The brand storytelling campaign process
The process of developing a brand story can be done as a series of steps.
Define the purpose and goals of your brand story
This is easy if you’re not-for-profit. The Fred Hollows Foundation has a hero, a journey, a mission and the goal of providing high quality and affordable eye care to everyone.
Do you know your brand’s purpose and goals? Google wants ‘to organise the world’s information and make it universally accessible and useful’. Apple wants ‘to bring the best user experience to customers through innovative hardware, software and services’.
When you can clearly articulate your brand’s purpose and goals, you have a strong foundation to develop your brand stories.
Map out your brand’s history
We’ve mentioned the famous companies that started in garages. People can relate to a garage. It’s humble, ordinary and something familiar to everyone.
What is your brand background? Your business exists for a reason and many successful brands began with nothing more than an idea. The Boost Juice story begins like this: ‘…a woman with no business experience — but unlimited passion and family support — opened her first juice bar in Adelaide. The idea was brilliantly simple: make living both tasty and fun.’
The brand doesn’t apologise for its background: it makes a feature of it. ‘Boost Juice has come a long way from its humble beginnings.’ Now they have 550 stories in 14 countries.
How can you harness the power of your company’s history and brand’s background to tell great stories that are emotional stories?
Think about your brand’s personality
If you want to avoid being a faceless corporation, spend some time working out the personality of your brand. Are you serious, playful or generous?
A helpful tool to use is the Brand Archetypes Framework. It’s based on the 12 essential personality types the Swiss psychologist Carl Jung developed:
—Creator
—Sage
—Caregiver
—Innocent
—Jester
—Magician
—Ruler
—Hero
—Everyman (aka Regular Guy)
—Rebel (aka Outlaw)
—Explorer
—Lover
As examples, Apple is a creator, Google is a sage, Disney is a magician and Rolex is a ruler. Each of these brands has clear goals, desires, traits and strategies that align with their brand personality.
When you have spent some time identifying where your brand fits, you can develop marketing messages to harness the power of your personality.
Define your brand’s purpose and values
We’ve highlighted above how brands like Fred Hollows, Google and Apple are very clear about their purpose.
To clarify your company’s values, ask yourself these questions:
—What do we do?
—Who do we do it for?
—Why do we do it?
This inevitably raises the issue of values, the compass that guides your brand story. Since you can’t stand for everything, you must stand for something. Is it like Adidas, about performance, passion, integrity and diversity? Or like Zara, about beauty, clarity, functionality and sustainability?
When you choose four or five values that make you stand out from others, you can more easily tell your brand story.
Write your brand story
There’s an expression in Hollywood: if it ain’t on the page, it ain’t on the stage. So, write a 200 to 300-word story of your brand. Include all of the key points from our guide to tell an emotional journey with your personality that has a beginning, middle and future, with highs and lows, your mission and purpose.