The utilization of brand storytelling as a marketing strategy has gained immense popularity as it addresses the innate human urge of forming connections through narrating stories.
The key approach involves placing the customer at the heart of the story, rather than your brand or product. By sharing relatable stories regarding significant life experiences with your target audience, you establish a powerful emotional bond with your perfect clientele.
Establishing connections is crucial in building brand awareness, maintaining attention on marketing channels, and creating trust. Although there are diverse perspectives on the ideal approach to brand storytelling, it’s commonly acknowledged as significant. In this regard, we will delve into the reasons why brand storytelling carries so much weight, cite examples of the best strategies to employ, and suggest some starting points. Nevertheless, presenting a clear definition of brand storytelling is paramount before delving further.
Brand storytelling
Skilled brand narrators depict portraits of individuals, occurrences, locations, and occurrences that establish a rapport between viewers and the principles upheld by a brand.
The exceptional companies, such as Nike, are adept at conveying their message without imposing a direct discourse about their business, merchandise, or service. For instance, if you deal in sports gear or manage a professional sports club, you could narrate tales about the ecstasy of scoring the game-winning point or the agony of a missed foul shot during overtime.
Real-life struggles and triumphs, as well as our emotional reactions to them, along with a glimpse into the lives of ordinary people, have a great impact on people. As a storyteller, your objective is to seamlessly integrate your brand and products into a larger narrative that resonates with your audience.
This implies that you shouldn’t simply keep mentioning your product or brand repeatedly. Instead, you have the opportunity to narrate anecdotes about the way individuals’ lives have been influenced by your work. You can express aspirations for what’s to come and recollect shared experiences from the past.
Ensure that you interconnect all your individual narratives to establish a brand encounter that fosters customer loyalty across channels, be it on your website, social media platforms, product packaging or physical retail spaces. These platforms offer avenues to imbue vitality into your brand’s story.
Brand storytelling importance
Like many aspects of life, individuals are inclined to form an emotional attachment with a certain thing. Occasionally, they cannot even articulate the rationale behind it. Possibly it brings back memories from their childhood or shows a favorable outcome to a problem they are grappling with. Consequently, this emotional relationship establishes a connection.
Developing a strategy to create consistent and positive brand associations through brand identity, design, and content is essential in brand storytelling, and it is the responsibility of the marketing team to accomplish this.
A marketer’s duty encompasses comprehending the audience by knowing their desires, necessities, and concerns that affect their sleep. With this understanding, marketers can produce brand narratives that connect with their audience, rather than solely focusing on sales. An approach to marketing that revolves around engaging stories has a greater chance of developing and sustaining powerful brand allegiance as time progresses.
Storytelling powerfully conveys the brand purpose
Modern consumers no longer simply purchase items from brands in a passive manner; instead, they regard their acquisitions as reflections of their personal values and identity. This presents a challenge for advertisers, who must now focus not solely on promoting a product’s functions or benefits, but on generating a sense of communal purpose and culture that consumers can embrace and participate in. Achieving this level of marketing success requires a holistic approach.
The concept of “Purpose” centers around one’s values, including their identity, principles, altruistic actions, and social causes they support.
When a brand has a meaningful purpose, it enables consumers to establish a connection with their values and get insight into how their offerings go beyond just monetary gain and bring genuine benefits to their customers’ lives. Brands that can successfully engage consumers based on these shared values are the ones that will gain their focus and business in the end.
Large corporations such as Nike, Coca-Cola, Pepsi, and Adidas resort to purpose as a means of enhancing their connection and involvement with their customers. Why is it that certain businesses prosper while others do not?
Effective storytelling is what sets brands apart in terms of their purpose. Without it, purpose cannot be activated or strengthened. Marketers must establish a connection between their personal values and motivations and their brand’s purpose, and communicate this narrative to their target audience. It is only through this type of storytelling that consumers will be willing to listen and be motivated to participate in the brand’s purpose.
To craft compelling and purposeful narratives for your brand, Marshall Ganz, an instructor of storytelling classes at Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government, suggests using a straightforward three-step structure.
The term “self” remains unchanged.
To initiate an impactful narrative for your brand, begin with the self. This entails elucidating how specific events in your life formed personal values that will eventually align with your company’s values.
Steve Jobs’ Commencement address at Stanford University in 2015 serves as a superb illustration. During the speech, Jobs recounted three tales, primarily reflecting on his own life. He discussed his modest upbringing in a working-class family, leaving college, and the creation and eventual dismissal from Apple, as well as his battle with cancer.
During his address, Jobs mentioned how his interest in calligraphy would eventually influence his design work at Apple, and how being diagnosed with cancer pushed him to embrace every day with more passion and authenticity as if it were his last.
The striking feature of Jobs’ speech lies in the authentic and unfiltered nature of his narrative. Every story provided a window into Jobs’ character, revealing his principles, aspirations, and zeal.
Discovering a truly remarkable personal narrative entails being sincere and genuine. It may entail introspecting on past events and values, and recounting these intimate experiences and memories to your listeners.
The pronoun “Us” remains unchanged.
According to Ganz, the next stage is referred to as the “us,” in which you link your own values with those of your audience on a larger scale. Through incorporating your personal anecdotes with the experiences, values, and aspirations of others, you establish a shared story for your listeners.
On their company website, Burt’s Bees founder Burt Shavitz’s story is a prime illustration. The account details how Burt and partner Roxanne co-founded the business and traces their journey from then to their story becoming one that encompasses the company, its products and customers, and their shared values.
Creating a successful narrative about “us” involves establishing a sense of unity and shared principles, while also exploring their origins.
This word refers to the present moment.
The last stage involves encouraging your audience to participate in your brand’s mission, through a call to action.
Observe how Kickstarter, a public-benefit corporation, invites potential candidates to join their team by starting with founder Perry Chen’s personal motivation for creating the platform.
On the website’s following section, snapshots and brief profiles of every member of the Kickstarter team are featured (referred to as “us”). The conclusion of the story prompts individuals to visit their careers page, encouraging prospective applicants with the question: “Are you passionate about Kickstarter? You could be a perfect fit.” By clicking the link, interested candidates can browse through all presently available job openings and submit an application.
Compelling brand narratives are genuine and sincere, and serve to construct shared storylines and principles that resonate with your audience, motivating them to embrace your mission and become part of your community.
Nike
With superb storytelling in the 1990s, Nike cemented its presence in people’s consciousness. In 1999, they unveiled a remarkable advertisement paying tribute to Michael Jordan’s career.
During a period when TV airtime was costly and there was a strong emphasis on selling, Nike decided to allow Michael Jordan’s story to do the talking. Their branding was limited to the “Just Do It” slogan and swoosh logo displayed at the conclusion, while the tale created an emotional bond between the athlete and fans. In the exchange, Nike played a minimal role.
Nike has adapted to modern times by utilizing Instagram to showcase captivating photo and video advertisements that serve as educational material for all. Nike has already depicted what a perfect day in worldwide sports would resemble through an ad, showcasing novices rising early to jog, women athletes playing video games, and running shoes developed from a seed.
Nike’s blog contains inspirational stories that can evoke emotions. From a college athlete who overcame their anxiety at the starting line to tips on how to encourage children to enjoy physical activity, the blog offers advice without a direct promotion of products. Through this type of storytelling, Nike connects with athletes and fosters loyalty towards the brand. Over time, this builds brand awareness and strengthens the Nike community.
Connecting with customers through stories
Companies and organizations are still grappling with the challenge of utilizing stories to establish and foster connections with customers.
Listening, learning, and interacting with your customers are crucial factors. Avoid making assumptions and guide your audience on a journey without using sales tactics or force. The more authentic and sincere you are, the more likely you are to boost brand recognition, increase engagement rates, and convert more qualified leads.
Authentic storytelling is achieved by keeping your content truthful. Make an effort to give customers a sense of belonging to a bigger community.
According to the “belongingness hypothesis” developed by psychologists Roy Baumeister and Mark Leary, people have an inherent psychological requirement to establish strong connections with others and that forming loving, emotional relationships plays a significant role in human conduct.
Discover a means of establishing a more profound, emotional connection with your clientele. Are you capable of offering them a sense of security? Do you simplify their lives? Employ these stimuli to fortify your bond and cultivate a devoted following. Building a compelling narrative can significantly boost loyalty, resulting in increased interaction with your brand.
An instance can be taken of a customer’s customer who specializes in the biopharmaceutical market, specifically in the field of rare diseases. Instead of advertising individual promotional activities carried out for pharmaceutical and biotech firms, or distinguishing themselves on the innovative treatments they facilitated in bringing to market, they have been using Rare Disease Day to amplify their narrative for several years.
By showcasing the individuals who make up this unique community, the larger focus is shifted towards rare diseases in a more holistic manner, providing a personal touch.
By utilizing podcast, documentary films, and earned, owned, and shared media, they have effectively implemented a content marketing strategy that leads their audience on a journey, evokes an emotional response, and ultimately strengthens the connection between the audience and the brand.
Using Rare Disease Day as a starting point, they establish the direction for their content marketing, PR, and communication plan for the rest of the year, as it usually occurs in February.
How to use brand storytelling in marketing
Integrating brand storytelling into your marketing strategy requires patience and experience. It’s beneficial to possess brand standards to ensure that whoever is narrating your tale is doing so uniformly. When utilizing brand storytelling as a component of your marketing approach, there are a few additional factors to consider.
Be helpful, not hype-full
Sharing genuine stories is more effective in capturing audience engagement compared to being excessively promotional. Take a moment to evaluate the messages you receive from brands you admire. Do they deliver on their promises?
It’s unlikely that you should provide unrealistic or impossible solutions. When something seems too good to be true, it usually is. Instead, use stories to effectively communicate how you can assist your target audience. Integrating a human element into your marketing efforts can prove to be beneficial.
Incorporate your customers
Allow your clients to share their personal experiences. Boast suggests that prior to purchasing a product, 92% of customers review feedback online. Potential buyers seek assurance of current users’ satisfaction prior to committing their resources. This is applicable to both B2C and B2B companies.
Including quotes, case studies, and review sites in your marketing plan can give B2B brands an additional advantage as the expenses and time required are typically higher. This approach aids in instilling trust in potential customers as they evaluate their buying decisions.
Deliver your story consistently
Ensuring consistent delivery is just as important as having brand guidelines in place. It’s imperative to avoid consumer mistrust by steering clear of disjointed visuals, inconsistent logos, and outdated content.
By utilizing a digital asset management (DAM) system to uphold your brand guidelines and arrange the brand assets employed in your marketing endeavors, you can guarantee that the content utilized is sanctioned, in line with the brand, and effortlessly accessible. This will simplify the process of sharing and presenting uniform narratives to your target market.
Notes on the side
If you’re prepared to commence with brand storytelling, utilize the aforementioned examples as motivation and guidance for developing your own tactics.
Develop a strong narrative that defines your identity, pinpoint your principles, fields of proficiency, and illuminate the practical obstacles within those domains. Discover or generate narratives that resonate with your clients’ significant encounters. Address their issues, entertain them, while avoiding overt product promotion.
Begin sharing your stories with the world once you are prepared, but keep in mind that brand storytelling entails more than simply reiterating your brand or product’s narrative. Instead, focus on real people’s experiences and highlight how they align with your customers’ interests to demonstrate your concern for them. Establish an emotional bond and product sales will come.
Achieving successful brand storytelling involves a combination of various branding techniques. This requires a firm grasp of the brand’s identity, an effective method for managing the brand, and the ability to consistently convey on-brand stories.
