Robinhood: A Good Story Always Wins
The app sticks to its story by defying Wall Street traditions.
Staying true to the legacy of its namesake outlaw hero, Robinhood reallocated shares, traditionally reserved for institutional stalwarts, into a halo of beaming retail investors, still bedazzled from the virtual confetti that the app sprinkled on them. In defiance of Wall Street tradition, Robinhood sold as much as 25% of its shares to retail investors who traded on its app.
As the Wall Street Journal explained, “for all the sway that amateur investors have over meme stocks like GameStop Corp. and AMC Entertainment Holdings Inc., they have been largely shut out of the IPO party. Companies tend to allocate well under 10% to individual investors, according to brokers, and much of that supply is gobbled up by banks’ wealthy, well-connected clients.”
There is a story we tell ourselves when we gravitate towards a brand. This story is influenced by what the brand tells us to tell ourselves. The landscape of the narrative is unlimited — it can talk about how the brand solves a problem, while daring to venture inside ours heads by alluding to internal problems or goals. In his book Building a Story Brand, Don Miller wisely notes that companies tend to sell solutions to external problems, but people buy solutions to internal problems.
