- Getting your story heard: Find a new angle. Then own it

Familiarity breeds contempt. Just ask Hugh Hefner’s old girlfriends.

However, not all relationships are as fraught and I think Austrian-British philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein offered a better assessment when he said something like, familiarity may not breed contempt, but it certainly takes the edge off admiration.

It stands to reason that the more customers hear from you the harder it is to impress them. And, what’s more, the more likely they are to find chinks in your products and services. Sensitive to this conundrum, smart companies turn attention to trickling small delight factors to keep things fresh.

The same thinking applies to storytelling. If you sell boxes then you’ll tell lots of stories about boxes and people will think of you when they want boxes. But when competitors emerge and the category matures, your stories sound like all the others and, in any case, people are sick of hearing about boxes because, well, everyone knows what they are.

One must whistle a different tune and find something new to say. So what if product and market fundamentals haven’t really changed, you can still address contextual factors to offer new meaning and win attention.

For a masterful demonstration of story redevelopment look no further than technology giant IBM, who themselves started out selling very large computing boxes, but these days sell just as much software and possibly even more services.

In the great computing infrastructure build-out of the last 15 years IBM has led much of the storytelling that shaped the epoch. But as the excitement of pioneering technology development and adoption faded in the dull light of everyday use, commoditisation and, latterly, the greyness of an accounting column shared with plumbing and other bland business mandatories, they’ve still kept their story fresh.

IBM’s latest story offering – a smarter planet – elevates the conversation to an idea with much bigger meaning than their own products and services. By taking this higher ground and promoting perspectives rather than just products, they’ve reframed their offerings in a richer picture, creating a whole new conversation.

When your story isn’t cutting through as it once did, change the conversation. Find an original angle and then own it.