Brand Fable:

The Rat and the Mongoose

This is a true story.
There once was an island.
A beautiful island in the Caribbean.

It was such a beautiful island that tourists came to this island,
Well…just to come to this island.
If only for a short time.
And come they did. By the boatload.
By the cruise ship load, in fact.

But of course, wherever there are boats
With boatloads of tourists,
There are also boatloads of rats.

Suddenly, the island had a brand problem.

The tourists who were coming by the boatloads
Were coming by less-than-boatloads.
And the Islanders began to fret.
“If the Rats are driving away our boatloads of tourists,”
They thought,
“We must drive the rats away by the boatloads.
Or we will have no boats and no tourists
Coming to our island.
If only for a short time.”

The Problem-Solving Islanders put their heads together.
That night, there was a storm on the island.
A brain storm.

“Eliminate garbage!” said one Islander.
“If the rats have nothing to eat, they will leave.”
But this idea was considered too impractical.
“Poison!” cried another Islander, But that too was considered not only impractical, but dangerous.

But one idea emerged from the storm of brains.
One idea was the shining light.
The ray of hope. One of the Islanders arose to speak
In the midst of this storm of brains:
“The Mongoose!” he shouted.
“I have read that the Mongoose is a wonderful tactic!
In fact, on another island, very similar to ours,
Those Islanders brought in The Mongoose.
The Mongoose ate the pests.
Problem solved!”

A Mongoose budget was established.
The Mongoose was ordered From the Mongoose Web Site.
And the Mongoose was delivered.

The Islanders went to bed that night
Confident that, in the morning,
The Rat Problem would be solved.
But the Islanders awoke the next morning
Hearing the same complaints from tourists
Who wanted to get back on their boats.
The Rats were still driving tourists away by the Boatloads.

“There are too many Rats for the Mongoose!”
Cried the Islanders.
“This problem is too big for one Mongoose.”

So they increased their Mongoose budget.
They ordered more and more Mongooses.
(Or is it Mongeese?!)
More Mongeese were delivered
But the problem,
The Rat problem,
Did not go away. In fact, in continued to get worse.

Each night the Islanders would go to sleep
Only to awake each morning to the sight
Of more and more tourists
Leaving by the boatloads.

So one Islander decided to stay up all night
To see why the Mongooses,
Who had solved similar problems
For a similar island,
Were not solving this problem.

So as all the other Islanders went to sleep,
This particular Islander stayed awake.
To watch the Mongoose at work.
But there was no Mongoose.
There were NO Mongeese at Work!

But there were plenty of Rats at work.
So this Islander went to the Mongoose hut
And to his shock and horror
What did he see?
He found all of the Mongeese
Asleep!?!?

Why? It’s quite simple really.
Because that is what a Mongoose does.
In fact that is what all Mongeese do at night.
They sleep.
While the nocturnal Rats are awake.

To this day, the island now has TWO problems:
1) Too many rats awake at night.
2) Too many Mongeese awake during the day.
This is a true story. .

Click for the moral of the story