It can be summed up easily. Narrative Branding is an inductive approach. Brand positioning is a deductive approach.
Inductive is showing people a painting and evaluating how much it engages people.
Deductive is asking people what kind of painting they want to see and then painting it.
Now that might need a little more explanation.
In Narrative Branding we bring new narratives to your audience — consumers, customers, employees. Yes, it begins with audience. What we are looking for are the metaphors that resonate strongly with your audience and the stories that they tell. We do not expect them to provide “the answer” at that point. From there we create new narratives for the brand by imaging the future. Then we use market research to see which narrative is the most engaging and compelling.
Traditional brand positioning begins with deducing what is important to your audience by assessing the world as it is today. You also want to assess how people view the competition. From that you isolate 2, 3 or 4 attributes which are both important and different from the competition. The last step is to put those attributes into a verbal positioning statement that is researched, although the words in the final statement are not mean to be used in the marketplace. Then the positioning statement is handed over to the creatives who are responsible for translating these attributes into the new branding.
We can go back and forth all day about the merits of one method vs. another. At the end of the day we come back to the fact that 63% of CMOs and other marketing decision makers want a method that is more effective than brand positioning.
Marketers unsatisfied with brand positioning
And that those who are looking for better methods are much more likely to be using or exploring the use of brand stories and storytelling.
Marketers are embracing brand stories
This is not my opinion. This is not the opinion of another branding expert or a branding agency. This is the opinion of marketers who use these methods. And theirs is the opinion that counts. The evidence is in the JupiterResearch (now Forrester Research) study conducted six months ago.
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I like your framework. And I think this is why the oldie-but-goodie research exercise of photo sorting is always so powerful. When you show a group of target customers photos, and ask a relevant question (like, “which of these captures your experience as a computer user?”) you get amazingly strong results. People quickly select which picture resonates, and their choice of words as they describe their selected picture are amazingly rich.