Loved the Skillshare manifesto. I hadn’t seen that one. And I like the way you describe brands that make you feel like you’re joining a club. You word things very nicely.

And because it is that, what you’re actually forming is a calculated series of touch points that make people think and feel things. If you solely focus on what you’re selling, you become a salesman. If you focus on creating a *culture shift*, you will find people who resonate with your culture and want to join. Now you have a club of like-minded individuals who feel emotionally like they belong to something greater than anything tangible. We all want to belong.

So stepping back and writing up a manifesto is a clear step towards defining a culture, and creating a club which you can then – and only then – actively invite people into. Brands need to be more than what they want from their customers, they need to become something worth joining for true “addiction”.

Nike: Stop whining, and kick some ass. Join us.
Apple: We believe in challenging the status quo, we salute “the crazies” who think they can change the world. Join us.

This all relates back to an amazing TED talk by Simon Sinek about speaking first and foremost about the *WHY*, not the how or the what:

Also, here’s another video manifesto by Skillshare
http://www.skillshare.com/about/manifesto

Notice how all of these things speak to us emotionally about our aspirations. This is so effective because we filter information through our crocodile brain first. Crap… I think this vein is a blog post in of itself. =)

Skip to the part on “”Heroes, buddies and villains,” and she even points to this resource on how to develop the “buyer’s story:” http://www.buyerpersonainsights.com/2011/01/how-well-do-you-know-your-buyers-story.html. Also a good read that helps.

Also, I found the audio recording I took and embedded it above via SoundCloud. She talks about character development around 3:20, though the entire 9-minute talk is interesting. You can also find the recording here: http://soundcloud.com/ericaswallow/content-strategy-movies

In the end, I guess it’s really up to you to figure out how to define a customer’s persona – whether that’s via setting up interviews, observing behaviors or just listening.

I love your questions, though. I have a feeling that since you can ask the right questions, you’ll find a great solution.

1. Understand who is your protagonist, what they think about, and what their challenges are.
2. Understand in what *sequence* they must tackle those challenges, and what items/tools/weapons they will need on their quest.

If you can understand those two, you can think about the pieces of the puzzle you will need to provide to be the sort of “fairy god mother” (content strategist) throughout the journey. It seems what you really need to do is think through these different personas and classify your quests. That’s great to ground that, but what’s interesting to me is how do you take that one step backwards and classify those people? Do you seek to understand that through customer discovery on the phone or in person? Is it researching people’s twitter and LinkedIn? What tools and strategies do you use to get a solid grasp on the personas and their questions?