THE HERO’S JOURNEY OF YOUR BRAND
Discover the Story Your Company and Its Customers Are Meant to Live
A two-day leadership experience. One Double Journey. One Shared Ambition. One Great Story.
A PRIVATE LEADERSHIP EXPERIENCE IN PARIS · TWO DAYS · UP TO EIGHT PARTICIPANTS
Your company has a story.
So do your customers.
But are you living the same story?
Your organisation has ambitions, opportunities and challenges. Your customers have dreams, aspirations and problems they want to solve. The most powerful brands understand that these two journeys are connected.
Your organisation’s future depends on the future it helps its customers create.
The Hero’s Journey of Your Brand is a two-day experience in which your leadership team discovers and rewrites the story connecting your organisation’s ambition with your customers’ aspirations.
Not another branding workshop. Not another exercise in finding the perfect slogan.
A strategic journey to discover what your organisation stands for, whom it serves, what it helps them achieve and the future you want to create together.
Your customer is the hero. Your organisation makes the journey possible.
Many companies tell their brand story from their own perspective.
They talk about their history, products, expertise, achievements and ambitions.
But customers are not looking for another company to admire. They are looking for a partner who can help them achieve something that matters.
They want to overcome a challenge. Discover new possibilities. Make progress. Realise an ambition. Create a better future.
In the story of your brand, your customer is the hero or heroine.
Your organisation is the guide, partner and catalyst that helps them move forward.
This changes the central question:
Instead of asking, “How do we tell a better story about our company?”, ask:
“What is the story our customers want to live — and what role should our organisation play in making it possible?”
That is where a more meaningful brand story begins.
The Double Journey: two journeys become one
At the heart of The Hero’s Journey of Your Brand is Peter de Kuster’s Double Journey.
It connects two stories that are often treated separately: the journey of your customers and the journey of your organisation.
1. The customer’s journey
Your customer has an aspiration. They face external challenges and internal questions. They need to make choices, overcome obstacles and transform their situation. They are looking for a guide who can help them achieve what matters.
2. Your organisation’s journey
Your organisation has its own ambition. It faces market challenges, competition, change and internal questions about identity, culture and capabilities. It must evolve to become the organisation its customers need.
These are not two independent stories.
They are interconnected.
Your organisation succeeds by helping customers succeed. And the challenges your customers face can inspire your organisation to develop new capabilities, rethink its purpose and discover new opportunities.
The two journeys meet in a shared future:
Your customers achieve their aspirations. Your organisation fulfils its ambition by helping them get there.
That is the story your brand should tell.
The One Great Story: a framework for discovering your brand
The experience is built around Peter de Kuster’s One Great Story methodology.
It gives your leadership team a shared language for understanding characters, ambitions, challenges, transformation and the future.
The framework combines four storytelling elements.
The 12 archetypes — Who are the characters?
Every memorable story has recognisable characters with distinctive motivations, strengths, weaknesses and ambitions.
The twelve archetypes help your team explore the identity of your organisation, the aspirations of your customers and the role your brand should play in their lives.
What kind of guide do your customers need? What character does your organisation embody? What qualities should define your relationship?
The 7 plots — What kind of story are you living?
Stories follow recognisable patterns.
The seven plots help your leadership team discover the fundamental journey your organisation and its customers are undertaking.
Are you helping customers overcome adversity, discover new possibilities, achieve something extraordinary, transform their lives or create a new world?
Understanding the plot helps reveal the deeper meaning of your brand.
The 36 dramatic situations — What challenges must be overcome?
Every meaningful journey involves challenges, conflicts, choices and turning points.
The 36 dramatic situations help your team identify the challenges that create momentum in your customers’ journey and your organisation’s journey.
They provide a way to explore what stands in the way of progress — and what must happen to move the story forward.
The two endings — What future will you create?
Every journey has a possible ending.
One is the fulfilment of the aspiration: the customer achieves what matters, and the organisation creates the future it set out to build.
The other is the unfulfilled aspiration: the challenges remain unresolved and the desired future stays out of reach.
Exploring both endings helps your leadership team understand what is at stake — and why your brand story matters.
Together, these elements help you move from a collection of brand messages to one coherent story with a clear direction.
Paris: a city of great stories
Why Paris?
Because great stories are not found only in business books, films and presentations. They are all around us.
Paris is a living classroom of ambition, creativity, identity, conflict, courage, transformation and reinvention.
During the two days, we use the city’s cultural treasures as inspiration and as mirrors for your own organisation.
The Louvre — Identity and ambition
What makes a character distinctive? What makes a story memorable? What symbols express identity and ambition?
Explore the archetypes and deeper motivations that shape memorable stories — and consider what makes your organisation distinctive.
Musée d’Orsay — Transformation and new perspectives
Great stories often begin when the familiar world is no longer enough.
What needs to change in your organisation? What new possibilities could your customers discover? What must you become to help them reach their next destination?
Palais Garnier — Emotion and experience
A great story creates an emotional experience.
How can your brand move beyond communicating what it does to making people feel why it matters?
Discover how drama, anticipation and emotion can make your brand more memorable.
Shakespeare and Company — The power of narrative
Every organisation has stories it tells about itself.
But which story deserves to be told next?
Explore how a compelling narrative gives direction, meaning and momentum to the future.
We also draw inspiration from famous films, biographies, literature, art, music, architecture and brand stories.
These are not cultural excursions added to a business workshop. They are part of the learning experience: great stories that help your leadership team see its own story differently.
THE TWO-DAY EXPERIENCE
Two days. Two stages. One new brand story.
DAY ONE — EXPLORE
Discover the stories your organisation and customers are living now.
The first day is about seeing your organisation, your customers and your brand from a different perspective.
Together, we explore:
Your customers’ story
- What do your customers really want to achieve?
- What are their aspirations?
- What external challenges stand in their way?
- What internal doubts, questions and transformations shape their journey?
- What kind of guide or partner do they need?
Your organisation’s story
- What ambition drives your organisation?
- What makes your organisation distinctive?
- What external challenges must you overcome?
- What must change internally?
- What capabilities will you need to serve your customers better?
The stories that connect you
- Which archetypes describe your customers and your organisation?
- Which of the seven plots best describes your shared journey?
- Which dramatic challenges define the opportunities ahead?
- What are the possible endings of your story?
Through examples from Paris, famous stories and facilitated leadership conversations, we challenge familiar assumptions and discover new perspectives.
DAY ONE OUTCOME
The Double Journey Discovery Map
A shared picture of where your customers want to go, where your organisation wants to go, what stands in the way and what you could achieve together.
DAY TWO — CREATE
Rewrite the story of your organisation’s future with its customers.
The second day turns discovery into a new strategic narrative.
Together, we develop:
- The aspiration at the heart of your customers’ story.
- The ambition at the heart of your organisation’s story.
- The shared mission that connects the two.
- The challenges your customers need to overcome.
- The role your organisation must play as guide, partner and catalyst.
- The transformation your customers should experience.
- The transformation your organisation must undertake.
- The future you want to create together.
We bring these elements together in one coherent brand story.
A story that explains why your organisation matters, whom it serves, what it helps them achieve and the future it wants to create with them.
DAY TWO OUTCOME
Your Brand Story Blueprint
A practical foundation for communicating your brand, aligning leadership, inspiring employees and strengthening customer relationships.
What you take home
At the end of the experience, your leadership team will have:
- The Double Journey Discovery Map — a visual representation of the connected customer and organisational journeys.
- A shared brand ambition — clarity about the future you want to create together.
- Your new brand story — a coherent narrative built around customer aspirations and your organisation’s contribution.
- A storytelling framework — using the 12 archetypes, 7 plots, 36 dramatic situations and two endings.
- Strategic implementation priorities — practical directions for bringing your new story to life in leadership, communication, culture and customer experience.
- An online follow-up session — to review progress and discuss the next steps.
The intention is to leave Paris with more than inspiration.
You leave with a story your leadership team can use to make decisions, inspire people and create a stronger relationship with customers.
Who should participate?
The Hero’s Journey of Your Brand is designed for leadership teams who believe their organisation’s future depends on creating a more meaningful relationship with their customers.
It is particularly relevant for:
- CEOs and founders shaping the next chapter of their organisation.
- Leadership teams preparing for strategic change.
- Family businesses defining their next generation of ambition.
- Companies seeking a clearer and more distinctive market position.
- Organisations whose products and services are changing faster than their brand story.
- Businesses that want to connect customer experience, leadership and organisational purpose.
The experience is designed for up to eight participants.
It works best when the people who shape the organisation’s future take part together.
The Paris edition
A PRIVATE TWO-DAY LEADERSHIP EXPERIENCE
Location: Paris, France
Duration: Two days
Participants: Up to eight members of your leadership team
Facilitator: Peter de Kuster
€7,500
Excluding VAT, per leadership team
The investment includes:
- Preparation and a pre-workshop questionnaire.
- Two days of facilitation by Peter de Kuster.
- The Paris storytelling experience.
- The Double Journey Discovery Map.
- Your Brand Story Blueprint.
- An online follow-up session.
Travel, accommodation, venue, catering, cultural admissions and local transport are additional expenses.
Private editions can also be developed for leadership teams in other cities.
About Peter de Kuster
Peter de Kuster is the creator of The Hero’s Journey, The Heroine’s Journey and The One Great Story methodology.
His work explores the stories people live, the ambitions they pursue and the transformations that shape their lives and organisations.
Through thousands of stories from professionals across creative industries, he has developed a practical approach to understanding the characters, challenges, plots and turning points that make stories meaningful.
In The Hero’s Journey of Your Brand, he brings this perspective into the boardroom.
His starting point is simple:
The most powerful story your organisation can tell is the story of the future it helps its customers create.
WHAT STORY WILL YOUR COMPANY CREATE NEXT?
Your organisation already has a story.
But is it the story that will take your customers — and your organisation — where you want to go?
Perhaps it is time to rethink the story you are telling, the role you are playing and the future you are creating together.
Two days in Paris. Up to eight leaders. One Double Journey. One Great Story.
Let’s discover the story your company should be living next.
START A CONVERSATION ABOUT YOUR BRAND’S FUTURE
A complimentary 30-minute conversation with Peter de Kuster.
Discuss your organisation’s ambitions, your customers’ aspirations and whether The Hero’s Journey of Your Brand is right for your leadership team.
Book your complimentary 30-minute conversation.