Most company stories are built the same way. Founded on a vision, driven by passion, committed to excellence. Every sentence is true, and every sentence sounds like every other company.
People have learned to tune it out. In 2018, the review platform TrustRadius surveyed more than 650 business technology buyers and vendors. Material produced by vendors, including their own case studies, came bottom of the trust rankings.
But the same survey found something useful. Buyers who said a vendor had been very influential in their decision were much more likely to say that vendor had been upfront about its limitations: 56 per cent, compared with 31 per cent for less influential vendors.
Admitting a weakness, in other words, made people believe the rest.
The classic example is more than sixty years old. In 1962, Avis was a distant second to Hertz in car rental and hadn’t made a profit in over a decade. Its ad agency, Doyle Dane Bernbach, built the campaign around that weakness: Avis was only No. 2, so it tried harder. Within about a year, the company went from losing $3.2 million to making $1.2 million. A new CEO was overhauling the business at the same time, so the ads can’t take all the credit. But nobody would have believed “we try harder” from a company claiming to be the best.
Your company story can work the same way. Put in what went wrong in the early years, the market you misread, the thing you’re still fixing. Then show what you did about it. That’s usually where the real story was all along, and it’s where we start every company film at Ruckus.
Next time someone suggests cutting the awkward part of your company film, ask whether it’s the only part anyone will believe.
