I think I still want to say narrative, rather than brand, but you’re right that the concepts aren’t quite fitting right. I want to say “narrative” because that sounds like “story about what we were doing and why”. “Brand” sounds less like it involves agency, choice, situations, purpose, and more like a sort of associative impression.
Maybe what’s up here is that for literal companies using PR, the people at whom the PR is aimed aren’t tracking *any* narrative about the company as a whole across all time. So there’s no call for a coherent legible story about how actions contribute to a supposed strategy, but rather just local calls for PR. Maybe a closer analogy between what I mean as PR-narrative (for a person) would be mission statement (for a company; along with narratives in particular situations that are trying to appear consistent with the mission statement). On the other hand, you’ve reminded me that PR-narrative even for a person is almost intrinsically less coherent than strategy, and does have some of the brand-nature rather than story-nature.
Cool. Sometimes people use “meta-narrative” for that kind of thing if I am understanding your point correctly. Like the overarching message-focused story of an organization. But, sure, use narrative, as long as people understand what you mean, all cool.
Yeah, your observation is on point—most of the time people (audiences) do not actually “track” about an organization. But that doesn’t mean it does not matter—on the contrary. The narrative is generally absorbed subconsciously, by being exposed to multiple stories from the organization.
I’d say the mission statement is something else than the narrative and more of a part of the strategic-domain than communications-domain. But definitely, the mission informs communications.
On your last point, I’d not say “less coherent” but maybe “vaguer”. If you are trying to control a narrative, I wouldn’t say it is not coherent. It is hard to control, yes. But I am not sure if it lacks coherency. But I think, both strategy and narrative are hard to understand when you are looking outside-in but feels more coherent from inside-out.
Interesting, thanks!
I think I still want to say narrative, rather than brand, but you’re right that the concepts aren’t quite fitting right. I want to say “narrative” because that sounds like “story about what we were doing and why”. “Brand” sounds less like it involves agency, choice, situations, purpose, and more like a sort of associative impression.
Maybe what’s up here is that for literal companies using PR, the people at whom the PR is aimed aren’t tracking *any* narrative about the company as a whole across all time. So there’s no call for a coherent legible story about how actions contribute to a supposed strategy, but rather just local calls for PR. Maybe a closer analogy between what I mean as PR-narrative (for a person) would be mission statement (for a company; along with narratives in particular situations that are trying to appear consistent with the mission statement). On the other hand, you’ve reminded me that PR-narrative even for a person is almost intrinsically less coherent than strategy, and does have some of the brand-nature rather than story-nature.
Cool. Sometimes people use “meta-narrative” for that kind of thing if I am understanding your point correctly. Like the overarching message-focused story of an organization. But, sure, use narrative, as long as people understand what you mean, all cool.
Yeah, your observation is on point—most of the time people (audiences) do not actually “track” about an organization. But that doesn’t mean it does not matter—on the contrary. The narrative is generally absorbed subconsciously, by being exposed to multiple stories from the organization.
I’d say the mission statement is something else than the narrative and more of a part of the strategic-domain than communications-domain. But definitely, the mission informs communications.
On your last point, I’d not say “less coherent” but maybe “vaguer”. If you are trying to control a narrative, I wouldn’t say it is not coherent. It is hard to control, yes. But I am not sure if it lacks coherency. But I think, both strategy and narrative are hard to understand when you are looking outside-in but feels more coherent from inside-out.