Brand storytelling can infuse a company’s content marketing with authenticity and emotion, making a memorable impact on your audience.

The concept is old, but its value is more important than ever. Storytelling is a cultural practice valued by societies around the globe and for good reason. Stories have the ability to entertain, to teach, and to celebrate the commonality of human experience.  Storytelling isn’t just for around the campfire.  It works for business, too. 

Developing your company’s story will serve your brand far beyond website copy or investment pitches.  

It’s important to remember that your story is not just the history of your products or services. An effective story will focus on the how and why of your company, what you stand for, and how your brand will impact the lives of customers. Powerful content marketing begins by building powerful brand stories. Here are some pointers for weaving your brand’s story into your content marketing strategy.

WRITE YOUR STORY 

  1. Identify your overall brand values and mission.  Your brand values are the core beliefs that drive your company, and they should be at the heart of your story. Your story begins with a customer’s first interaction with your brand, and it’s your job to guide where that story goes.  Identifying your brand values and mission will help guide that process.  Start by asking yourself some questions.  What inspired the creation of the business? How do you hope to make a difference in your customers’ lives? What separates your business from competitors? The answers to these questions will help identify your brand values.
  2. Develop brand guidelines. Guidelines should address all attributes of your brand including your vision statement, colors, fonts, imagery and voice.  All of these components help to build and maintain the overall story of your brand.  Developing clear guidelines that reflect your brand values will provide clarity and consistency throughout your marketing and allow collaboration from a variety of individuals. There are many benefits to brand guidelines beyond storytelling which you can learn more about in this post. 

TELL YOUR STORY

  1. Develop campaigns that highlight experiences and emotions.  There’s broad evidence to support the theory that people make decisions based on emotion and marketing teams can benefit from this if they effectively appeal to their audience’s personal experiences.  Think about the lifestyle effect your brand can have on a customer and design your campaign around it. Advertising campaigns of this nature can have a memorable impact on audiences.  A great example is a 2013 print ad campaign for McDonalds Australia that promotes the fast food chain’s breakfast menu.  Instead of featuring sandwiches, DDB Triba’s creative team built a campaign around the experience of ‘morning mood’.  The ‘mood’ is effectively communicated with inventive visuals that depict a variety of morning workers crafted entirely  from tactile elements such as cactus, glass, and paper funnels.  These ads convey a highly related state-of-being with humor and surprise, creating a memorable impact.
  2. Try your hand at telling personal stories.  Now that you’ve developed your company’s own story,  try building campaigns about the lives and stories of your customers. Connecting those customer experiences to your brand ideals will develop a relationship with your audience and inspire brand loyalty.  A great example is the recent Subaru commercial that features a grandpa and grandson meeting on an early morning beach to go surfing.

      The story contrasts the grandfather’s old-model Subaru with the grandson’s new Crosstrek, highlighting the product’s longevity.  The ad ends with the tagline “The best things in life keep going, that’s why I got a Subaru, too.” The story is entertaining, relatable and expresses the company’s brand ideals of capability and reliability.  Additionally, the generational comparison and outdoor setting a

Every company’s story is unique, but can be equally successful with a thoughtful and compelling narrative that inspires an emotional response.  If the role of the storyteller doesn’t suit you, consider hiring a creative agency to help craft your company’s narrative and tell it to the world.