Anytime I refer to The Belief Journey, I'm talking about one of three critical dials in my world-first Beliefonomics Storytelling Framework, the other two being The Brand Journey and The Channel Journey. All three work together to unlock your central Brand Story that drives purpose and profit.
The Belief Journey contains six distinct stages, illustrated below thanks to Ashley Boyd:
I explain it in actionable detail in my book, with an excerpt provided below for you now:
BOOK EXCERPT (Chapter 9, "Beliefonomics: realise the true value of your brand story", Mark Jones, 2020).
Let’s clear something up straight out of the gate. When we talk about belief, it isn’t just a conversation about religion or politics, as much as I love those subjects. Within each of us exists this sea of existential beliefs about who we are, how we interpret the world and understand other people. These self-beliefs fundamentally shape our world view.
The key to understanding this reality is realising that our beliefs are constantly forming, shifting and changing. Each night, scientists tell us, dreams are one way our brains pro
cess and make sense of the day’s activities. These happy, sad, terrifying or
profound experiences form, and inform, layer upon layer of belief systems that govern our decision making – commercial or otherwise.
For example, a large number of people believe all people are essentially good.
Dr Brené Brown advocates this thinking, famous for her research into vulnerability and leadership. Her top tip is to assume others are not out to get you, they’re doing the best they can. It follows that if most people are doing their best, we believe most people are good.
It’s not hard to see evidence of this belief at work. How often have you seen pedestrians stopping instinctively to help someone who just stumbled and fell? We believe most people will help us in an emergency.
Flip this thinking into the commercial realm. Back when Uber started, it was a radical idea. Why would you jump into a car with a random stranger? The most popular conversation at the time was about trust – do you trust Uber's rating system to protect you from bad drivers? Do you trust random strangers? For the early adopters like myself the real question was do I believe most people are good? Yes, I do. Yes, they did. And here we are, some 11+ years after Uber was founded and the world is populated with ride-sharing services who trust the technology and believe in good people.
Of course, it almost goes without saying that we believe in a lot of things. Another common belief in society is that each of us has the choice and ability to significantly change the direction of our lives. Not happy with your health, body shape or appearance? The gym, a fitness coach, weight-loss program or plastic surgeon will deliver the results. Self-belief is combined with belief in commercial services.
At the consumer product level, we don’t just trust in products. We actively exercise belief in those products.
For example, I believe that the breakfast cereal Weet-bix, combined with milk and honey, is good for my kids. All four of them have consumed vast quantities of the stuff over the years and, as parents, we’re happy
if they eat it every single day. Sometimes twice. If that statement makes you twitchy, perhaps you have a different set of beliefs about what foods are good for you or your kids!
With these ideas in mind, and inspired by my own Belief Moment (which I share in my book), I developed the Belief Journey (model pictured below) which is one of three critical dials in my world-first model for brand storytelling, The Beliefonomics Storytelling Framework. If you’ve been exposed to ideas like Design Thinking, User Experience Testing or Customer Experience, you’ll know the customer should always lead strategy development.
The Belief Journey is a complementary model that helps us understand how customer beliefs operate and change within distinct stages. As we intuitively know, life is more complex than the binary notions of I believe in something or I don’t believe […]
BOOK EXCERPT from “Beliefonomics: Realise the True Value of Your Brand Story” by Mark Jones (2020), Chapter 9
Buy a copy of the book here, available in print ($24.99 plus P&H) or ebook ($9.99), or contact Mark to discuss mapping the Belief Journey of your organisation.