Why Your Brand Needs A Story 📖

Plant your bum on a comfy chair, I want to tell you a tale

A scream pierces the night sky like a blade.

"The factory's burning!"

It’s 3am. A man stumbles from his bed, watching orange flames swallow everything he'd spent decades building. His workshop. His dreams. His future.

Gone.

But this carpenter had burned before.

Eighteen years earlier, his sons had accidentally ignited wood chips, destroying his furniture business and family home. Most people would have given up at this point. But he rebuilt and started over.

Then the Great Depression crushed his new workshop. His beloved wife died. Bankruptcy circled like a rabid vulture. Desperate, he begged his siblings to guarantee a loan.

"Can't you find something more useful to do?" one asked, dripping with a sort of judgmental disdain.

More useful than toys?

Because that's what this "failed" carpenter had turned to. Cheap wooden playthings. His family thought he’d lost his marbles. But he’d found his soul.

He became obsessed with perfection. Every toy received exactly three coats of varnish… never two, never four. When his son tried to save money by skipping the third coat on wooden ducks, the man’s fury was biblical. "Fetch every duck from that train station. Give them their final coat. Do it alone, even if it takes all night."

His motto became legend: "Only the best is good enough."

That wooden duck, with its beak that opened and closed when pulled, conquered Denmark. Children everywhere fell in love.

The carpenter who'd lost everything was now building something magical.

Then came that hellish night in 1942. The second inferno. Everything in ashes. Again.

Insurance wouldn't cover the devastation. People begged him to relocate. But twenty-six families depended on him.

He chose them. He chose to rebuild.

By the end of World War II, traditional materials had vanished. Desperate manufacturers embraced a revolutionary technology... plastic injection moulding. The Danish government banned its commercial use until 1947.

But our man bought the country's first machine in 1946 anyway. He cheekily experimented in the shadows, preparing for a future only he could see.

When the ban lifted, he was ready.

In 1949 his company launched the "Automatic Binding Brick." These weren't mere toys, they were imagination turned into possibility. A system where children could build anything their hearts desired.

Those revolutionary bricks? That company born from ashes?

LEGO.

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Alternatively, I could explain Lego to you by saying - They sell plastic bricks.

That would have saved us both a bit of time but it doesn’t exactly hold the same gravitas does it?

At a time when everyone’s looking for that quick fix, the people who build their brand properly - with feeling, thought, emotion, and story - will be the winners.

Your story won't be as epic as this one but you can still make it brilliant.

If you want to know how to do that, I want to show you so you should click here