Discover the 27-genre Framework That Transforms Brand Indifference Into Blockbuster Appeal

As a marketing leader responsible for brand differentiation in a crowded market, you want your brand story to drive measurable business results and if you’re using the right genre of story that your audience can relate to, then you will create tremendous appeal for your offering.

But you feel frustrated because most brands tell the story they want to tell instead of the story their audience wants to hear, leaving tons of revenue on the table while competitors who understand genre thinking capture market share.

Now you can achieve breakthrough brand transformation through the Hollywood 27 Genres framework and enemy-superpower thinking that Greg Logan reveals in today’s episode.

That disconnect between your story and their genre?

It’s costing you customers.

Big time.

I’ve watched brilliant brands struggle for decades because they focus on what they do instead of the emotional genre their customers are actually living in. They craft beautiful mission statements while their audience craves a completely different narrative pattern.

And the competitors who figure this out? They capture market share with what looks like magic but is actually systematic genre alignment.

Meet Greg Logan: The Brand Storytelling Expert Who Cracked Hollywood’s Code

Greg Logan is the author of Creating a Blockbuster Brand and founder of Narrativity, where he helps companies like Google and Adobe tell stories that actually work.

What makes Greg extraordinary?

He’s combined two careers – branding and advertising with entertainment – to decode the exact formulas Hollywood uses to hook us emotionally. Then he translates those formulas into brand storytelling that drives real business results.

His approach demonstrates what I call the marriage of classical storytelling wisdom with modern technological precision. The genres that have captivated audiences for millennia now serve your brand strategy.

And his new book, Creating a Blockbuster Brand? It’s the systematic guide to implementing these blockbuster formulas in your business.

Greg’s worked with some of the world’s most recognized brands. The results speak for themselves.

The Hollywood 27 Genres Framework That Transforms Brand Appeal

Hollywood doesn’t guess at emotional connection.

They use 27 specific genres that tap into universal human experiences.

Each genre creates predictable emotional responses. Each genre attracts specific audiences. Each genre follows proven formulas that have worked for millennia.

Your brand storytelling should work the same way.

Think about it. Are brands really still winging it with generic “we help you succeed” messaging when Hollywood has proven the formula for emotional resonance?

Greg reveals how identifying your audience’s genre preference transforms everything:

The Genre Selection Process: Which of the 27 emotional patterns does your audience live in? Are they in a “Rags to Riches” journey? A “Monster in the House” survival story? An “Out of the Bottle” transformation narrative?

The Alignment Strategy: Once you know their genre, you speak their emotional language fluently. You become the story they’re already telling themselves about their challenges and aspirations.

The Competitive Advantage: While competitors use one-size-fits-all messaging, you’re delivering precisely calibrated emotional resonance that feels like you’re reading their mind.

Doh! Why didn’t we see this before?

Because we were focused on our story instead of their genre.

Greg walks through the framework with loads of specific examples that show exactly how different brands apply different genres based on their audience’s emotional reality. This isn’t theory – it’s proven application with measurable results.

Enemy and Superpower Thinking: How to Defeat Brand Indifference

Greg introduces a framework that cuts through the noise and creates what he calls “brand magnetism.”

Every compelling brand story needs two elements:

The Enemy: What your audience fights against. Not your competitor – the real villain in their story. The frustration. The obstacle. The force preventing their transformation. The revenue-killing disconnect between their brilliance and their market impact.

The Superpower: What you uniquely provide to defeat that enemy. Your specific capability. Your proven methodology. Your transformative advantage that no one else delivers quite the same way.

This enemy-superpower dynamic creates magnetic differentiation.

It’s the difference between “we provide marketing solutions” (yawn) and “we defeat the genre mismatch that’s costing you customers while competitors capture your market share” (HelloOOo! Now we’re talking).

Specific beats generic. Every. Single. Time.

And when you combine genre thinking with enemy-superpower positioning? You create blockbuster brand appeal that transforms browsers into buyers.

What You’ll Master in This Episode

• The 27 Genres Framework with Loads of Examples: Greg walks through Hollywood’s complete genre system with specific brand applications that show exactly how to identify and implement your audience’s emotional pattern for maximum resonance

• How to Identify Your Audience’s Genre Preference: The diagnostic questions and audience signals that reveal which of the 27 genres your customers are living in right now – and how to align your story with their emotional reality

• Enemy and Superpower Thinking for Magnetic Differentiation: How to define the real villain your audience faces and position your unique capability as the superpower that defeats it, creating brand magnetism competitors can’t match

• Why Genre Misalignment Kills Revenue: The costly mistakes brands make when they tell their preferred story instead of their audience’s preferred genre – and how competitors who understand this capture your market share

• The Blockbuster Brand Formula: Greg’s systematic approach to applying Hollywood’s proven emotional frameworks to drive measurable business results through genre precision

• From Generic to Magnetic: How genre thinking transforms brand indifference into blockbuster appeal that creates the emotional connection generic messaging never achieves

Why This Episode Could Transform Your Brand Strategy

Most brand storytelling advice focuses on what to say.

Greg’s framework reveals what emotional pattern to say it in.

That’s the distinction between content and connection. Between messaging and magnetism. Between hoping for results and systematically creating them through proven Hollywood formulas.

If you’ve been frustrated by brand stories that sound good but don’t drive business results, this conversation provides the missing framework. The genre thinking tt aligns your message with your audience’s emotional reality.

And what I love about Greg’s approach? (Maybe you’ll appreciate this too.)

It respects the classical wisdom of storytelling – these 27 genres have worked for millennia – while providing modern precision for brand application. That’s EI + AI = ROI in action: Emotional Intelligence through genre mastery meets systematic Implementation for measurable Return on Intelligence.

Greg doesn’t theorize. He’s applied these Hollywood formulas to Google, Adobe, and companies that demand proof, not promises.

Ready to Create Your Blockbuster Brand?

This episode gives you the genre framework Hollywood has used to generate billions in box office revenue.

Now it’s your competitive advantage.

Listen to discover which genre your audience craves, how to defeat brand indifference through enemy and superpower thinking, and why genre alignment creates the blockbuster appeal that transforms browsers into buyers.

Because your brand story deserves the same systematic emotional precision that creates Hollywood blockbusters.

Chapters:

Links:

• narrativity.com
• Greg Logan on LinkedIn
• Greg on Instagram
• https://www.storytellingquiz.com/
• Craft your vibrant brand story with the StoryCycle Genie™
• What users are saying about the StoryCycle Genie™

Deepen Your Brand Storytelling Mastery: Three Essential Episodes

To amplify your transformation from today’s genre revelation, these carefully selected past episodes provide complementary classical wisdom:

Episode 522: How EI + AI = ROI, Your Return on Intelligence With Dr. Robin Hills – Discover how emotional intelligence combined with systematic frameworks creates measurable business results, providing the foundation for implementing Greg’s genre thinking strategically.

Episode 527: The Story Strategy That Has Grown Brands by 600 Percent – Explore the proven story structures that drive exponential growth, showing how systematic narrative frameworks create predictable business transformation.

Episode 515: How to Effectively Position Your B2B Brand With April Dunford – Master the positioning strategy that makes your brand the obvious choice, complementing Greg’s genre framework with market positioning precision.

Each recommendation selected to deepen your mastery through The Business of Story’s archive of classical wisdom enhanced by modern application.

A Strategic Conversation with Brand Storytelling Expert Greg on The Business of Story Podcast

TRANSCRIPT: Why Hollywood Storytelling Formulas Work Better Than Traditional Brand Marketing

Park: Hello, Greg. Welcome to the show.

Greg: Thank you, Park. It’s great to be here.

Park: You’re coming to us from one of the most popular destinations in the world, Lisbon, Portugal.

Greg: Everyone seems to be here at the moment. I just had friends leave, I’ve got my family arriving next week and it’s getting busier, but it’s a beautiful place. I know why everyone’s coming.

Park: You were originally from Australia?

Greg: I’m an Aussie born and bred. In the nineties, I lived in Italy for a couple of years and up until 18 months ago when I moved permanently to Lisbon, I lived eight years in Los Angeles.

Park: Were you out there in the TV movie business?

Greg: Yeah, it’s a company town. I moved there to create reality TV shows. I was following my dream like everyone else does. I took a detour from that after a few years, but that’s why I went there. I had a great time in LA. It’s the best weather in the world, the best time zone in the world to do global business from, and every night of the week, you’ve got the best entertainment that exists in the world.

What Reality TV Teaches About Brand Storytelling (And Why Most Brands Fail)

Park: What was it about reality TV in particular that attracted you? Because to me, there seems to be nothing real about reality TV.

Greg: The reality is they use real people so they don’t have to pay the wages. That’s the reality of it. I can tell you the whole story because it’s where I learned my greatest life lesson.

I had over 30 years in advertising. I was creative director of Leo Burnett Milan at 25 years of age, started my own agency, sold it. But I was having Groundhog Day after three decades. I’d written a few films – I was really bad at feature films, but I wrote a short film that did really well and won hundreds of awards around the world, the Crystal Bear at Berlin.

I thought I’d do branded content because it was my two worlds. After a few months, I entered the global competition at Cannes for the best new reality TV format. I was one of five chosen. I went to the Grand Palais, presented in front of 7,000 people and won the best new reality TV format in the world.

I was inundated with offers. As a prize, I got a global deal with Warner Brothers. I was speaking to Ellen DeGeneres the next day for my format. I had CAA as an agent and I moved to America because of all this. Everyone said I was really good at reality TV.

In 18 months, I sold 12 formats to the biggest networks and TV companies. Here’s the problem: they take it and tweak it enough so it’s no longer mine. They pay me a few thousand dollars and go, “Great, we’re gonna sell this.” Ellen DeGeneres’ company did a show called Little Big Shots, which was based on something I had done.

After a couple of years, I realized I moved my whole life to America, my whole career, but I wasn’t making the money. I had a mortgage, I couldn’t go home, I’d left advertising, but I didn’t want to go back to it. I was stuck.

How One Conference Changed Everything: The South by Southwest Brand Storytelling Revelation

Greg: As this was all happening, I went to South by Southwest. There were all these talks on why brands need to become better storytellers. Everyone was saying very convincingly why, but I realized not one of them said how.

I went home to LA, was driving down Sunset Boulevard, looked at the Hollywood sign and went, “That is the how. Hollywood’s formulas are how brands can become better storytellers.”

I spent three months translating those formulas for brands and quickly left reality TV behind. That was probably the lowest point of my life, but it got me there and took me to a place I would never have thought of – creating Narrativity, which is my business.

From the moment I started it, it took off and it was what I was meant to do in my life. Very few people have that expertise in brand and advertising like I do, plus understanding of brands and what they want. Very few people have also done entertainment in every form and can put those two things together.

From the moment I started Narrativity, I have not thought of one TV format in nine years.

Why Small Businesses Need Hollywood Storytelling More Than Fortune 500 Companies

Park: Now you are working with brands all around the world, helping them refine their story using your Hollywood-based story templates and your knowledge of working in the industry.

Greg: My whole career, I’ve been working with the world’s biggest brands. I work with huge brands – Google, Adobe, big brands. It’s great making rich companies richer, but I really love working with smaller brands, entrepreneurs and startups. I produce the same outputs for them, charge them the same money, but what I do for a smaller company changes their life completely.

All my greatest case studies and success stories are from smaller or mid-sized businesses because it’s transformational. Whereas I make the rich companies do better, but it’s not that trajectory that I do with the smaller ones.

From Captive TV Audiences to Earning Digital Attention: The Storytelling Evolution Every Brand Must Understand

Park: You’re trying to democratize brand storytelling basically and bring it to small to medium size businesses that can’t typically afford huge branding agencies. I found Hollywood storytelling back in early 2000s when our son Parker went to film school at Chapman University between 2006-2010.

Digital marketing came in and I was lost. It seemed like it sucked the creativity out of advertising as we knew it. Branding got even more difficult with all the noise. I asked Parker to send me his books and recorded lectures because I wanted to know what Hollywood knew about storytelling that I could apply.

That’s where I found the hero’s journey. I saw it as a customer journey or business owner journey. I knew business leaders probably wouldn’t embrace what they’d think of as the woo-woo-ness of Hollywood, so I created my 10-step story cycle system.

There are now a lot of books on the market about how to use Hollywood storytelling for branding. What makes yours different?

Greg: What is great is the world’s discovering that you just can’t sell anymore. You have to tell a story. You have to engage people because when I started in advertising, we would just put ads on air and tell everyone your features and it would work because everyone was sitting there. You had a captive audience in front of that TV.

People don’t watch TV anymore. Everyone’s flicking through at a million miles an hour. Unless you trigger their heart in some way – whether it’s being really funny or really shocking or just really engaging – you’re not going to succeed.

We all come from our own perspective and experience. Your ABT formula is really about how do you connect one-on-one with that customer. It’s very powerful and a great way to get them to see you differently that’s meaningful to them.

I came at it from South by Southwest – brands should become better storytellers, and I needed to create the how. The most financially successful storytellers of all time are the movies. Every movie Hollywood makes is built on the hero’s journey formula.

I broke down all the different formulas – the genre, the quest, the enemy and superpower, the backstory. I broke them down to everything I know from my 30+ years working with brands, what they need across their suite to tell a stronger brand story.

Probably my stuff is not about that one-on-one sales thing. Mine works at an overarching brand story level. If you look at the difference between you and I – ABT really gets people nodding for that one-on-one selling. I work up on the big lofty movie area. You get them to buy the ticket, I get them buying popcorn.

The 27 Movie Genres Framework: How to Choose Your Brand’s Perfect Story Category

Park: One thing in your book I found really fascinating is this idea of all the different story genres. You’ve got 27 different genres that you want people to be thinking about and pulling from to find that one genre they’re going to base and build their entire brand story narrative strategy upon. Can you elaborate on that?

Greg: When I was looking at the world of movies, I realized the writer, before they write anything down on the page, goes “What kind of movie is this? Do I want to do a romance? Do I want to do a comedy?”

We as the audience have gotten to know genre very well through Netflix. When we sit down, we go “What do I feel like tonight?” One of you might go “I want a comedy” and one might go “I want an action” and you have to fight that out. What we’re doing there is working out what’s the right thing for us at this moment and defining the genre brings your audience closer to what they desire.

In marketing, we never think about this. We just jump to the story we want to tell and we’re completely missing what’s the kind of story the audience wants.

Case Study: How Hyperloop Went from Sci-Fi to Historical and Raised Hundreds of Millions

I’ll give you an example of why it’s important. Hyperloop – the first new mass transportation form in a hundred years. It’s going to jettison you environmentally friendly from LA to San Francisco in half an hour.

When we started with them, I thought they would be sci-fi. There is no brand I’ve ever worked with that would be more sci-fi than them. The definition of sci-fi is “the future is here.”

I said, “You’re sci-fi, right?” And they went, “Sure, but the future is here is our biggest problem. Everyone’s excited about us. They all know we are the future. They’ll all get on board, but they think this is 30, 50 years in the future. We need hundreds of billions of dollars in investment now. We need contracts from governments now. The future is our biggest enemy.”

They chose the last genre I ever would have picked, which was historical. The meaning is, “It’s amazing. You don’t make a historical film unless it was amazing. But it’s true.”

They said, “We need to tell people that this is true. This is real.” As soon as they told me that, I knew exactly what I needed to write. I wrote things like “This crazy pipe dream is real. We’re moving the world faster forward, get on board.” I kept writing messages like “This is now.”

Within six months, they got four global contracts, hundreds of billions of dollars of investment, just because they said, “No, we’re not sci-fi, we’re historical.”

Park: How would you have told it as a sci-fi story?

Greg: Like “This is the most exciting thing that’s happened. The world’s never seen anything like this. This is going to take us into the future for generations.” I would have been excited about it like they were, but then they were like, “This isn’t helping us right now.” If their audience was consumers, yeah, for sure. But their audience was investors and governments.

Step-by-Step Process: How Any Brand Can Find Their Perfect Story Genre

Park: How does a brand go about finding that appropriate genre? They may think they are a comedy when actually they’re a bromance.

Greg: I have 27 genres and a meaning for each of them. What I do is say to my clients, “Just go through it. Don’t think too hard about it and just go, what could we be?” The more they look at it, the more they see other things that they could be.

I did a university once and the group chose 26 out of 27 genres. The only one they didn’t pick was family, even though they chose the 26 others. When you think about it, a university is everything – within a university and the benefits of it.

I say, “Let’s create a long list. Then let’s really think about not what you could be, what you feel comfortable in. Think about the story you want to tell going forward and think about the story your audience wants to hear. Don’t try and cram proof points into it because it’s not an external message.”

In movies, there’s comedy or there’s romance, but there’s also rom-coms. You can put two genres together if it tells the complete story for you. Half my clients have one genre and half have multiple genres.

When we get down to a real short list, I ask people to make a case for why they think that is the right genre. When people discuss it out, they really get to the one that’s right for them.

Enemy and Superpower Strategy: How to Stop Talking About Yourself and Start Solving Customer Problems

Park: You talk a lot about enemy and superpower development. Can you share insight on that?

Greg: In marketing, people go “What’s our superpower?” and the danger is you’re just reinforcing that you’re talking about yourself. Brands will go “Trust. Our superpower is trust.” I ban my clients from using the word trust because everyone wants customers to trust them. But if you said “Trust me,” I’m not going to trust you.

I go, “What is it that you do that makes people trust you? What is it that you do that engenders that trust?” Then we’ve got something to talk about.

People might go “Simplicity or value, that’s our superpower.” But what you want with your superpower is you want it to be your brand essence – whatever everything you say, you look, you feel, everything you project, you want people to feel this.

It’s going to be far more effective if your superpower defeats something your audience hates. That’s why before we even talk about the superpower you have, let’s talk about your customer’s greatest enemy.

When I say “What’s your greatest enemy?” they always go “People don’t know us” or “Our competitors slam us on price.” I go, “Yeah, that’s your enemy. Your customer doesn’t care about that. That’s your problem. What is their enemy?”

They might be too busy. There are all these different things in their life that really are their greatest barrier to success. When you find the really meaty one, then we go, “Okay, now what’s the superpower that you have that defeats that?”

If you go out and tell everyone about a superpower that really answers their problems, you become really important to them. It’s another way to stop you telling the story you want to tell and start telling the one the audience wants to hear.

Real Case Study: How One Financial App Overcame Fear and Sold for Hundreds of Millions

Greg: I’ll give you one example. This was a startup – a digital app that helped people in financial difficulty get out of it. It had financial scores and road maps to help you get out of it.

My client came to me and said, “Greg, we have a problem. We have hundreds of people on this beta phase and not one person is using it. We can’t even work out what we need to tweak because no one’s using it to tell us what works and what doesn’t.”

When we got to enemy and superpower, they worked out that their audience’s greatest enemy was fear. The reason they weren’t using the app was they didn’t even want to look at it because they were so fearful of what terrible situation they were in financially. They were ostriches with their heads in the sand.

The whole room just went, “My God, this is our problem. They’re too scared.” So we got to a superpower of how do you defeat fear? It was action. You can actually do something about it.

It told me I need to express this idea of action. It was “Feel good about money. You could do something about it.” As soon as we went out and said “Feel good about money,” it flipped the script and everyone started using it.

It was so successful that a huge financial organization bought them for hundreds of millions of dollars before they even launched. He said, “Greg, all that went down to defining the enemy.”

Greg: Other examples: fighting indifference with care factor, fighting worry with know-how, fighting rigidity with can-do. This is an insurance company that invests in smaller insurance companies – fighting unrealized potential with the brave pill. They give those businesses the brave pill to realize their potential.

Just so your audience knows, these are not messages you go out with. The genre and the enemy and superpower are things I do to help you define your brand, help you define the kind of story you want to tell. Then everything else expresses the genre and your enemy and superpower.

How to Measure Brand Storytelling ROI: From Internal Pride to Hundreds of Millions in Revenue

Park: How do you measure the success of brand storytelling?

Greg: It’s the problem with how do you measure marketing – it’s difficult. However, most of the time I work with my clients, their pricing doesn’t change, their product doesn’t change, their people doesn’t change. Their story changes, that’s it.

I’ve seen my clients improving by 35%. Their business doubles, the next year it doubles again. The financial help app – no one used it before, we told a new story, it works so well they sold it. Hyperloop is a classic example. No one was touching them, we told a new story, hundreds of millions of dollars.

But one thing my clients say to me again and again is there is so much pride in this company now. Everyone loves our story. Everyone tells our story. Everyone’s clear on the story. When they tell the story to their customers, they love it.

In my session, I measure it by – I don’t move on until someone says “My God, goosebumps” or “Hell yeah.” If I don’t get a hell yeah or goosebumps, I don’t move on. That is my measurement. Have we nailed the story because I just see how excited they are. Clients cry when I read it back to them, which happens a lot.

Park: That’s a huge one because it starts internally. If you don’t have your people bought in and sharing your story, and you’re not seeing increases in recruiting the best talent, retention, and your people evangelizing your story, then it’s really not going to work externally.

The Six-Hour Co-Creation Process That Ensures 100% Buy-In

Greg: I make sure that happens right from the start. I do a six-hour input session with my clients and I say all the key stakeholders need to be in the room. If there is anyone who can undo all this because they’re not in the session, then they need to be in it. We’re not doing it until they’re in it.

Everyone has a say, but everyone can see what everyone else is feeling and everyone’s excited about. Half the things – the genre, enemy and superpower, the quest, the log line, the personality traits – we come up with in the room together. It’s finished, it’s done in that session. They’re all just so excited.

The other half – the love story, the backstory, the tone of voice – they give me the inputs that I go away and write. Three days later, I present it back. I never have anyone reject it because they’ve already been on the journey and they’ve been part of creating it and they have complete ownership of it.

For me, they feed me the gold – they tell me things about their business that I would never have thought of and I use the formulas and my skill as a copywriter to make it magic.

The Right Way to Use AI for Brand Storytelling (Hint: Most People Do It Backwards)

Park: How do you see AI now playing into this and brand storytelling in general? Are you using much AI?

Greg: I am. I’m a sole operator. I don’t have any staff. Every client wants me and I’ve always looked for ways to scale. When AI came along, I was like “Perfect.” I was really disappointed. For a couple of years, it was pretty bad.

How AI works is it very impressively scans the whole universe and plays back what it’s found. When you ask it in terms of a story or tone of voice, it will play things back in a cliche – the ultimate cliche – because it’s scanned everything to then condense it down.

My number one job is to stop my clients conforming to the conventions of the category. I create a unique voice and write it in a very unique way. AI does not help me one bit do that.

The Reverse AI Method: Create First, Then Enhance

But how I use AI is once I’ve created the unique voice, once I’ve written a few things, I put it into AI and go, “This is the voice that we are looking at. Can you give me another option?” Sometimes it’s great, but where I find it’s really valuable is when I’m happy with something I’ve done, I put it into AI and it edits it for me.

I love that because I’ve never had someone edit my work, and certainly not as fast as AI can. Sometimes I go, “I like this thought. Give me some more options for that.” It just takes the work I do up that bit more and sometimes gives my clients a lot more options.

Park: You are doing it backwards than what most people do. Most people say “AI write me a story” and then they’ll come in and try to fix it. You write it first and give it then to AI and say, “Take a look at this and let me know.”

Greg: If you give it a blank sheet of paper, it looks elsewhere. It’s going to play back a story that you will look at and go, “Wow, that’s impressive. That all makes sense. That sounds cool. You did that so fast,” but it’s going to sound like everyone else. I’m seeing this again and again – I can see straight away when AI wrote something.

But if you give it something like you write the story and say, “Can you make this better?” it’s focusing on that. It’s using its incredible skills and multi-dimensional intelligence just to work on that. That’s powerful.

AI Brand Analysis Results: What the StoryCycle Genie Revealed About This Expert’s Own Brand

Park: With our StoryCycle Genie, I always run all our guests through it. I didn’t know anything about you other than promotional pieces, but I ran your website through it and gave it your book. It said, “Here’s Greg’s story, here’s the brand assessment of how he’s showing up, and here is the brand story strategy that we see through his website.” What did you think of the output?

Greg: I was amazed. I have to say, I’m an expert on telling brands their story. I’ve talked about some of the big brands I’ve worked with, but people employ me to advise them on their story. But my toughest client is me because I’m too close to it.

We can never tell our own story because we’re too close to it. It was just so great to see from a different perspective that wasn’t mine, what are my strengths? It was fantastic. I think it’s something everyone should do because we’re too close to everything we are and who we are.

We also never spend time looking deep into everything we are and who we are, what we do and pull out what is the strength for the different audiences. A real power of it was like I do – start with the audience. Who are they? Then what’s the story you want to tell to each of those audiences to get them engaged and show why you matter to them.

I was also very pleased that I got nine out of 10. I was like, “Phew, that’s a relief because I’m a professional brand storyteller.” Imagine that would have been embarrassing if I got a four.

Key Brand Insights: Unique Value Proposition and Physical Gift Analysis

Park: Your unique value proposition, according to the genie: “Transform unknown businesses into loved brands.”

Greg: It’s correct, except one word – unknown – because I do take some unknown businesses, but Google would disagree. But if we just took unknown out, yeah, I transform businesses into loved brands.

Park: Your emotional promise being transformation has to be backed up by what we call the physical gift. By buying Greg’s services, what do I physically get when it’s all said and done? It said your physical gift is recognition. It represents the measurable outcome that satisfies logical decision-making as it can be quantified through metrics like brand awareness, market share, media coverage, and industry authority that justify the investment in storytelling transformation.

Greg: Recognition resonated with me because it’s something I hadn’t thought of, but that recognition works on a number of levels. The person who brings me into the organization gets a lot of recognition because everyone goes, “That was amazing. That was so much fun. You’re transforming our business.” So they get recognition, the CEO gets recognition, the brand gets recognition as well.

Park: And even on a deeper level, aren’t they now recognizing the story that you helped them reveal to themselves?

Greg: Yeah, it works on a number of levels.

The Biggest AI Insight: Hidden Unique Positioning Revealed

Park: What was your biggest surprise takeaway from the Genie?

Greg: First of all was just everything was there. I probably wouldn’t say there was anything surprising because it was all truth. If we took that word “unknown” out, I probably wouldn’t change anything. The archetypes you had me as – the magician and sage – that’s all true. As soon as I saw it, I was like, “Yep, that’s me.”

I think the biggest surprise, and was a pleasant surprise – I realized I don’t use it enough – was it really pulled out my unique point of difference is my two worlds. I come from the world of entertainment and working with Fortune 500 brands. That secret sauce of those two things together is powerful and quite unique.

It used it as “This is why you’re gonna get recognition. This is why you’re gonna feel transformation – because this guy is these two things together, which is unusual.” I thought that was the thing I went, “I don’t really use that enough.”

Resources and Tools for Brand Storytelling Success

Park: Greg, your book is phenomenal and I highly recommend it to anybody out there. When I got it, I thought “Not another book on Hollywood storytelling and branding.” But you have a lot of really great insights that I have not seen in other books. I really love the genres of how to land on the right genre. Then you back it up with a lot of other techniques. It’s essentially a workbook. You get it, it looks like a textbook, but it’s a workbook.

Where can people learn more about you?

Greg: My business is called Narrativity and you can go to narrativity.com. The book is “Creating a Blockbuster Brand” and you can check it out on blockbusterbrands.com. I also have a story grader thing, which is like a messaging health check – free. It’s slightly different, multiple choices and sliding scales at storytellingquiz.com.

Any of those three – narrativity, blockbuster brands or storytelling.com. I’m always happy to tell stories about storytelling.

Park: We also now have a brand new Brand Story Grader on our website that is free. You can push the white button, get your free assessment and run any brand through it. It’s going to grade it on how well it’s going to show up from an A+ to F-. It’ll pull up 14 different assessment points and give you a grade on each one and explain why it’s great or why it’s not and where it could be fixed.

Well, Greg, thank you so much for coming to us all the way from Lisbon.

Greg: It’s been a real pleasure. Thank you, Park.

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