When people talk about brand stories, they usually mean customer-facing narratives: campaigns, taglines, purpose-led messaging. And that’s fine - up to a point.

But if your brand story only lives in the marketing function, you’re missing its most powerful use.

A great brand story doesn’t just speak to the outside world. It sets the tone, direction, and expectations inside the business too. It’s the source code that aligns strategy and culture; the narrative spine that helps your team understand not just what the company does, but who it is.

When it’s missing, you feel it inside the business: You can get drift, duplication, and dissonance between teams; vision statements that don’t land; cultural initiatives that falter; employees who don’t see how their work connects to the mission.

A strong internal brand story fixes that. It says:

• Here’s what we believe.

• Here’s where we’re going.

• Here’s how we behave.

• And here’s how it all connects.

It becomes the organising principle behind how the business shows up - not just to customers, but to itself.

Why start inside?

Start with the lived experience of the people delivering the brand. If the story doesn’t ring true on the inside, it won’t stick on the outside.

An internal brand story brings a heartbeat to the strategy. It turns values into verbs. It helps every function - sales, product, ops, customer support - work from the same foundation, even if they express it differently.

When you get it right, you get energy as well as alignment. The best brand stories help people feel part of something bigger, because they are aspirational.

And when you start on the inside, don’t just look to the top. Some of the richest, most authentic story material comes from further down the org chart. That’s why we often build from the bottom up - beginning with emerging leaders or delivery teams, then working up through middle managers to the executive group.

This sequencing gives depth and legitimacy to the narrative. It surfaces the language people actually use, the values they actually live, and the vision they actually believe in. So by the time it reaches the top, the story is already grounded and energised.

So what does this look like in practice?

I use a focused four-week sprint to uncover and shape the internal brand story - the same structured process outlined in the first article in the series [here]. What matters most at this stage is the emphasis on employee experience, clarity of language, and testing internally before polishing for external use.

The goal is clarity. A shared story that makes people proud to be part of the business, and clear on where it’s heading.

When you get the brand story right internally, everything else starts to align around it.

Next up (tomorrow) - what happens when your brand story doesn't align inside and outside your business, and what to do about it.