by Lake

Can a Brand Have a Tragic Flaw?

In fiction, a tragic flaw is a fatal characteristic that brings down an otherwise competent character. It’s the weakness that triggers tragedy. Gatsby’s obsession. Macbeth’s ambition. Walter White’s greed (for money and power). It’s not the external enemies that destroy these characters, but their inner demons.

So here’s something to think about:

Can a brand have a tragic flaw?

If yes, how does it present, take hold, and bring about your brand’s destruction?

The Flaw is in the DNA

A tragic flaw isn’t a mistake. It’s a core trait, most likely a strength. Walter White was determined to care for his family. His first taste of success fueled his greed.

It’s the same for a brand. The strength that empowered growth and market share sours and becomes the thing that undermines everything. It starts with basic positioning:

  • We’re the fastest
  • We’re a luxury brand
  • We’re the originator / leader
  • We’re the disruptor

In the beginning, these aren’t problems. They’re differentiators. They’re the very elements that attract an audience and drive growth. However, the traits that define a brand also limit it.

  • The company built on exclusivity becomes inaccessible at the first sign of economic trouble.
  • The firm committed to innovation churns out crap that nobody wants.
  • The SaaS start up that’s so fast and nimble never learns long-term sales discipline.
  • The brand that brags about being the first gets leapfrogged by better competitors.

Consider the rise and fall of three iconic brands:

BlackBerry: The technology was cutting-edge. Their confidence in their product blinded them to the change on the horizon.

WeWork: Ambition and aggressive growth is a good thing. There’s a difference between aggressive growth and unrestrained growth. The latter invites collapse.

Blockbuster: At first glance, it seems like their fatal flaw was ignorance. But we know the truth. It was late fees arrogance that their business model was untouchable for years to come.

These brands knew their markets, yet they loved their image more than they loved their customers. That’s where their strengths hardened into blind spots. That’s why they didn’t see the changes until it was too late. That’s why they all bombed so spectacularly.

In fiction, we call this a character arc that’s flattened. In business, it’s called bankruptcy.

Can a Brand Change Its Fate?

Tragedy is expected in stories. Tragedy is the ingredient that elevates a mediocre story into something worthy of a reader’s time. Tragedy makes an already good story legendary. (Imagine how disappointed you would’ve been had Walter White lived.) Tragedy in stories is a very good thing. Not so much in business.

Fortunately, in business, you get to pivot. You can rebrand, refocus, and reintroduce your wiser hero to your audience. You can stretch up market and stretch down market, and happily embrace new revenue-generating segments along the way.

But doing so requires awareness and honesty. It requires leaders who recognize when the story has changed and get real with their response. It requires leaders brave enough to ask, “What part of our identity is now holding us back? Which of our strengths no longer matters?”

In a good novel, a character’s self-realization leads to a strong plot point. If it’s in the right place, the hero is willing to die as he enters the story’s final battle. For a brand, self-realization means you avoid the tragic ending altogether.

So, Can a Brand Have a Tragic Flaw?

Absolutely. Your job is to identify and eliminate it long before the final curtain.

by Lake

Pain Points, Plots Points, & Products

Every great story begins with a problem. Not a setting, not a vibe, not even a great character. None of these really matter unless there’s a problem that shakes up somebody’s world. Problem is another word for pain; and pain is the most important ingredient in fiction.

Pain Starts the Plot

Fiction writers call the moment the character’s life gets disrupted the inciting incident. Maybe the house burns down. Maybe somebody dies. Maybe they realize they’ve been living a lie. Maybe they realize their spouse has been living a lie. Whatever it is, it hurts and hurts bad. That hurt launches the plot.

Without pain, there is no story. A character waking up and making eggs is not a story. But if the eggs are the the last thing the character owns because he just got canned, that’s better. Even better if the character is cooking his eggs and a bad guy crashes through the window intent on murdering the can and stealing his eggs! Now we’re talking.

Pain gives the protagonist a new purpose. Pain forces the character to make a choice, to take action, to change. No pain, no change. No change, no arc. No arc…no story.

Marketing Follows the Same Rules

You’ve heard the saying that people don’t buy features, they buy benefits. It’s true only if those benefits offer a path out of pain.

The consumer’s pain may not always be as dramatic as the fictional character’s pain. But there’s still a gap between where they are and where they want to be. That gap is or includes their pain.

Good marketers shine a light on that pain. They don’t do it to exploit it, but to empathize with it and make a promise: You don’t have to stay here.

From Pain to Promise

Whether the brand promises clearer skin, less stress, more confidence, or something else, it’s offering a pathway out of pain.

What does this exploration of fiction plots and consumer pain points tell us? Simply this:

Don’t start with the solution.

Whether you’re writing a landing page, a sales letter, or a brochure, don’t lead with your brilliant product. Consumers don’t care how wonderful your widget is unless it fixes their problem.

Instead, start with pain. Find it. Name it. Understand it. Show it. That’s how you earn attention. That’s how you earn trust. Because when you can articulate someone’s problem better than they can, they will assume that you understand how to solve it. If your company has done the job correctly, they’re right.

Start with the wound. Then give us a reason to believe it can be healed. It works because human beings, like characters, are wired to move away from pain. In fiction, the journey gives us catharsis. In marketing, the journey gives us transformation.

by Lake

Horror Movie by Paul Tremblay

(Warning – spoilers ahead.)

The unreliable narrator of Horror Movie wonders, “Will the movie be something you take with you, that stays with you, burrows into and lives in a corner inside you?”

He’s referring to the Hollywood production that he was a part of. But we could ask the same about any horror story because the best works stay with us.

The Plot

In 1993, the unnamed narrator is recruited to play the “Thin Kid” in an independent film aptly titled Horror Story. The screenplay is full of dark themes, a contrast to the bright idealism of the young filmmakers.

In the fictional story, a group of artsy high school friends place an unsightly mask on one of their own, stand him in the dark corner of an abandoned school’s cluttered classroom, and spend long nights turning him into a monster.

Something for worse transpires on the set and the production ends with lifelong consequences for all involved.

Only three of the film’s scenes are ever released. Yet Horror Movie takes on a life of its own, morphing into urban legend on Reddit boards and film school classrooms. Now, thirty years later, the Hollywood machine is rebooting the story and the “Thin Kid” is back.

The Takeaway

The worst monsters are the ones we create ourselves. Perhaps the idealistic filmmakers were attempting to put flesh on the bones of that theme. But that is not the true heart of Horror Movie the novel.

The story’s brutal truth is in the narrator’s scars, whether real or imagined, and in disturbing story beats such as:

There was a terrible, awful silence, and I could see out of only one eye because blood had splashed into the other…

Horror Movie is the kind of novel readers will either love or hate. Fans who require straightforward horrors won’t fall in love with this one.

If, on the other hand, you allow your monsters to lurk at the edges of your vision, always scuttling away a half-second before you get them in focus, you’ll love this one.

It may be something you take with you, that stays with you, that burrows into and lives in a corner inside you…