Hacking Reality. Flipping the script. Breaking clichés.
Once upon a time, brand stories impacted people in how they felt about themselves, their lives, the future. The best made life feel more predictable and created a sense that you, too, could find your place in the world.
Those promises have lost all credibility. Today, brand stories are disconnected from our splintered realities, disconnected from the emotional challenges of navigating an infinite, challenging supply of belief systems and life blueprints.
People still crave stories, but they don’t care about brand communication that ignores how they feel about themselves. Why should my existential credibility rely on my choice of the latest AI tool? Why should I believe that the color of my lip balm is a guarantee for a passionate kiss later in the evening?
Brands must Hack Reality – or get Hacked
Hacking reality means understanding what’s at stake – which, arguably, is one of our main existential challenges in today’s unsettling times of fragmentation and uncertainty. Hacking life is the ability to appraise any given situation, to respond to shifting contexts and select from various possible directions.
It is the combined ability to understand what makes life worth living for, and to shapeshift accordingly. Real joy lies in playing with angles and perceptions to take advantage of new opportunities.
If people feel capable of the difficult choices required to find their place in an ever-changing world, then a brand narrative hits what we call their “lifewires” without preaching or patronizing.
The internet created the novel concept and need for shapeshifting skills: being able to hold two (or more) diametrically opposed viewpoints is today’s most critical ability to traverse splintered spheres – if only to make sense of life. A brand narrative that espouses such a life hacking spirit is a brand that is emotionally relevant.
Requiem for Brand Vanity - Flipping the Script and Breaking Clichés
We at Mushrooms Branding rescue brands from their vain and superficial selves.
A brand narrative that helps people hack and navigate their own lives is like a clearance kick – all subsequent creative brand communication will “join the hack” and impact their audiences' hearts and minds.
NARA
Brand Narrative Radar
These methodologies were developed, are owned and run by Mushrooms Branding
Innovative Services & Tools
NALUM
Brand Narrative Luminance Files
NASH
Brand Narrative Shapeshift
NARA Brand Narrative Radar
Brand narratives that gloss over people’s psychological states quickly fade into oblivion. In contrast, emotionally impactful brand stories become deeply embedded in customers’ lives. Imagine your brand perception operating in stealth mode – flying under the radar of mainstream behavioral research, your own beliefs, and brand and marketing influencers.
With our sensitive NARA Radar, we gain valuable insights into the emotional bonds that people form with your brand. We reveal in which emotional dimensions your brand is perceived as potent and compelling – and where it provides little to no emotional support for your customers or is even rejected.
Our NARA Radar uncovers the emotional tremors people experience in their inner world. Our focus is on both the obvious and hidden emotional conflicts and contradictions in behavior, as this represents the dramatic substance from which emotionally impactful brand narratives emerge.
NARA provides a precise measure of the emotional credit that your brand narrative holds with current and potential customers, on these critical dimensions:
CULTURAL VIGILANCE
What kind of Sense of Belonging does your Brand Narrative create?
REALITY LENS
In which reality does your Brand Narrative operate in?
IDENTITY INTIMACY
Which of your TA's Emotional Conflicts does your Brand Narrative dare to address?
EXISTENTIAL COMPASS
Which vital questions does your Brand Narrative answer?
SHAPESHIFTING CONTROL
How does your Brand Narrative inspire people's ability to adapt an evolve?
You will find it imperative to continuously integrate the NARA Radar into your decision-making processes, to secure your brand's future – based on a real understanding of your customers' emotional worlds and needs.
NALUM Brand Narrative Luminance Files
Subscription Only
Brand Narrative Luminance Files – Welcome to Young Adults’ Uncorrupted Narrative Secrets!
Do you still read and listen to studies on brand management and consumer behavior? Allow yourself to be tempted by something truly insightful: our NALUM Brand Narrative Luminance Files. Luminance means looking behind the scenes. Files are confidential insights.
And that’s exactly what we provide.
In our NALUM Files we share unexpected findings about the emotional worlds of young adults – and contrast them with the current level of brand storytelling.
Dive into new narratives. Understand what truly resonates.
We love to truthfully engage the emotional turmoil of young adults.They are an important mirror reflecting the state of our (consumer) society – and most interesting during young adults' search for identity.
Young adulthood? Ambivalence. Shadow and light. Financial and emotional independence? Sometimes yes, sometimes no. Sometimes looking at the world through romantic notion filters, sometimes with frustration. Sometimes in rebellion, sometimes conforming.
Sometimes calling out what previous generations got wrong, sometimes staying silent, sometimes distancing themselves from preconditioned opinions and lifestyles – and sometimes wanting everything to stay just as it is. And from all that chaos, carving out their own viable life paths.
Even brands whose products don’t directly target this demographic can learn a lot from how young adults respond to today’s reality – especially when it comes to dealing with uncertainty.
Via our acclaimed Brand on my Terms format, we have created a dialog-based approach that allows us to engage with young people lovingly, confrontationally, humorously – and always with the necessary depth and clarity – as to how they perceive brands and approach consumption.
Our NALUM Files are essentially a unique Brand Narrative Quality Hack: Which brand narratives provide emotionally relevant answers to the challenges of our time?
The NALUM Files consist of three key elements:
• Do the desired ones know their own desire? We offer a respectful snapshot of the emotional depths currently experienced by young adults—insights that define their needs and aspirations.
• Do the storytellers know their own tale? We hack brand narratives, dissect their perceived subtexts. You will receive in-depth critical comparisons between emotionally effective and ineffective contemporary brand stories.
• Can it get any worse? With us, nothing works without a dose of self-irony. We maintain a fictional list of "making it worse" branding blunders—narrative cringe at its finest.
We don’t “bash” brands — quite the opposite. The NALUM Files are crafted with utmost sensitivity, accessible to a select group of buyers. Our meticulous approach and the depth of our insights and analyses make the pricing understandable.
From our materials and videos, you will be able to regularly assess how well your brand is tapping into the emotional pulse of your audience.
These invaluable insights will tell you what steps to take to begin transforming your brand narrative into a queen of contemporary and emotional relevance.
NASH Brand Narrative Shapeshift
The future belongs to a brand narrative that teases into view people’s freedom-loving, adaptable Self while at the same time taking their exhausted, oversaturated spheres seriously.
That’s why we developed NASH, our Brand Narrative Shapeshift, as an expression of our own deep-dive-based storytelling expertise.
NASH draws from an unconventional narrative reservoir. It is based on a profound yet critical and humorous engagement with the target audience’s palpable ambivalences, inner fractures and discrepancies via their lived experiences. With this, we create tangible impact: a genuine, deeply felt connection between customer and brand.
If this the experience of reality you want to express via your brand narrative, we offer:
For Startups: Initial Narrative Shapeshift
Your brand is still young and unknown, your company new to brand storytelling. We provide you with your brand’s foundational narrative that will elevate subsequent creative communication for a first impactful public appearance.
For Established Brands: Newly Woven Narrative Shapeshift
Your company is experienced in brand storytelling. Now, you wish to introduce a decisive narrative twist to tackle new market and customer challenges. We equip your upcoming new brand story with a sophisticated narrative repertoire – one that will carry your brand and your customers through societal transformations.
We operate upon a solid foundation: our narrative framework is rooted in deep dive encounters with people during our Mushrooming ad hoc Conversations. Carefully tailored to the "existential conditions" of your brand, we approach customers’ personal narrative worlds with an open mind.
The quality of our insights is achieved by our critical elements:
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A unique combination of proprietary methods
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The alignment of the discussion content with five sensory dimensions (see NARA Dimensions)
With NASH Shapeshift you will receive a thorough, precise analysis and immediately actionable directional content / brand story variations as to what your refined brand narrative must encompass to touch and connect with audiences – the latter also presented in three different storytelling variations, in video format.
The brand narrative framework we create can then be strategically deployed to inform and guide the development of your creative brand communication campaigns.
Our Intention
What Moves Us
Brand narratives need to be examined, monitored and calibrated. Constantly. There is simply too much meaningless storytelling in the marketplace. People sense this, turn away and grow indifferent. Brands struggle and fade away.
A brand narrative is the living evidence of a brand's right to exist in people's lives. In many cases the only one, what with the perceived commoditized roles of most products on people's lives.
Every advertising campaign, every social media activity, is only as good as the underlying brand narrative on which it is based. When a brand narrative addresses existential questions of humanity, it cuts to the core of people's emotional needs and aspirations.
People need stories that offer an inimitable mix of depth, contradiction and pleasure/excitement. Creating the space for emotionally relevant brand narratives is what we excel at.
Our Skillset
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Using narrative psychology, paradoxical intervention, metaphor elicitation and other advanced techniques, we decipher which narrative and cognitive elements are relevant to people, thus strengthening a brand narrative's (emotionally important) role in customers' lives.
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We pin-point what allows a brand narrative rise to the challenges of our times, and thereby become meaningful to people's lives.
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We eliminate brand narrative elements that are perceived as cynical, uncaring and arrogant.
How Your Company Benefits
Significant impact on your brand performance and business results by working with us:
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Your (established) brand meets or exceeds set sales targets
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Your brand can skillfully assert itself against competitors in the minds and lives of customers
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Your brand manages critical development phases, including upheavals and disappointments, while staying connected to customers with honesty, empathy and courage.
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Your young and growing brand is in the process of earning its first deep emotional connection with new customers
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Your brand, products and services are perceived as contemporary and future-oriented
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Your brand cements a strong and lasting emotional connection with customers