North Story.
At Makeshift, the core of our 'Make' phase and the guiding force for all that follows is embodied in a deliverable called the North Story. This framework is born from the fusion of two pivotal elements: the 'north star' and the 'brand story.'
North Star Meets Brand Story
In the startup world, the north star refers to a guiding principle, goal or metric that drives the strategic direction and decision-making process of the company.
For startups, identifying a north star is crucial for a few reasons:
Focus: It helps the team concentrate efforts on what matters most, ensuring resources are allocated efficiently.
Alignment: It ensures that all team members are working towards a common goal, even as individual tasks and projects may vary.
Measurement: It provides a clear metric or set of metrics that can be used to measure progress and success.
Decision-making: When faced with tough choices, referring back to the North Star can help in making decisions that align with the long-term vision and goals of the startup.
Then there's the brand story – a cohesive narrative that encompasses the facts and feelings created by your brand. A brand story goes beyond mere specifications or features of your products or services. Instead, it connects with your audience by focusing on the values and experiences that your brand offers.
Here are some key elements of a brand story:
Origin: How and why the company was founded. This often includes the founder's motivations, challenges they faced and their vision.
Vision: The future goals and aspirations of the brand, showing a commitment to growth and improvement in line with its values.
Purpose: What the company stands for, its core values, and what it aims to achieve beyond profit. This could relate to social, environmental or cultural goals.
Products/Services: How the products or services fit not only into the brand's story, but also into people’s lives.
Journey: The evolution of the brand over time, including major milestones, setbacks, and successes. This shows resilience and commitment to the brand's values.
People: The individuals behind the brand, including employees, customers, partners and influencers.
A well-crafted brand story resonates with a target audience, building a connection that goes beyond the product, leading to brand loyalty and advocacy. It's an integral part of a brand's identity and marketing strategy.
While crucial, brand stories are sometimes relegated to the realms of brand marketing or seen as just tools for awareness.
North Story: A Fusion of Product and Purpose
The North Story combines these two worlds. It's an expression of your company that is both rigorous and inspiring. Think of it as the DNA of your company – a comprehensive narrative that unifies and amplifies everything you do, make and say.
Here’s how we’ve seen teams use their North Story to drive cross-functional action:
Product: Guides product development, serving as a benchmark for the roadmap. It inspires the creation of new features and experiences and helps teams prioritize them.
UX and Design: Informs design language and user experience, impacting aspects like onboarding flows and retention strategies.
Brand Marketing: Sets the overarching tone for the company's presence across all discovery channels. It dictates the high-level narratives and communications, shaping how the brand is perceived in the market. This could range from the visual style of marketing materials to the themes of advertising campaigns.
Product Marketing: Drives value messaging and influences customer interactions and sales enablement materials. It ensures that product marketing efforts align with the broader brand narrative, enhancing the product's market positioning.
Growth and Content Marketing: Informs thought leadership and content creation, supercharging performance in the marketing funnel from top to bottom. It plays a significant role in content strategy, directing the themes and messages that resonate with target audiences and nurture leads.
Sales: Becomes a tool for storytelling in customer interactions, sharpening messaging in sales conversations. It provides compelling reasons to believe in the product and the company, enriching everything from elevator pitches at events to detailed proposals.
Operations: The North Story influences operational aspects like hiring strategies, cultural initiatives and compensation structures. It helps ensure that the company's internal operations and culture reflect and reinforce its external narrative.
Integrating the North Story into each of these departments ensures a coherent, unified approach to both product and brand development, aligning every aspect of the company with its core narrative. This alignment enhances cohesiveness and effectiveness in execution, fostering a strong, unified brand presence in the market.
The North Story isn’t just about branding; it’s a compass that answers ‘why now’ and directs every department towards a common goal and sets you down the path towards Story-Market Fit.
