Many organisations have a strategy. And often plenty of communication. But not yet a narrative that guides choices, behaviour and communication.
In this FAQ, we answer questions about Narrative Design, guiding brands, brand positioning, internal alignment, sales stories, content, campaigns and working with Truman.
Narrative Design is the design of a narrative system that guides choices, organisational behaviour and communication. It brings strategy, organisation and market together in one coherent, meaningful whole.
This makes strategy not something that lives in a document or presentation, but something people can understand, feel and use.
A narrative is a narrative system that connects that what drives an organisation on the inside with that what people on the outside need in order to understand it, trust it and choose it.
It clarifies the role the organisation plays in the wider world: why that role is relevant, why it is credible and why it deserves preference over alternatives.
That system translates into language, behaviour and brand expression. It brings everything an organisation thinks, says, does and creates together into one meaningful whole.
Truman is a Narrative Design Agency based in Amsterdam. We help organisations and brands develop a guiding narrative: a narrative system connecting strategy, behaviour, communication, content and campaigns.
We are not a traditional advertising agency, branding agency or strategy consultancy, but we combine strategy, creation and production. We think like strategists, imagine like creatives and build alongside our clients as partners. In this way, we make sure that strategy does not only make sense on paper, but that it also becomes visible, tangible and useful inside the organisation and in the market.
Truman helps organisations with Narrative Design, brand positioning, corporate stories, internal alignment, proposition development, sales stories, content, campaigns and asset production.
Our deliverables include:
Our services usually sit within three programmes: Choose Direction, Align the Organisation and Move the Market. With those, we first help organisations choose direction, then take the organisation along and finally move the market.
A Narrative Design Agency helps organisations develop and apply a guiding narrative system. That system shapes brand positioning, leadership, employee behaviour, sales, propositions, content, campaigns and customer contact.
Truman is a Narrative Design Agency in Amsterdam. We help organisations make their strategy work: internally, inside the organisation, and externally, in the market.
Storytelling is usually about telling a good story. Narrative Design is about designing the system behind that story.
A story could be a text, a campaign or a presentation. A narrative is broader: it determines what an organisation says, does, creates and proves. Narrative Design therefore touches not only upon communication, but also strategy, organisational behaviour, sales, propositions and brand expression.
A narrative is the underlying narrative system that guides choices, behaviour and communication. It defines what an organisation chooses, why that choice is relevant, how it makes the choice credible and how that chosen direction shapes everything the organisation thinks, says, does and creates.
A brand story translates that narrative into a recognisable story about the brand. It makes the direction understandable, tangible and easy to share with a specific audience or in a particular context.
Put simply: the narrative is the system behind the story. The brand story is one of the ways that system is expressed.
Positioning is about the place a brand or organisation wants to occupy in its audience's mind. It clarifies what you want to be known for in relation to the alternatives in the market.
Narrative Design goes further. It considers not only the outside world of the market, customers and competitors, but also the organisation's inside world: its origins, beliefs, strategy, behaviour, culture, proof and choices.
Positioning is therefore an important part of Narrative Design. But Narrative Design brings it all together in one narrative system that guides what the organisation thinks, says, does and creates.
The True Story Canvas® is Truman's strategic model for defining the core of an organisation or brand. It brings origins, role, audience, tension, promise and proof together in one clear foundation.
Within Narrative Design, we use the canvas to develop a narrative that is credible and provides direction.
A guiding brand helps people choose in a changing world. It makes complexity comprehensible, reduces doubt and offers a practical way forward.
Such a brand is not only visible or distinctive. It helps customers, employees or stakeholders understand what is changing, which choices matter and what makes sense to do now.
Markets have become more complex. Customers have more options, more information and more reasons to have doubts. That makes attention alone no longer enough.
Guiding brands earn preference quicker because they offer guidance and something to hold onto. They help people understand what is changing, what that means for them and why a particular choice is logical, credible and useful.
Guiding brands do three things: offer guidance, move people and prove their direction through behaviour.
Accordingly, they do not stop at a promise or a campaign. Instead, they make their direction visible in choices, products, services, communication, evidence and customer contact.
Purpose is about why an organisation exists or the contribution it wants to make. It often starts with the organisation itself: this is what we believe, this is what we find important, this is the impact we want to have.
Offering guidance goes a step further. It connects the organisation's belief with the audience's question, doubt or choice. A guiding brand does not only state what it stands for, but it helps people understand what is changing, which direction makes sense and what step they can take.
Put simply: purpose shows what an organisation considers important. Offering guidance shows how that conviction helps customers, employees or stakeholders choose in a changing world.
Thought leadership is revolves around a distinctive view of a market, topic or development. Offering guidance goes further: it helps customers or stakeholders navigate through what is changing in their world.
Thought leadership builds authority. Offering guidance builds trust because it helps people understand, weigh their options and choose.
You become guiding by making a clear choice as to which role your brand is playing in a changing world. Then, that direction needs to become visible in your behaviour, evidence, products, services, communication and customer contact.
A guiding brand does not only say what it stands for. It also helps people understand what is changing and what they can do.
A strategy comes alive when people understand what the organisation is choosing, why that matters and what it means for their day-to-day choices and behaviour.
That takes more than a presentation or internal campaign. You need a narrative that leaders can convey, teams can use and employees can recognise in what the organisation does.
When leaders, teams, sales, HR, marketing and communications all tell a different story, there is usually a lack of a shared narrative. The issue then is not necessarily weak communication, but a lack of coherence.
Narrative Design helps to develop one guiding narrative system. That system gives language to the organisation’s course, clarifies choices and enables different parts of the organisation to work from the same place.
Strategy only becomes useful when people know what to do with it. That is why you translate it into practical principles for leadership, team behaviour, sales conversations, customer contact, content and campaigns.
A narrative makes that translation possible. It connects the strategic choice with the organisation's day-to-day reality.
A new direction becomes understandable when you explain not only what is changing, but also why that change is needed now, what tension is at play and which role the organisation is choosing.
A good narrative gives people language, context and grip. Because of it, direction is not only understood rationally, but also felt to be credible.
A corporate story is valuable when you want to clarify who you are, what you stand for and why your work matters.
A narrative is needed when the story must also guide choices, behaviour, sales, propositions, content and campaigns. A corporate story describes. A narrative directs.
During a merger, growth or reorganisation, not only the structure changes, but also the story people need in order to understand the organisation.
A narrative helps to connect old and new realities. It clarifies where the organisation comes from, which direction it is choosing and how employees, customers and stakeholders can move along with it.
A complex proposition becomes easier to explain when you start with the question, doubt or change in the customer's world. Not with everything your solution can do, but with what the customer is trying to understand or decide.
Narrative Design helps translate technical, strategic or societal complexity into a clear story with tension, choice, promise and proof.
When customers do not understand the value quickly enough, the problem is often not the value itself, but how it is framed and explained.
A narrative helps customers see what is changing, why that matters and why your organisation is the logical choice. That makes the value easier to recognise and communicate.
Sales and marketing tell the same story when they work from one shared narrative core. That core defines which customer tension takes a central position, which direction you choose, which promise you make and which evidence supports it.
From that core, you can develop sales stories, propositions, campaigns, content and presentations that reinforce one another rather than sit alongside one another.
A sales story is a persuasive narrative that helps sales explain value clearly, credibly and relevantly. It is not only about what you sell, but above all about what the customer needs to understand in order to choose.
A good sales story reduces doubt, gives structure to the conversation and makes clear why your solution is the logical one.
A narrative can shorten the sales cycle because customers understand sooner what is at stake, which choice they need to make and why your organisation is relevant to that choice.
In B2B especially, a strong narrative reduces complexity, supports internal decision-making and builds trust during the consideration phase.
You translate a narrative into propositions and sales materials by applying the strategic core to specific customer questions. What doubt is the customer experiencing? What options are they considering? What proof do they need? Which next step should feel logical?
This leads to propositions, sales decks, relationship manager presentations, conversation scripts, customer journeys, explainers and content that all work from the same direction.
Campaigns do not automatically build preference. Reach makes people notice you, but preference only develops when people understand why you are relevant, why you are credible and why you are the logical choice.
When campaigns fail to build preference, they often lack an underlying narrative that connects the individual messages and executions.
Brand preference develops in the consideration phase when you reduce uncertainty. Customers may already know you, but they are still looking for proof, reassurance and grip.
A narrative helps organise content, evidence, customer cases, propositions and campaigns so that interest can grow into trust and preference.
Content adds up when every theme, format and story stems from the same narrative core. Without that core, content often remains a collection of disconnected posts, articles or campaigns.
With a narrative, you can build towards recognition, evidence, trust and preference over time.
A creative platform is an foundation idea that makes a narrative recognisable and repeatable across campaigns, content and assets.
It is not a one-off campaign thought, but a creative system you can draw from over time. A good creative platform makes the brand's direction visible, tangible and activating.
You need a new campaign when the direction is right but the activation could be stronger. You need a new narrative when the underlying direction is unclear, fragmented or no longer credible.
Warning signs are: campaigns do not build a position, sales tells a different story, customers take too long to understand the value, or the organisation has changed while the market still sees it as it used to be.
Complex change becomes understandable when you start with what the customer experiences: doubt, risk, uncertainty or choice overload. Then, you give language to what is changing and show which choices make sense.
A narrative makes complex change more human, concrete and useful.
Truman not only develops the narrative but also translates it into assets. Think of campaigns, content formats, films, social assets, presentations, explainers, photography, copy, design and sales materials.
In that way, the chosen direction stays recognisable in everything the organisation creates and publishes.
Yes. Truman develops and produces video, photography, animation, explainers, commercials, social content and campaign assets.
For us, production isn’t separate from strategy. Every asset must strengthen the narrative.
Truman works through three programmes: Choose Direction, Align the Organisation and Move the Market.
First, we determine which direction an organisation can credibly claim. We then translate that direction internally into leadership, behaviour, teams and sales. Finally, we make the narrative externally visible through propositions, content, campaigns and assets.
Choose Direction helps organisations make a sharp choice about the direction they can credibly claim.
Align the Organisation translates that direction into leadership, teams, employees, behaviour, HR, sales and customer contact.
Move the Market makes the narrative visible externally through propositions, content, campaigns, sales materials and creative platforms.
Together, these programmes ensure that a narrative is not only designed, but also used, owned and made visible.
You bring in Truman when your organisation needs a narrative that works through everything it says, does and creates.
For example, when the strategy is in place, but nobody feels it yet. When leaders, teams and sales tell different stories. When customers do not understand your value quickly enough. Or when campaigns generate reach but fail to build a recognisable position or preference.
A project usually begins with a sharp diagnosis of the challenge. We then determine the route required: choosing a direction, internal alignment, market activation or a combination of the three.
Depending on the challenge, we work with sessions, research, strategic development, creative concepts, content, campaigns, sales materials or production.
Every project is bespoke, but not unstructured. We work with clear programmes and building blocks, such as Choose Direction, Align the Organisation and Move the Market.
This keeps the approach structured while tailoring the route to the challenge.
It depends on the challenge. A compact strategic refinement can take a few weeks. A broader Narrative Design project involving internal activation, campaign development or production takes longer.
After an initial conversation, we determine a fitting schedule and scope.
Costs depend on scope, depth and production. Strategic and creative phases can often be budgeted in advance. Production and execution depend on the assets, channels and level of complexity involved.
During an introductory meeting, we first determine what is needed before preparing a proposal.
At Truman, you work with a compact, senior team. The people who help shape the strategy, concept and creative work are also involved in the execution.
This keeps communication direct and the narrative consistent from strategy to asset.
Yes. Truman often works with internal marketing, communications, HR, sales or leadership teams. We can also collaborate with existing agency partners.
Our role then is to provide direction, coherence and narrative leadership.
Truman works with organisations in, among others, energy, healthcare, food, government, financial services, B2B, professional services, trade associations, non-profits and consumer brands.
Many of our projects take place in markets where change, complexity or societal pressure influence the choices made by customers, employees or stakeholders.
Yes. Truman works with B2B organisations where propositions are complex, decision-making cycles are long and trust is of importance.
In B2B, Narrative Design helps make value easier to understand, align sales and marketing, and give customers clarity sooner.
Yes. Truman also works with public-sector organisations, social initiatives and non-profits.
For societal challenges in particular, Narrative Design helps make complexity understandable, activate behaviour and build trust.
Truman was founded on one conviction: no more sugar-coated bullshit.
Our thinking began with True Storytelling: building credible stories from what an organisation genuinely delivers. It has since evolved into Narrative Design: designing narratives that are not only credible, but also guide choices, behaviour, communication and market movement.
Truman's books include True Storytelling and Supercharge Your Stories.
These books form part of the foundation of our thinking about credibility, stories, behavioural psychology, content and brand communication.
Truman means 'the loyal one'.
For us, that means staying true to what you genuinely choose as an organisation. Not as a fixed ideal, but as a direction that evolves with the world around you. That is where every strong narrative begins.
Call or email Truman to arrange an introductory meeting. Through conversation, we will explore what is going on, where the organisation is getting stuck and whether a guiding narrative could help.
Call Paul Hillesum on +31 (0)20 280 18 90 or email paul@trumanamsterdam.com.