my agency. I was 55 years old when I did that, Adrian. And I had so many people think I was nuts. They said, "Why didn't you sell it? You built it. You spent 20 years building it. Why didn't you sell it?" And I said, "Because I would lose another five years to whoever buys it in order to keep the doors open for them before I could exit." And then I'd be 60 years old, and I wouldn't be able to do what I wanted to do. And that was to help consult, teach, coach, and speak around the world to share what I learned about the power of intentional storytelling and to provide the frameworks, like I just did here, the AND, BUT, THEREFORE. There's another one, the five primal elements of a short story, a little anecdotal story you can tell in under a minute to make your business point for you. And why that's important is people will argue with your opinions and assertions, but they can't argue with a true story well told, making your business point. And then, of course, my overarching 10-step StoryCycle System. Those are my three core frameworks that I teach to help people become better communicators and more confident and compelling storytellers.

Adrian Tennant: Well, as regular listeners know, we love case studies on IN CLEAR FOCUS. So, Park, using any of your frameworks or the artificial intelligence tool, what success have you seen with the client?

Park Howell: Yeah, well, since you have a lot of branders listening to this, I know you've got some B2C marketers and I understand even some students. So let me share one with you. We are going to go to Quebec, Canada. There is a used car dealership there called Pret Auto Partez, which means "ready, car, go" in English. It's run by a very brilliant guy, Andre Martin Hobbs. Andre Martin Hobbs came to me right after I did my very first storytelling training at Social Media Marketing World in San Diego in 2016. And he said, "I've just opened this car dealership. Would you help me develop the brand around it?" And he told me, and I kind of said, "I don't know, used car dealership, I would like to have something a little bit bigger than that maybe." And then he said, "Oh, and by the way, this is for credit risk Canadian buyers." So then I'm thinking, "Oh my goodness, is this just another smarmy used car dealership that's going to take advantage of people that are in poor financial straits, right?" And so Andre said, "I'm going to call you in three weeks so we can get going." I said, "Okay, great," really figuring he wasn't going to call because they never call. They either hire you right then and there or they don't. True to his word, Andre called and he said, "Okay, Park, I'm ready to go." And I was still like, "I don't know." And I said, "Okay, well just tell me about your business." That's really where I was like, "Wow! Okay, this is amazing!" I was telling myself a negative story, an anti-story about him and his industry. Then he told me what he was really up to. But they weren't articulating this to anybody else. And that's what he needed help with. So Adrian, what Andre was doing is he goes, "My whole mission is to help Canadians repair their credit. I just happen to be using used car sales to do that." He said, "Now, these are good people. They maybe lost their money during the worldwide recession. Maybe it was a divorce. Maybe it was a health thing. These are not bad people. They have fallen on hard times. And they are being taken advantage of by smarmy used car salesmen that are going to get this huge margin on their loan. And they'll probably end up repoing the car in about three or four months. And then they'll just do it all over again." He goes, "I don't want that to happen. So what we are doing here at Pratt Auto Partay is when anybody walks in the door, they have to first go through a two to three hour financial planning program one-on-one with one of our people. We get to see their finances and understand if they can even afford a car or not. And if they can't afford a car, they might want that F-250, but they're gonna get the Yugo because that's all that they can afford and that's the only car we're going to sell them. Then we are going to follow up with them every month for the first six months to make sure that they're making ends meet, answer any questions they have, because our goal is to get them to pay for that car without missing a payment for two years. And when they do that, they go from a non-prime buyer into the prime buyer mode." So I said, "That is brilliant." He goes, "I'm just simply using the used car industry as a way to help them do that." So I came up with, and let's use the AND, BUT, THEREFORE to first set the premise of it. It's going to start with their customer. You, as an at-risk buyer, so the market says, want the freedom and the self-respect of owning your own car. That's our AND statement of agreement. BUT statement, BUT you're frustrated because you have bad credit. Just that easy. THEREFORE you can now drive a car you can own that will repair your credit when you purchase through Pratt Auto Partez. Just that simple. Setup, problem, resolution, ABT, and action. That led to the tagline that became their overarching narrative theme. And that narrative theme is: "Pret Autopartes, your vehicle to financial freedom." It became so powerful that Andre used it as his internal operating system. We took them through the full 10-step StoryCycle System so he had his complete narrative strategy spelled out. Every new hire that came in had to read through the overall narrative strategy and the narrative about Pré-Auto Partez and then sign off on it and say, "Yes, I want to be a part of this." They ended up letting go those that came from the auto industry and were just interested in selling cars, and they attracted only those who were interested in helping Canadians repair their credit. His goal was to grow Praet Auto Partez by 20% when he first talked to me. They ended up growing by over 400%, became the fastest growing car dealership in the Quebec area, had people getting on buses traveling eight hours to Praet Auto Partez from across the country in order to get the car that would help them get them back on their financial feet, so to speak. So that's a great example of turning an anti-story my own into a positive story, helping a customer really define what their story is, using the StoryCycle System to get to that final, and but therefore, that gave us the central focus of their story that led to the overarching theme, "Pré-Autopartés, your vehicle to financial freedom."

Adrian Tennant: Great example, and a great conversation. Park, if IN CLEAR FOCUS listeners would like to learn more about the business of Story, try out the StoryCycle Genie™, or connect with you directly, what's the best way to do so?

Park Howell: Yeah, right now your next step is go to storycyclegenie.ai. Click on the little red button there and get your free brand story assessment. In about 60 seconds, it's going to review your website. And it's going to come back to you with a grade on how well you are telling your story from an A plus to an F minus, all based off of our StoryCycle System. And then it's going to give you a 14-point storytelling assessment that will validate what you're doing well. reveal gaps that you can easily and quickly fix, and even inspire you with new ways to think about your story. And it's absolutely free. When you're done with it, it's going to email you a PDF of your story, and you can look at it. And of course, at that point, if you want to start fixing your story and building out your brand brain, then you can subscribe to the genie and do your thing. If not, you at least will have this amazing intel to help you keep moving forward on producing and sharing the most powerful brand story you can.

Adrian Tennant: And of course, you've written several books on this topic. Where do we find those?

Park Howell: Yeah, so "Brand Bewitchery," if you are interested in the overall branding process behind the StoryCycle Genie™. If you'd like to learn more about the ABT, I co-wrote this with Dr. Randy Olson, "The Narrative Gym for Business." He's the gentleman that taught me about the AND, BUT, THEREFORE. It's all on either go to Amazon or you can visit me over at businessofstory.com. Hit me up on the contact form if you'd like to connect. And I just send people to LinkedIn. I think I'm the only Park, P-A-R-K, Howell on LinkedIn. Shoot me a note there if you'd like to connect. One other thing: I just launched a newsletter on LinkedIn called Brand Story Ops for Agencies. I've already gotten like nearly 2000 subscribers to it. So every week I've got a new article out there, and it's giving you story tips and some of my techniques I use and talk about how you can activate story ops throughout your own agency and/or with your clients as a whole new revenue offering for your agency.

Adrian Tennant: Park, thank you very much for being our guest this week on IN CLEAR FOCUS.

Park Howell: My pleasure, Adrian. Thanks for having me.

Adrian Tennant: Thanks again to my guest this week, Park Howell, founder of The Business of Story. As always, you'll find a complete transcript of our conversation with timestamps and links to the resources we discussed on the IN CLEAR FOCUS page at Bigeyeagency.com. Thank you for listening to IN CLEAR FOCUS, produced by Bigeye. I've been your host, Adrian Tennant. Until next week, goodbye.

Timestamps

00:00: Introduction: The Power of Storytelling in Marketing

00:20” Meet Park Howell: A Journey into Narrative Clarity

02:08: The Importance of Intentional Storytelling

05:07: The Hero's Journey as Brand Architecture

07:11: Reframing the Brand's Role: The Customer as Hero

09:12: Shifting Perspectives in Brand Messaging

13:05: Avoiding the AAA Narrative Trap

14:19: Break: A Message from Visha Koudel

15:19: Artful Intelligence: The Story Cycle Genie

19:02: Combating AI's Creative Flattening with Story Structure

20:27: From Film Theory to a Trademarked Framework

24:06: Case Study: Transforming a Used Car Dealership's Narrative

29:49: Conclusion: Connecting with Park Howell

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