Brand Storytelling: A Comprehensive Guide

by Nathan Rothfield

If you’ve got a brand and you’re not telling brand stories, check out our guide below to get you started. You don’t need a marketing agency to tell you that stories sell. All you need is a marketing strategy and a compelling story, which can be your brand’s story.

What is brand storytelling?

 

Brand storytelling harnesses the power of narrative and myth to grab your audience’s attention with a great story. It can also influence and shape your brand’s identity in ways that are not possible with traditional marketing approaches.

 

Think of it as a way to promote your brand values and identity without being salesy. Telling your brand’s story is a great strategy to employ now that most consumers are looking for brand authenticity in any product or service.

 

Here are some great examples of brand storytelling to inspire you:

— Coca-Cola Journey

— Telstra Smarter Business

— Stories from the Airbnb Community

— Nike Equality campaign

— Dove Campaigns

Why do we tell brand stories?

 

We’re human. We are all telling stories all the time. But for brands, there are at least three core reasons why you should tell stories.

 

To stand out 

In the face of media saturation, brand storytelling is a great way to get attention. Remember that there 5.3 trillion ads shown online every year. Telling a powerful story is a great way to stand out and be a memorable brand.

 

Get your customers to create a tribe

Good brands have customers — great brands have tribes. Think of Apple’s acolytes, Ferrari’s fanatics or Disney’s devotees. Brand storytelling helps your customers feel deep emotional connections that make them await every new product or service with bated breath.

 

Make money and do good 

Yes, your tribe can earn you a tidy profit with a quality product but great companies are also thinking about the impact they can make on the world. They are showing a human face, even a soul, in a world of faceless businesses that all have the same brand feel. Evidence of this trend is that the top 10 most empathetic companies are among the most profitable and fastest-growing in the world.

The impacts of storytelling

Stories bring people together, inspire them and simplify complex messages. Objective tests and surveys confirm how strong the effects of brand storytelling are:

— Our neural activity increases 5x when listening to a story

— Customers are 71% more likely to recommend brands they are emotionally connected to

— People remember a story up to 22x more than a list of facts

— Brand storytelling can increase the value of a service or product by more than 20%

What makes a good story?

 

Conflict

Many elements can contribute to a good story, but one of the most powerful elements is conflict. People don’t flock to the cinemas to see movies without conflict, they rush to the ones with the most conflict. Your story includes characters with character traits: Steve Jobs was a driven success, then fired from Apple, developed cancer, came back and worked for free before he finally died from cancer. This brand story is an emotional journey rich with conflict.

 

Overcoming obstacles

Rags to riches stories capture the essence of overcoming obstacles and reaching great heights of success. Consider the incredible growth journey derived from the fact that all of these five famous business behemoths were started in a garage:

— Amazon

— Microsoft

— Disney

— Apple

— Google

 

Empathy

People have to be able to identify with your story to feel a strong sense of empathy. This is what creates the emotional connection that makes brand storytelling powerful. The more human you can make it, the more empathy it will generate.

 

Consistency

In successful stories, characters, plots, themes and tone are consistent. We’d be confused if the hero suddenly turned evil. When you keep your brand story consistent, it allows your customers to develop a bond of trust.

 

Authenticity 

People can tell a fake a mile away, whether it’s a politician or a brand speak a false message. The best brand storytelling resonates with truth, even if that means embracing shortcomings and failures. For the best brand stories, stay true to your values and be authentic.

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.

What marketing channels work best for storytelling and content marketing? 

Once you’ve written your brand story, you need to get it out there in the most effective way to get your audience’s attention and grow your brand. You can find high-impact print and great direct communications solutions.

 

Luckily, digital marketing channels also give you a plethora of choices when it comes to how to share your brand story. These are some of the ways to spread your marketing messages:

—Articles

—Case studies

—E-books

—Explainer videos

—Infographics

—White papers.

Want to give your brand stories a boost with some great branded marketing collateral that can be applied to your industry?

 

Learn more about the business solutions we can offer, including order fulfilment and supply chain management.

 

Contact us at Rothfield to discuss the best way to tell your brand story. We can guide you through the entire process end-to-end, headache-free.

 

Rothfield Connect is our cloud-based platform that puts you in total control.

 

Contact Us

Like this article? Get more of this in your inbox

 

Loading