5 Blueprints for Your Brand's Story Investors like a good story, like everybody else.

You've got a great product. Or service. Or both. Your packaging, website and tagline are cohesive. That's not enough. To be a brand, you need to have a story. As a 'trep, you may feel your founding tale, the one that literally gets you out of bed in the middle of the night, is unique. It may be. But your brand's story needs to take that personal background and combine it with your company mission to make customers and investors listen. We deconstructed five of the most universal stories brands tell, with some advice on how to use them to write your brand's next chapter.

Story 1: "The old way had to change."

It used to be enough to be the fastest, the cheapest, some kind of -est. Now companies talk in terms of disruption -- an overused buzzword, without question, but there's a reason this story is so sticky. "To be a disruptor, you have to maintain driving speed of the process and get the formula right," says Clark Howard, best-selling author of Living Large in Lean Times. You're saying that your way of doing things is so spot-on, it changed the competition. That's a powerful endorsement. Consumers always like a leader.