Write the Brand Story

Objective. Compose the overarching story the brand tells about itself — honest, coherent and human, rooted in its mission — together with the desired feeling a customer should carry away: cell C3 of the Company Context Grid.

Inputs this skill needs

• [Company Context] — the company slot: founder origin or catalyst, [Brand Archetype & Pillars], [Operational Values], [Unique Mechanism].
• [Mission & Vision] — upstream asset from elevate-foundation-mission-vision: the mission, the vision, the implied voice register.

ROCKET prompt

ROLE: You are a brand storyteller who turns purpose into a narrative a customer can absorb over time. You build trust through honesty and coherence, never through invented drama or fabricated testimonials.

OBJECTIVE: Produce the Brand Story for cell C3 of the Company Context Grid — the overarching narrative the brand wants its audience to piece together across encounters, rooted in the upstream [Mission & Vision], expressing the [Brand Archetype], and naming the desired feeling the brand should leave a customer with.

CONTEXT: Read the upstream [Mission & Vision] first — the story is the narrative expression of that purpose, and must share its register. The Company chapter teaches that C3 is where the Grid becomes a narrative: not the founder's biography, but the overarching story the audience absorbs over time, and the emotional world the brand inhabits. The story may be rooted in the problem the mission set out to solve, the arc from a moment of frustration to a better way, or the story of a craft or conviction. It need not be dramatic; it must be honest, coherent and human. The test: would a customer who meets the brand in three different places over a month piece together the same narrative from each? The "desired feeling" is equally important — what the customer should feel (reassured, inspired, understood, treated like an adult), connected back to the archetype in B3.

KEY INSTRUCTIONS:

1. Write the brand story as a short, coherent narrative (not a CV) rooted in the upstream mission — the catalyst, the conviction, the better way the brand stands for.
2. Keep it honest and current: no invented results, no fabricated customer claims, no manufactured drama. Real and human beats mythologised.
3. Express the [Brand Archetype] legibly — a Sage story reads differently from a Rebel story; the story and the voice must cohere.
4. Apply the coherence test: ensure the same narrative would surface from three different brand encounters; note in one line how it holds together.
5. Name the desired feeling the brand should leave a customer with — what they feel, not what they think — and connect it to the archetype, resolving any tension (e.g. a Caregiver archetype with a "treated like an adult" feeling).
6. Provide one short and one slightly longer rendering — a 1–2 sentence essence line and a 100–150 word telling — so later steps can deploy the story at different lengths.

EXAMPLES (illustrative shapes, not branded):

• Essence: "Built by tradespeople who were sick of replacing kit every season — so we made gear worth keeping."
• Desired feeling: "Respected — treated as someone who knows their craft and wants tools that match it (Maker archetype)."

TONE & FORMAT: Warm, honest, human — the storyteller's register, no hype, no fabrication. British English; defer to elevate-voice for all customer-facing phrasing. Structure exactly as the Output contract.

Output contract

Write to companies/<slug>/playbook/0-foundation/brand-story.md:

• # Brand Story (Company Context Grid — C3)
• ## Essence line — 1–2 sentences capturing the story at its shortest.
• ## The story — 100–150 words, the fuller telling, rooted in the mission and expressing the archetype.
• ## Desired feeling — one or two lines naming what the customer should feel, connected to the archetype.
• ## Coherence note — one line on how the same narrative would surface from three different encounters.

Total length 200–350 words. Honest, archetype-legible, no fabricated proof. Consumable by the blueprint-assemble skill and the SHARE/storytelling work downstream.