The Cautionary Tale of Telling Tales
For as long as advertising has existed, leading practitioners have highlighted the importance of brand storytelling. Explaining where a brand has come from and why it exists is fundamental in emotionally connecting with a consumer. But what happens when a brand uses other stories to communicate their beliefs? More specifically what happens when they use an individual's story to represent their own? This is an example which looks at the importance of telling true stories and resisting the temptation to tell tales.
Lance Armstrong will go down in history as the biggest drug cheat that sport has ever seen. The scale of the doping and the size of the lie mean that his achievements will forever be marked with infamy. In the aftermath of his confession he made one statement in his interview with Oprah Winfrey which fascinated me:
“This story was so perfect for so long. And I mean that, as I try to take myself out of the situation and I look at it. You overcome the disease, you win the Tour de France seven times. You have a happy marriage, you have children. I mean, it’s just this mythic perfect story, and it wasn’t true.”
Lance Armstrong was stripped of all seven of his Tour De France titles
Nike, the unfortunate brand in question, told this story like great advertisers do. Unfortunately, as we now know, they were selling a concept, a work of fiction that a single individual couldn’t hope to live up to. Armstrong is not alone. Time and again athletes are put on pedestals which are, in truth, tight-ropes. In recent months we've seen this with both Tiger Woods and Oscar Pistorius. Heroes for so many - suddenly turned to villains as their darker side is revealed. Global superstars will always slip if they’re sold as something they’re not. We are all human, no one is perfect and selling someone as that means they can only go one way.
The alternative is to tell authentic human stories. To continue with Nike, there is an example where this could not be more true. The emergence of Andre Agassi in the ’90s as a Generation X ambassador was an opportunity for Nike to tell a real story about a real person who stood for the very same things Nike did at the time. He was rock n'roll, he was rebellious, he was loud, bright and exciting. He was adored not just for his virtues but his very public flaws as well. Interestingly, when Agassi revealed he had taken shockingly illegal drugs during his playing career, there was a surprisingly repressed response from media and fans. People loved Agassi even more for the mistakes he made throughout his career and the person he became because of it. It’s a genuine story, not a marketing concept, and as a result the truth could never ‘come out’.
Andre Agassi the ultimate Gen X ambassdor
It’s easy to take two of the most famous sponsorship cases in the last 25 years and pin them at either ends of a spectrum of right and wrong, but there are lessons to be learnt. Consumers have a desperate thirst to discover the often layered centre of their heroes, not just the shining exterior we see in ghost-written autobiographies. Brands that can root their own story to that of an ambassador have much less to lose than those that become attached to a polished veneer.
