Think of your brand story as a game.

A game you can get good at.

Why you need the right story

Let’s simplify marketing into two components, your machine and your fuel.

  • Your machine includes your team, tech stack and all of your owned, paid, earned and shared channels. It’s everything required to get a few seconds of time with your target audience.

  • Your fuel is what you say when you get a few seconds of time with your target audience - get this right, and you’ll increase the ROI of every dollar spent on the machine. 

When you need to accelerate growth, the default is to add to the machine - add more people, tech, spend…big expenses. But often, the most strategic investment you can make is to get the fuel right.

How it works

We use a process inspired by great game narratives to craft a brand story that your employees, your prospects and your customers can easily share.

We walk CEOs, marketing leaders and key stakeholders through a strategic framework that pinpoints the right story. The process is insightful and fun, and the result is designed to improve every sales and marketing metric.

So let’s play a game

Call it what you like: brand story, strategic narrative, company positioning. We use a process called GameFrame. It’s rooted in the free-flowing narratives from video games. It produces a story designed to inspire your employees, prospects and customers and create a competitive firewall for years.

Your options

  • Limited bandwidth

    Not your expertise

    Reaching consensus is elusive

    Output by committee, not a story

    Adoption is inconsistent

  • Sell senior talent, delegate to junior

    May not be their primary expertise

    Limited stakeholder buy-in

    Output is a framework, not a story

    Adoption is inconsistent

  • CMO-level talent doing the work

    Primary expertise

    Stakeholder buy-in built in

    Output is an inspiring story

    The right story is easily adopted and shared

Our process

  • It’s not a messaging matrix of paragraphs and bullets.

    It’s not linear and finite like books or movies where you watch the hero’s journey from a distance.

    It puts your customer directly in the hero’s seat and easily adapts to each hero’s unique journey.

  • It’s a fusion of strategy and creativity. Parts of it will even feel like team building.

    It will crystalize your mission and values and it includes gamified adoption techniques.

  • It’s designed to be completed in 90 days, but can expand to 120 if your team needs more time between milestones

  • It’s hard work, but we do most of it outside of our collaborative sessions.

    Several of our meetings require no prep on your part.

    We do the lion’s share of the work and break your contribution into bite-size pieces.

“Quick question”

“Sure. Wait, why are you holding a buzzer?”

“No reason…Why do people buy our software?”

“We have slightly better -”

BUZZ

“Our people are -”

BUZZ

“I got this. Our comprehensive solutions streamline antiquated workflows through proprietary…did I already say comprehensive? Oh! Something about AI?”

Feel familiar?

You’re not alone. Great messaging is hard. Here are some predictions about your world right now.

  1. You could swap websites with a competitor and use their messaging

  2. In an FBI interrogation, sales and marketing would all have different stories

  3. Friends and family aren’t sure what you do 

  4. You have more people on your team than likes on your posts

  5. The inbound applicant pool is stagnant

  6. You get anxious before a board meeting as you prep your results

Let us help you.

  • “This is so good. I’m blown away…I'm still riding the high from delivering the strategic narrative at the offsite.”

    CEO - Events Platform

  • “I cannot say thank you enough. I love that you rolled up your sleeves. You didn’t just give high level frameworks and consulting. You actually made a meaningful impact on our business.”

    CEO - SalesTech Platform

  • “SteelFin's approach to messaging is not only thorough and sophisticated but also creatively captivating, giving our marketing campaigns a decisive edge.”

    Marketing Leader - Localization Platform

Companies we’ve worked with and for