Storytelling

Brand storytelling is the art of shaping a company’s identity using narratives and storytelling techniques that facilitate an emotional response and establish meaningful connections with audiences. But it’s one thing to draft an incredible story; the story is just the beginning. How do you bring that story to life in a crowded digital world to create maximum impact and engagement?

1. Keep it simple – our memories and attention spans are short. Stick to one core message. Truly powerful stories are never complicated.
2. Make it human – use emotive, engaging yet easy language. Utilize empathy to connect and be relatable. This is not a job for robots.
3. Don’t think literally – find an unusual take on your core brand message or idea. Think bigger, bolder and higher.
4. Be disruptive yet familiar – it must feel unique yet intuitive to the brand so you can stick out without seeming farfetched.
5. Idea before execution – think big idea first then execution. The story determines which influencer or digital platform will be best for the idea, not the other way round.
6. Make the touchpoints work for you – different touchpoints have differing capabilities and functions. The story needs to be refreshed differently for each of them.
7. Make your consumer a co-author – get audiences to contribute, amplify their voices and replay it in some way. Encourage them to make their mark on the brand’s story.

What is Brand Storytelling?

Brand storytelling is defined as the art of shaping a company’s identity through the use of narratives and storytelling techniques that facilitate an emotional response and establish meaningful connections. When done correctly, research shows the powerful impact storytelling can have on us:

• Stories are 22 times more memorable than facts & figures alone
• Our neural activity increases 5X when listening to a story
• Storytelling lights up the sensory cortex in the brain, allowing the listener to feel, hear, taste, and even smell the story

As a result, in a time when captivating consumer attention is the ultimate commodity, it has never been more important for companies to tell the right stories. The stories that stop us in our tracks, the stories that move us to tears, the stories that challenge us and change our perspective. A great brand story should do the same, building emotional connection and leading to wonderful, memorable experiences. To a brand, it’s everything. It inspires, it relates, it resonates, it builds trust and it forges a relationship.

Simon Sinek explains how to use the Golden Circle model to truly differentiate your brand’s value proposition when most fail.

Leadership expert Simon Sinek is perhaps best known for giving one of the most popular TED talks of all time, which you can view at the end of this post. The Golden Circle theory explains how leaders can inspire cooperation, trust and change in a business based on his research into how the most successful organizations think, act and communicate if they start with why.

I think that marketers will find the most value in his Golden Circle model, which helps give focus to how a business can stand out from similar competitors by communicating its differences. I was prompted to check it out after a workshop when discussing the importance of developing a strong digital value proposition as part of a digital marketing strategy a few years ago. One of the attendees working in B2B healthcare explained how they had used it with their agency to develop a more distinctive proposition for their brand amongst similar service providers.

Building A Brand Story — 3 Tips

Know The Audience. It’s vital that a brand knows who they want to connect with. We’re not just talking about demographics. To create a great brand story there has to be a deep understanding of the customer as a person rather than just as a target. What are their loves, their hates, their media preferences, their routines and the other important aspects of their lives? If a brand’s customer personas are a little light when crafting a story, stop and take the time to add meat to the bones.

Translate The Positioning. It’s important that stories aren’t simply drawn from the pages of a positioning PowerPoint or brand book. They must always be constructed around what a customer wants to hear, not what a brand wants to tell. In other words, they need to be translated.

There are a lot of considerations. What’s going to command interest? How can the story relate to passions and interests? What will be perceived as being valuable? What are the emotional triggers? And more.

One thing to consider during the translation phase is tone. All marketing jargon needs to be avoided. Brands need to find terms and phrases that will grab attention, yet still represent their own personalities. Whether it’s by connecting through informal tech lingo or local language, it’s always a case of connecting in the way that works best for the customer.

At this stage it’s also important to think in visual terms. What’s the picture that will form in the customer’s mind look like? How will they react to it? What will it mean to them? Once you think you know, find a way to test it.

Share Effectively. After the story has been crafted, it’s time to think through how it will be communicated. A brand story needs to work across all channels. The customer journey should be reviewed to identify the most suitable opportunities through which to share it. A content audit could also help, so that the story can be adapted for different situations through a variety of mediums and tools, from video to infographics and a lot in-between.

A drip-feeding strategy can work well to identify the level of customer resonance and reaction before total implementation. Hashtags can be very effective tools to communicate the story. They’re also a good way to share the story’s chapters over time. In a world that loves bingeing on emotional media, this tactic can work well.