Storytelling is a critical aspect of business branding as it can fascinate and inspire.
Storytelling is a critical aspect of business branding as it can fascinate and inspire. Like the fan, who has been sold on the story of the club enough to believe his money is a big part of what pays the players.
What you tell and how you tell your brand story influence the impact your brand will have on your target audience.
What is A Brand Story?
Every brand must have a story to tell. Successful businesses are built on compelling stories. This story must transcend all marketing strategies and also be the bedrock on which these strategies lie.
This story connects your brand to your audience. It is not a story that only tells your audience about how great your product or service is. Moreover, this story should also not be focused only on how your brand grew. It should humanize your brand and be based on empathy. Your brand story should explain why your business was founded. By crafting a story that has depth, you give your brand a purpose that your target audience is willing to identify with. Such a story will make your potential customers want to weave themselves and activities around your product. This even creates brand loyalty among your customers.
Every brand must have a story to tell Successful businesses are built on compelling stories.
Your brand story:
– represents you
– influences how the world sees and receives you.
– helps you stand out
– communicates the value of your brand
– is a summary of who you are and why you exist.
To know how to tell your brand story, you must first understand who your target audience is. This will enable you to decipher how best to connect to them through your story and make your brand unforgettable.
What Makes A Brand Story Unforgettable?
The human brain recollects things and events in patterns. To make your brand unforgettable, you can tap into this quality of the human brain to process things in patterns and plug your brand’s value to your audience. The best way to do this is by storytelling.
You are not likely to forget a story you are told if it has an element that is personal to you. In other words, such a story will have to be relatable to be memorable. In like manner, your brand story should be relatable and engaging.
An engaging story gives your brand a competitive edge because it has an emotional value. Here are a few elements you must incorporate into your brand story to make it unforgettable.
- Great stuff, No fluff
– Your brand story must be concise. Like most stories, it must have a start, middle, and end. As a brand that hawks its product or service to consumers, this story structure must present the problem it wished to solve and why it wanted to solve it, how it solved it and how it would keep solving it.
– A good brand story practically summarizes the past, the present, and the future of your brand in an abridged form. Nobody will remember a story that has neither direction nor takes a lot of time to be formed.
- Personalize it
– Your story aims to connect your brand to your audience. To do this, you have to empathize with their situation. Also, this story must show that it understands the problems that plague its customers. By doing this, the story becomes relatable to the potential customer.
– Alternatively, you can tell your personal story rather than target that of your potential customer. There must be aspects of it that your customer can identify with. They can readily retell it to another prospect thereby, making it unforgettable.
- Go deeper
– Humans are complex beings. The very nature of human interaction is convoluted. In the same light, your brand story should also mirror this reality.
– When crafting your brand story, it should not become too complicated that it will not be understood. Your branding will not be long-lasting if your brand story lacks depth. Depth also gives your brand story an emotive value.
You need to set the tone of your story and the mission of your brand right from the beginning.
- Advocacy, consistency, and honesty
– For new businesses and startups, you need to set the tone of your story and the mission of your brand right from the beginning. We live in an era of social action and advocacy, it would serve a brand well to weave its brand story around a social cause and stay true to it.
– Customers are likely to identify and stick to a brand that is aligned with a cause they believe in. Brand development is all about eliciting an emotional response from potential customers.
– Older brands can also key into this element to make their brands unforgettable. It is no secret that brands reinvent themselves all the time. But consistency must be maintained while at it.
– It will also not serve your brand to be known for one action today and a completely different one the next day. This can trigger distrust in your brand as customers will believe you to be dishonest.
- Don’t be salesy
– One of the objectives of new businesses and startups is that they want to scale up as quickly as they can. They desire to break into the market and acquire a large market share. So, they may be tempted to incorporate this marketing goal into their brand story.
– However, your brand story is not the place to pitch your product or service. Do not treat it as your landing page. While communicating your brand’s value is a necessary part of your brand story, it is not an avenue to tout your brand as the solution to the customer’s problems.
– Customers will most likely lose interest in your brand when they get the indication that they are being sold to. It will come across as a nuisance that they will want to be rid of, making your brand forgettable.
- Go deeper
– Humans are complex beings. The very nature of human interaction is convoluted. In the same light, your brand story should also mirror this reality.
– When crafting your brand story, it should not become too complicated that it will not be understood. Your branding will not be long-lasting if your brand story lacks depth. Depth also gives your brand story an emotive value.
Brand storytelling is the process of creating a narrative that is engaging yet connects your brand to your customers.
The Art of Telling Unforgettable Stories
It is a fact that every brand needs a back story. This process of creating and telling the brand story of a business is called brand storytelling.
Brand storytelling is the process of creating a narrative that is engaging yet connects your brand to your customers. Studies have shown that the attention span of the average human has fallen to 8 seconds.
Therefore, you must find a way to sustain and retain the attention of your customers in your brand. For your brand to effectively communicate its story and value, it must employ the mechanics of masterful storytelling to capture the attention of the audience.
While it is called brand storytelling, its focus is not on your brand or product. The focus should be on the customer. By making your customer the central character, you connect them emotionally to an experience they can relate to and make your brand unforgettable.
Storytelling is not an easy art, but it is a necessary part of brand creation. Branding for beginners, especially, can be quite daunting. Your storytelling must have certain qualities for your brand to be unforgettable.
These qualities include:
- A relatable narrative
– During brand development, you must consider the kind of narrative you want to push forward. This narrative is a story that must represent your brand yet connect you to your customer. You should think about a story that captures the experience of your customers and then tell them through the appropriate medium.
– Some narratives are best pursued through multimedia channels while others will have to rely on text and the imaginative power of the audience. Regardless of the channel you choose, your story must be relatable to create an emotional bond between your brand and your customers.
- A suitable protagonist
– Like all great stories, your narrative should have a protagonist. This individual will be the hero of your story. The protagonist’s story should be hinged on your brand’s product or service but it must not present your brand as the center of the story.
– The protagonist’s story should reflect either the experience of your customers or their hopes and aspirations. Let your hero have a goal they strive to achieve.
- Conflict
– Your protagonist should not be comfortable. Let your audience grow with this character. Introduce a conflict that can prevent your protagonist from achieving their goal.
– The more difficult resolving this conflict is, the more compelling and unforgettable your storytelling will be. However, the story should be simple regardless of the nature of the conflict.
- Resolution
– Like all stories, the narrative of your brand storytelling must come to an end. Your brand storytelling is not the medium for cliffhangers. The protagonist should develop throughout the storytelling process and find an inspiring way to resolve their conflict while using the product or service of your brand.
Like All Stories; The Narrative Of Your Brand Storytelling Must Come To An End.
- Repetition
– Brand storytelling is not a one-time task. You will have to keep reminding your customers and target audience alike why they should stay loyal to your brand.
– It is also through consistent storytelling that you can show how your brand has evolved. Your consistency in telling your brand story will also tell a story of its own. However, your brand storytelling should not be repetitive.
– Your business will begin to gain less and less traction if your audience continues to see the same story from your brand. This is not to say that your storytelling should veer over the bigger picture your brand conveys.
– Instead, it should reinforce it but with different narratives and maybe even different categories of protagonists. This targets a wide range of audiences.
3 Brand Stories to Learn From
Brand storytelling should be effective. However, the outcome can either be a hit or a miss. Let’s consider 3 successful brands to glean lessons from their brand story and their brand storytelling mechanics to see why it works.
1. Manchester City – Anyone can be a star
Brand Story:
English football club of international repute, Manchester City, tells the story of one of their top women goalscorers, Georgia Stanway in a feature.
Anyone can be a star focuses the beam on how this player came into global prominence from relative obscurity. It captured her journey as a professional player and also highlighted how she has grown from a shy, talented country girl to a superstar confident enough for the big games and big screen.
The reason it works:
The story is relatable. It connects to the reality of many who have recorded progress and growth at some point in their lives. Additionally, the story has an inspiring appeal that tells those yet to meet their goals that their day in the spotlight will come.
The brand story managed to weave the brand around the success of this story, reinforcing its devotion to carving something magnificent out of wood.
Their Secret:
Emotional connection
The Story Connects To The Reality Of Many
2. Opera Australia – You saved the theater
Brand Story:
Opera Australia personalized the COVID-19 pandemic by zeroing its storytelling on how it stopped people from doing what they loved and enjoyed. It made the audience the focus of the story by further appreciating their support during the period.
The heartfelt note from the Artistic Director engaged the audience in a way they could all relate to while listing their programs for the opening of the theater.
The reason it works:
This tragic moment was one that everyone can relate to. The feeling of support was universal. The story also tied the unifying factor nicely by calling on all to strengthen that support.
Their Secret:
Emotional connection
3. Budweiser – Light up the World and Rise as One World Cup Ads
Brand Story:
The 2018 Budweiser Light up the FIFA World Cup ad uses its brand story to tell about the present and also gives its prediction of the future. It used AI drones to deliver the Budweiser beer to football fans all over the world, harmonizing lovers of the game with yet another item (their beer).
After waiting with bated breath for a goal, the 2014 Rise as one World Cup ad calls for all nations to rise and join in the euphoria of the celebration associated with the game.
The reason it works:
2018 was a year that most new techniques in machine learning and artificial intelligence were becoming mainstream. People wondered what the future would look like. The ad wove its storytelling around this to make forecasts of the future.
It gave the audience a peek into how technology can be used to light up the world. The Rise as one ad adopted an integrative approach to draw the audience into harmony after experiencing the common feeling of anxiety.
Their Secret:
Emotional connection, Harmony, and Prediction
To Wrap Up
Branding can be an onerous task when you do not deploy effective techniques to achieve a successful brand awareness campaign. Regardless, you’ll need to understand that branding and storytelling make startups successful.
How? Storytelling is a viable way to maintain your brand appeal and create brand trust in your audience. Remember, a compelling story is even more powerful as it is authentic and relatable.
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