“The world is shaped by two things — stories told and the memories they leave behind.” — Vera Nazarian.
The worlds of Marketing, Media, and Technology have gone through a dramatic change in recent years. Commerce is no longer about selling products in a brochure. It’s about digitally connecting with customers’ emotions to increase brand value.
The days when people relied on traditional forms of advertising, like print ads or commercial spots, are long over. Our society is highly-automated and digitally driven. Things have become so mechanized that humanity is at a premium.
Convenience and instant gratification are the hallmarks of our digital economy. In a virtual world, the authenticity of the human touch is in scarce supply. Even if consumers don’t fully understand it, they subconsciously yearn for a genuine connection.
Modern consumers are overwhelmed with digital channels and marketing that offer them convenience in the palm of their hands. Businesses can’t afford to be just another faceless entity if they want to compete. Brands need to tell stories that consumers can connect to their daily lives.
“A great salesperson knows how to tell a story in which the product is the hero.” — Peter Guber.
What is Brand Storytelling?
Storytelling is an intrinsic human activity. All cultures tell stories. They are used for a wide variety of purposes, like entertainment, sharing information, and as a way to pass on values and tradition.
Brand storytelling is no different. By using narrative techniques and elements of story, brands can create trust and deep bonds with the customers and help communicate their brand’s culture and values.
We all understand a good story when we hear one. We’re engaged, enthralled, and desperate to know what happens next. In short, we’re sucked into the world of the story.
Stories are more than a set of events or facts laid out in chronological order. They have themes, heroes, villains, desires, and obstacles. More crucially, they are a repository for helpful information.
Why Storytelling Works?
Imagine this scenario. You are a village elder of a tribe in the time before written language. Your village sits near a lake with strong currents. Every now and then, a young tribe member ventures out unsupervised to the lake. You warn them to be careful, but kids like to explore.
This scenario is a problem. But how can storytelling be the solution? Well, perhaps one night around the fire, you tell the story of a great monster that lives by the lake whose favorite food is young villagers who venture in or near the water.
If you make the story vivid enough, the younger children would be engaged, entertained, and even scared by the story. Instead of being told not to go near the lake, they can feel and imagine for themselves the consequence of going there. And yes, while there might not be literal monsters in the lake, there are figurative risks all the same.
This example gets at the heart of what storytelling is and why it’s such a powerful and time-honored medium.
The Neuroscience of Story
While storytelling is an art, it’s also a science. There is a lot of science that explains why story is such an effective medium. One study found that stories are 22 times more memorable than a list of facts. Memorizing a list is difficult, but tying up facts into a narrative makes the process much easier.
There are several reasons for this. One of the most powerful reasons is that when listeners hear a story, they map the details onto their own experiences and feelings. This process is called neural coupling. In effect, it helps us interpret the information contained in a story through our own lens, which helps us empathize with the described events.
Secondly, stories release dopamine. When we listen to an engaging story, the reward systems of our brain trigger this chemical reaction. This helps us feel stories more deeply and helps with memory.
This process makes stories meaningful. And events that are meaningful are deeply affecting and memorable. For brands, stories offer an opportunity to positively affect the brains of consumers and create long-lasting memories.
The Role of Brand Storytelling
As we mentioned above, one of the biggest challenges of digital marketing is cutting through the noise. There is so much competition, and consumers are bombarded with an incredible amount of media, marketing, and advertisement. Marketing Technology helps us deliver much more content, but the quality is more important than quantity.
Coupled with this, Millennials and Gen Z have fundamentally changed the role of brands. They are skeptical and distrustful of large, faceless corporations. Additionally, these generations want to put their money into brands that share their values. In short, they don’t want to associate themselves with brands that only care about money.
So, how can your brand stand out from the crowd and make meaningful connections?
Brand storytelling can be seen as an extension of the Brand Story. Though they have some similarities and crossover, they are distinct things.
A brand story is something that you might find on the “About Us” section of a website. A good brand story tells you why the company started and what it hopes to achieve. It also makes clear the purpose and value of the brand.
Most brand stories follow a similar pattern. The business owner was frustrated by a pain point or existing solutions. They knew there had to be an easier / cheaper / more ethical / quicker way. They went through various trials to solve the problem before settling on their current solution. It helped them achieve their goals, and it can help you achieve yours.
All stories start with a problem. The protagonist wants or needs something, and they must overcome some obstacles to get it.
Now, there are two ways that we can think about this. You can take the Peter Gruber approach and create a story where your product is the hero. You can find an example of this more traditional style of advertisements in this amazing Sherwin-Williams Safari TV ad.
Color swatches are a magical part of the process of buying paint. To be honest, it’s the part that people love because of all the possibilities of imagining how a room will look and because it’s a way to express creativity. Sherwin-Williams runs with this concept and builds a safari world out of the swatches and then asks us, where will color take us? It’s perfect.
However, in recent years, some of the best digital marketing looks to place the customer at the center of the story. They are the hero of their story, and they have a desire or need, such as saving time or money, a desire for status, or self-improvement. But to get there, they need to overcome some obstacles with the help of a guide. And this guide is where your product comes in.
If it all feels very Joseph Campbell Hero’s Journey, that’s because it is. But how does understanding these principles and implementing them into your digital marketing have an impact?
The Impact of Brand Storytelling in Digital Marketing
Consumers have become fairly savvy about when they are being sold to. Navigating digital spaces like social media and online publications means we are bombarded with clickbait, spam, and other sorts of digital advertisements. Even our emails and apps are trying to sell us something.
As a defense mechanism against this constant intrusion, people stop seeing ads. For example, Banner Blindness describes the phenomenon that occurs when consumers only selectively see parts of a webpage and not the banner advertisements.
This is clearly an issue in digital marketing. However, shifting from sales to a story can help overcome this ad fatigue that customers experience.
We’ll cover how to do brand storytelling in a future article, but for now, let’s just look at how using narrative techniques alongside your digital technology can lead to loyal and engaged customers.
Brand marketing itself is nothing new. For a few decades now, advertising has been about more than just promoting and showcasing products — at least for many companies. Modern marketing has been about finding a brand narrative and communicating it through story.
The storytelling process works because instead of just telling skeptical consumers about your brand’s value and personality, you can let them feel it instead. Just like our example of telling spooky stories around the fire, you can engage your listeners on an emotional level.
Having values that speak to consumers is incredibly powerful. Three-quarters of consumers expect brands to have a positive effect on our lives. At the same time, 64% of consumers say that they associate themselves with brands that share their values.
Marketing technology allows brands to reach customers. But the quality of the message is what helps drive meaningful relationships.
Conclusion
Stories are a mix of art and science. They help forge a positive relationship with consumers by expressing your brand’s values and personality. To stand out in a competitive marketplace, you need to create engaging stories via video, blog posts, images, emotional & intelligent technologies and more which can connect with Your Consumers. At Wevun Global we tell one everyday to Kids to nurture the future leaders with homeschooling.
What are your favorite stories? They can be any medium at all. Tell me what your favorite aspects of these narratives are and why you love them. Then, think about how you can use these techniques to communicate positive qualities about your brand.
