What’s your NQ?
Wednesday, February 21st, 2007I was on a call the other night with the founders of a freshly minted online startup. The company has a lot of potential to do good in the world–their hearts are in the right place and their business model is very prosumer.
But one thing was missing: a compelling narrative. I told them (paraphrasing here), “If you want this thing to reach critical mass with the ‘conscious consumer’ market, you need to convey a narrative that truly inspires them.”
With values-driven consumers, it’s all about the context: why is a company doing what they do? What’s the story behind their reasons for being? And does their narrative speak to my values?
So it got me thinking: what if we could begin measuring the Narrativity Quotient(tm) of brands (and their marketers)? I use the word “narrativity” because, in academic parlance at least, it describes how “narrative” a narrative actually is. If it’s disjunct and hard to follow, it has low narrativity. The same holds for the converse.
In a crowded, increasingly niched marketplace, your brand’s narrativity matters. A lot. Do your streams of business represent a coherent narrative? Is that narrative compelling and easy to understand? Is every email an extension of your core narrative?
How about every conversation?
