Propagoogle.

If you want to gauge the importance of brand storytelling, let’s talk about what happens when you lose the plot.

I’m thinking, of course, about Google’s response to Trump’s silly Canadian fatwa, renaming Lake Ontario “Lake America.”

Rather than taking a thoughtful approach (h/t to Apple, for pointedly resisting, at least so far), they snapped up the bluster and the bait like a hungry trout patrolling what the Iroquois first named “lake of shining waters” at least four centuries ago.

Result: those clicking on the relevant Google map from this side of the 49th parallel are now gifted with Trump’s middle finger salute to our formerly bosom buddies to the North. Those on the opposite side are seeing the original. While the Rest of the Planet- lucky you- you get both.

Consider how that twists the story.

Before: a single, clear, and cohesive window on the world. After: confusing, localized versions of reality.  

Before: global consensus, scientific accuracy, historical fact. After: allowing nationalism to overwrite centuries of established norms. 

Before: reliable and uncompromised information. Now: all of us wondering how much is politically filtered?

Personally, I’m with the resident New Yawkah who asked, “What’s next, Canada geese become Donald ducks?”

It was both a genius dig and a sly observation on the mutability of Google-delivered truth. Neither of which bodes particularly well for a brand built on objectivity, universality, a fondly recalled origination mantra of “Don’t Be Evil”, and unshakable corporate strength.

In short, it’s a crack in the armor. Not immediately fatal, but no long-term bueno, either.

After all, Google may be the current poster child, but this is a story mistake hugely amplified by technology’s seeming inability to communicate, or even care about, , anything other than its own self-interest.

So maybe we call it an entirely avoidable own-side foul. Especially when Google and its hyperscale peers could and should be creating the basis for an emotional connection that gives people the facts and the reasons to believe there’s mutuality of benefit.

That’s the kind of storytelling that makes the next chapter clear to every audience.

The kind that indelibly links core values with audience needs, seamlessly weaving facts and emotional experiences together in ways that drive interest, empathy, and positive action.

The kind, as the remarkable Bob Brihn likes to say, “that solves the story problem underneath the marketing problem.”

Which is clearly not happening when you surrender to the polarizing exigencies of the moment, tossing it all under the political bus.

When prompted, Google Gemini, the company’s master AI platform, characterizes the fallout as a “severe paradox” since “by displaying different realities to users based purely on which side of a national border they stand, it fundamentally compromises the brand’s core pillars of clarity, truth, and answers.”

But what do it know?