By Janinne Brunyee
A new imperative
At Boost! Collective, we believe it has never been more important for organizations – whether they’re startups, established firms or nonprofits – to forge close, personal and authentic connections with their key audiences. This requires moving beyond facts, figures and features. It means engaging with your audience’s head and their heart. And there’s no better way to do that than with a story.
While all organizations have many stories to tell, perhaps one of the most powerful is the story of their founder. It allows the organization to reveal the founder’s personal journey, their values and the big idea that energized their decision to create the organization in the first place.
Connecting with values
As the millennial generation continues to be a key audience for many organizations, the need to find ways to connect at the values level becomes increasingly urgent. According to a recent Forbes article, millennials as a consumer group care about what they perceive to be genuine and authentic. This interest falls somewhere between a purely aesthetic preference and a search for honesty and truth. It’s a powerful force for motivating millennial customers.
There are a number of well-known examples of founder stories that have been integrated into the fiber of an organization’s values-driven message: Blake Mycoskie of TOMS shoes and Jessica Alba’s Honest company.
As a story-driven marketing and communications firm, our team is passionate about working with mission-driven organizations and the bold individuals who found them. One of our favorites is Aimee Robinson, founder of EcoBalanza.
Big idea: Taking care of the environment
Aimee founded EcoBalanza seven years ago to be the anchor for her personal, philosophical and professional equilibrium. The mission: to discover how to create a sofa with integrity. To reach her destination, to build a small, custom, truly toxin-free and sustainable furniture design studio in Seattle, she had to blaze her own trail and draw her own roadmap.
We have told Aimee’s powerful story in a number of formats including on the About us page of her website, a case study that showcases the work we did for her company and through a blog post that provides an intimate and personal experience of visiting the workshop. Here is a short extract:
“Before I leave, Aimee shows me one last thing. She brings it over cradled in two hands; the foot of a couch. It’s only about 4 inches long, hand tooled on a lathe and stained. She hands it to me, like a sacred artifact, and she’s beaming with pride. “Look at this, look at these colors, look how this stain has come out”. And she’s right, it’s beautiful. There are warm tones, cold tones, streaks of lights and darks, more complexities in this one tiny detail than in half of my apartment. “
Beauty as empowerment
With enthusiasm and excitement, we are putting the finishing touches on the content for a new website for Visette, a one-of-a-kind dress shop in Seattle’s vibrant Capitol Hill district. What makes Visette special? It’s not just the beautiful dresses sourced from emerging local and international designers. It’s Visal Sam, the founder.
Visal is a woman of absolute determination and contrasts. Her drive and ambition for her career as a commodities broker, and now the creative force behind Visette, was borne of a painful childhood shaped by Cambodia’s civil war. Surrounded by hunger, brutality and tragedy, she found solace in the beautiful. “Imagine that all the people around are dressed the same, and all you see is black. This is what made me embrace color and shape,” she recalled.
“We know that beauty is only skin deep,” she acknowledged, “but we also know that you feel differently when you look good, and that’s what motivates me.” She relishes the role as a sage guide for her clients as they explore fashion beyond the box that has hemmed them in. “I think a woman who steps into something unexpected, something new, suddenly sees another side of herself.” It’s a transformation she’s witnessed many times over. This has shaped one of Visal’s fundamental convictions: “We are all inspired by beauty.”
It is Visal’s life experiences and passion for empowerment that are the key drivers for the content we are developing for www.visetteboutique.com which launches in early March.
Your founder story is potentially an unexplored treasure that could allow you to invite your audience – customers, funders, donors and more – into the heart of your organization. We would love the opportunity to work with you to tell it.
Boost! Collective is a story-driven marketing and communications firm. We work collaboratively to discover, create and tell the powerful stories that drive deep engagement with your audiences.
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