You’re not too cool to think in tropes

The year is 2016.

No, i'm not gonna talk about difficult-to-swallow election results. Or referendums (referenda?). I want to talk about Borough Market in London. And specifically, a conversation i was having with a colleague at the time.

We were going to eat some fancy street food (it was the start of the month!). Out of nowhere, because we were both dorks, he asks:

“Do you know tvtropes.org?”

I said i hadn't. And he, again i should reiterate a dork like me, was shocked. We had to correct that, he said. So i got on my phone and looked it up. And man, i. Was. Hooked. Safe to say our productivity for the day went down the toilet. I probably put something vague in my timesheets. Ah, the beauty of time-based business models.

Anyway.

I've been obsessed with tropes ever since. Especially if they're increasingly popular in culture. Because that means they'll most likely be relatable for a huge number of people. But more important is that tropes can be highly specific.

So you end up with a cool axis of popularity plus specificity, i.e. the place where potential distinctiveness goes to live a good life.

Fast forward to 2024 and, of course, you have LLMs to do some of this stuff. But the principle behind tvtropes.org still stands. To use tropes to help better understand what a brand is, or could be. How it shows up in the world. How it would behave. What it wouldn't do. All that good stuff.

So, here’s an extremely simple guide on how LLMs plus thinking in tropes can give you clarity, momentum and specifics to work with.

To be clear, this isn't meant to be a definitive answer to all your brand strategy projects. But it's another tool to your arsenal, especially if you're dealing with a brand that is at huge risk of simply being bland. So, let's play it out in simple stages.

1. The "ok, cool on paper"

You receive a brief. It's about a B2B company who historically did software boxes, but is switching to a SaaS model. They are changing their product architecture, but need a more unified brand narrative. They think there's something interesting in being a sidekick to small businesses.

2. The "we can probably do better"

Ok, a sidekick is cool. But also, kinda expected in the category. Every brand wants to be a helper to customers' needs. An "enabler". You want to go deeper. So you load up your LLM of choice, and ask: "give me the 10 best types of sidekicks and examples of each of them in popular culture".

3. The "give me specifics yo"

Now, you start seeing where you can unpack things. You realise a sidekick can play a secondary role (Hermione Granger!), be a normal character observing the action (Otacon from the Metal Gear saga!), or offer comedy relief (Shaggy Rogers!). Interesting, not sure yet how useful, let's keep going...

4. The "oh, do tell some more?"

You keep reading and realise sometimes sidekicks are reckless and get into trouble. This seems to have potential. You'd assume a sidekick is someone who can get the hero out of trouble. But what if there's a brand narrative where the brand is the one that needs saving? Could there be something there?

5. The "might be something in this!"

You go back to your brand history and you realise they were born out of a rebel spirit against old school small business ways. There's a bit of bravado to their history, and bravado can sometimes get you in trouble. Perhaps this brand has historically broken the norm one too many times. Could you write a narrative around a reckless brand? (Editor's note: yes, i just invented some brand heritage to suit my own editorial purposes!)

6. The "let's go deeper underground"

Who knows. But now you're wondering. So you ask the LLM: "what would a narrative about a brand that is reckless feel like? How do you do it in a way that doesn't compromise reliability?"

You start exploring some of the areas it gives back. You think about the positive spin of reckless sidekicks. They may get in trouble, but they also get shit done. So it's a brand that is more interested in getting you results than following the rules. So, a bit like Direct Line, it chooses to reject a category norm ('nice' empathy) and offers a different solution (ruthless practicality).

7. The “try a few others for size”

Now, is this your answer? Not necessarily. And the above is purely hypothetical, apart from the Direct Line bit which is true (and won an IPA award some years ago).

But the point is, you see how a simple back and forth on a LLM took you down places that could be seen as potentially distinct? Now, imagine this but for the brief in your hands.

Is your brand more of a sage? A democratiser? A straight talker? What types of tropes are attached to these types? How can you get more specific, knowing that in the specifics lie potentially unique ways of presenting yourself?

Then, the job is what the job always is. Simplify, then exaggerate. Jerry Seinfeld talks about how comedy is about finding something small and specific and then blowing it way out of proportion.

This feels to me as good a definition of ​relative differentiation​ as i've ever seen. So give it a go. Try to define your category based on common tropes. Then try to find tropes which are less exploited but which could be credibly expressed by your brand. See where things go, have fun. And if nothing else, dork out for the kick of it!