How to Turn Narrative into Action
After diagnosing why the old narrative has failed, brands need to turn positioning, emotion, scene, and community into actions that can be executed, verified, and iterated.
I
Across the previous four essays, I have been doing one thing: diagnosis.
The first essay argued that the crisis in consumer goods is not that “products aren’t selling” — it is that consumers no longer accept being defined. I called it the “revaluation of consumption legitimacy.”
The second essay argued that consumers have shifted from role-persons and achievement-persons to sovereign persons — and the sovereign person holds four rights: the right to interpret, the right to choose, the right to exit, and the right to build.
The third essay argued that the three pillars of the old narrative — authority endorsement, identity encoding, and the preaching posture — have all failed at once in the face of the sovereign person.
The fourth essay argued that the new narrative is about rebuilding the expressive relationship between brand and consumer — listen and take advice, play the supporting role, move people, and lift them up.
The diagnosis is done. But diagnosis is not the goal. When a doctor looks at the scans and says, “You are indeed sick,” the patient will ask: then what?
Then comes this essay — how to turn narrative into action.
II
In my earlier piece “PEST Market Growth Strategies for the Age of Surplus,” I proposed a framework: the PEST Growth Compass — Position × Emotion × Scene × Tribe.
Position: What role do you play in the consumer’s story universe? Are you the protagonist, the authority, the educator — or the supporting character, the companion, the one who lifts them up?
Emotion: Which of the consumer’s emotional touchpoints are you responding to? Anxiety, loneliness, the longing to be seen — or the wish to be taken seriously?
Scene: In what scene does the consumer need you? What are the power relations and exit rules within that scene?
Tribe: With whom does the consumer use you? Is the community you form together sustained by obedience, or by voluntary connection?
PEST is not a marketing strategy sheet; it is a map of role positioning. It helps a brand answer one question: on the consumer’s new map, where do you stand?
That position is not drawn by the brand itself; it is the place the consumer permits you to enter.
III
After positioning, how does it land? I propose a six-layer narrative model.
Layer one: identify the contradiction.
The starting point of narrative is not a product selling point, but the consumer’s real contradictions within concrete relationships. Wanting to celebrate but not wanting to lose control. Wanting to show that someone matters but not wanting to compete in one-upmanship. Wanting to be close to family but not being good at direct expression. Wanting to join a community while keeping personal boundaries.
When researching these contradictions, you cannot just ask “do you drink, and what flavors do you like?” You must also ask: who wants you to drink, and who allows you not to drink? Which moment made you feel respected, and which moment made you feel controlled?
A narrative earns its right to exist only when it grasps a contradiction the consumer finds hard to resolve alone.
Layer two: take a clear stance.
The brand needs to make a choice within the contradiction. A value stance cannot be phrases anyone can use, like “the good life” or “quality living.” It should state: what you protect, what you oppose, and what you are willing to give up for it.
A brand built for small gatherings of friends can protect “friendship that needs no proving” and oppose using drinking capacity to test relationships. A local culture brand can protect “living local memory” and oppose turning tradition into a hollow antique.
Once you have chosen a stance, you must adjust your product portfolio, channel incentives, and measurement metrics. Not doing everything — making trade-offs.
Layer three: product evidence.
The value proposition must leave perceivable evidence in the product. Does the liquor’s flavor profile match the target scene? Does the container size help participants control the total amount? Is the information clear? Is the price consistent with the promise?
If a brand talks about “relaxed gatherings” yet offers only large-volume, high-proof products; if it talks about “respect” yet uses sales incentives to encourage drinking contests — the narrative fails at the product layer.
Genki Forest went from the “0 sugar, 0 fat, 0 calories” story to 551 full-process testing standards — that is the shift from “telling you what makes me good” to “showing you the evidence.” Product evidence is what gives a narrative its backbone.
Layer four: rebuild the ritual.
Ritual is not the repetition of ancient gestures; it is turning values into shared action. New rituals should create shared attention, emotional synchrony, and exit safety all at once.
The first toast is opened by the host, who explains “why today is worth raising a glass for,” rather than demanding that everyone drain their cup in one go. Each person may choose a different alcohol strength or a non-alcoholic drink, yet share the same toast and the same moment. Replace “drink a glass to prove the relationship” with “tell a shared memory.”
The test of ritual design is not novelty, but whether it makes the expression of relationships more sincere, participation more equal, and the experience more comfortable.
Layer five: scene co-creation.
Consumers are not the audience of the story; they are co-authors of relational meaning. Brands need to hand part of the power of definition over to the users.
Co-creation is not the same as soliciting a tagline. Deeper co-creation includes: having real banquet participants jointly design refusal-friendly rules for declining a drink; having local residents tell the life histories connected to the product; allowing the community to form its own toasts, drinking rhythms, and ways of commemorating.
Mixue Bingcheng’s serialized stories on receipts, and the “stamp-swap mutual-aid stations” that consumers organized on their own — that is co-creation. The brand did not prescribe how consumers should play; consumers found their own way to play.
Layer six: organizational consistency.
In the end, the narrative is delivered by the organization. What consumers encounter is not only advertising, but also distributor behavior, retail prices, frontline scripts, and after-sales response.
If a brand says “less, but better” yet rewards only big bottles and high drinking volume; if it says “respect the consumer” yet requires frontline staff to push sales aggressively — the more it broadcasts, the faster the organizational contradiction is exposed.
Writing the line “respect every choice” takes only a day. Getting sales, channels, and management to genuinely accept that consumers may choose to drink less or not at all requires redefining growth.
IV
Six layers may seem like a lot, but they can be condensed into a single formula:
Narrative legitimacy L = F × E × R × P
F — Fit: does the narrative respond to the real contradictions of today’s consumers?
E — Evidence: can the promise be verified through the senses, information, price, and service?
R — Respect: does it protect the right to choose, the right to exit, and difference?
P — Participation: can consumers and scene partners take part in creating meaning?
It is multiplication rather than addition because if any one factor approaches zero, the entire narrative can fail. However moving the story, if the product does not deliver, it will be seen through. However excellent the product, if the relationship script remains coercive, recognition will be hard to win. And if a brand allows participation but lacks a clear value stance, it becomes commotion without direction.
This formula is not a mathematical model; it is a judgment tool. Tomorrow, when you see any brand’s narrative, you can screen it through these four dimensions: Does it respond to a contemporary contradiction? Does the product deliver on the promise? Does it respect the consumer’s right to choose? Can consumers take part in creating meaning?
Only when all four pass does the narrative have legitimacy. If any one of them is zero, the other three — however good — count for nothing.
V
Finally, I want to return to where this series began.
The series is called “Who Defines ‘Worth It’?”
Five essays: from the revaluation of consumption legitimacy, to the migration from role-person to achievement-person to sovereign person, to the failure of the old narrative’s three pillars, to the four principles of the new narrative, to this six-layer model and one formula — running through all of it is a single thread:
The power of adjudication has shifted from the brand to the consumer.
In the past, brands defined what was good, what was worth it, what was right. Consumers obeyed, accepted, and were educated.
Today, consumers have the final say. What a brand must do is not define things for them, but listen to their voice, enter their story, play the supporting role, move them through value resonance, and lift up their feelings and choices.
This is not a change in marketing technique. This is a restructuring of the power relationship between brand and consumer.
Liang Di is right: the power to define value is slowly sliding down from on high, landing on each concrete, individual person.
Cai Yu is right: the consumer walks into the market carrying an enormous story. Whether you can enter their story and help them express who they are — that determines whether your brand still deserves a place on the shelf.
I said in the first essay: consumers have not stopped consuming; they are redefining what is worth consuming. And the power over that redefinition is no longer in brands’ hands.
Now that sentence can be completed: The power is not in the brand’s hands, but the action can be.
Whether you can listen and take advice, play the supporting role, move people, and lift them up — these four things are what you can do.
First, position your own role. Then step into this young person’s story universe together.
This is not the end. This is the beginning.
This is the final essay in the “Who Defines ‘Worth It’?” series. Five essays, from diagnosis to prescription, from “why products aren’t selling” to “how to turn narrative into action.” The core question has always been just one: in an era when consumers no longer accept being defined, on what grounds does a brand still deserve to be chosen? The answer is not in the brand’s story. It is in the story the consumer is willing to let the brand enter.