5 Expert Tips to Tell a Compelling Brand Story
Gone are the days when the only way to excel in business was to compel the people in buying the product or service. In today’s era, people are more concerned about the reliability and trustworthiness of the companies. Through employing the element of brand storytelling, the companies can incorporate the essence of humanization and better communicate their brand story.
What is a Brand Story?
A brand story is a narrative of the facts & feelings that are shared by the brand. Unlike traditional advertising, the storytelling often encompasses an element of emotional value so as to evoke a human element. Hence, it is not just a marketing asset, but also affects other facets of the organization through its guiding principles.
Through brand storytelling, companies and organizations often get a chance to answer the questions of the customers, as to who they are and what actually they represent. While contemplating and answering these queries, the companies often tend to realize the actual worth they are providing and even alter their strategies accordingly.
5 Ways to Tell a Compelling Brand Story
There are numerous ways in which companies and organizations can tell a compelling story to their audience. Among all the mediums, content if combined with perfect visual elements, has been found by the companies & organization to be the best one to convey a strong message.
Let us discover the most compelling ways in which effective brand storytelling can be accomplished:
1. Brainstorm Brand Story Ideas
Designing and compiling a brand story does not necessarily mean to be putting the hard effort into finding the unique element. Rather it should be all about the day-to-day running of the business and accomplishment of the operational goals.
For narrating the brand stories, the focus should be all about uncovering the common aspects of business and management operations through a unique point of view. To do so, the questions the storyteller must be considering are as follows:
- What the brand is all about?
- How does the brand provide value to its customers?
- What purpose does the brand want to accomplish through it?
- Why does the brand need to be present in the first place?
- How does the brand fill the necessary market gap?
2. Explore Your Unique Selling Point (USP)
A unique selling proposition (USP) sets apart a brand from competitive partners. Through USP, companies are able to demonstrate what makes them unique from their competitors. In order to highlight the USP in brand storytelling, the companies and organizations must ensure these:
- The customers are the ones to decide as to what their USP is. By finding out what matters to their customer, they can incorporate a USP in its brand storytelling effectively.
- They must decide upon a particular niche and use that within the storytelling to attract more loyal customers.
- They must emphasize the notion of being a problem solver in their storytelling campaign.
3. Encourage the Customers to Convey Your Story
A customer’s narration of his/her experience with a company outweighs all its marketing strategies combined. However, to convince customers to share their experiences in the form of testimonials or reviews with the masses is difficult to achieve. Hence, efforts need to be put in by the companies or organizations in order to engage the customers and let them narrate the brand stories by themselves via considering these points:
- Dedicate a team to story source from the customers regarding the company’s efforts & product/service.
- Focus on generating stories that spark the true sense of contentment on behalf of the customers.
- Show a little gratitude to them through small rewards so as to drive authentic stories.
4. Be Active on Social Media
Brand storytelling can be effectively achieved by organizations and companies through active engagement on social media channels. It often leads to increased brand awareness, increased customer outreach and enhanced lead generation. Through active engagement on social media, companies and organizations get a chance to tell their unique brand story.
To tell a brand story that resonates with a company’s or organization’s resolution, they must consider the following points:
- Create customer personas to understand them more effectively and tell a brand story that resonates with their interest.
- Provide resources to their customer base for better client-customer relationships.
- Invite the customers to become a part of their brand through hashtags, social share and reviews.
5. Keep It Simple
Last but not the least, this is one of the essential points to ponder over if a company or organization needs to up their game through competitive brand storytelling. A brand story is aimed at the masses instead of internal insights. In order to keep the brand story simple yet effective, the companies and organizations must consider these points:
- Add a humanized, personal and emotional element to the storytelling campaign for creating a long-lasting connection.
- Focus on telling the truth and share the real experiences for inducing trustworthiness.
- Use the element of authenticity so that people are able to relate and spread the word around in the process.
5 Amazing Brand Story Examples
There are a number of renowned brands that incorporate an element of storytelling within their brand marketing campaigns for effective outreach and customer relationship. Let us discover the 5 amazing brand stories that need to be exemplified and followed:
1. Toms Shoes
The brand story of Tom Shoes is summed up within The Tom story, when the founder Blake Mycoskie, on his Trip to Argentina in 2006, realized the hardships faced by children growing up without shoes. The concept then evolved out in the form of matching every purchased pair of shoes with a new pair of shoes for a child in need. Till to-date, the company has managed to provide 50 million pairs of shoes to needy children, along with the provision of 250,000 safe water in 6 weeks and restored the eyesight of 360,000 people.
2. Google
Google was a small company when it was launched in 1995 and initially named Backrub. Being a leading advertising platform, instead of on-screen campaigns, it rather focuses on human stories for a sales pitch. Parisian Love is its brand storytelling campaign through a three-act sequence as it highlights the history of the Google search engine, coupled with piano theme music. Today, Google is the leading search engine, leading advertisers and continues to expand its territories above & beyond.
3. Old Spice
Old Spice is one of the leading American men deodorant & perfume lineups. The parent company, Shulton Company, has been in service since the early 1900s and is now owned by Procter & Gamble. Their brand story revolves around the idea of making a man smell like assumed rather than turning him into a fictional perfectionist. The story targets women instead of male and has inspired a number of spoofs ever since.
4. Pampers
The concept of disposable diapers, Pampers, evolved in 1956 as a Procter & Gamble researcher was fed up with changing his grandkid’s cloth-based diapers. Today, it has become one of the trustworthy and reliable brands globally. Through Friends at Work brand story, the story emphasizes John Legend changing his kid's diaper as other dads sing along. Through the change of the status quo, they are becoming a beacon of hope for the female majority.
5. Marks & Spencer
In the domain of fashion and style, Marks & Spencer have always made their way through innovative product lineups. They also stepped into the grocery services and adopted the brand story of highlighting their quality within their grocery retail service back in 2004. The easy to mimic and easy to remember food ad allowed their brand story to become a crispy yet hot topic of the town. Furthermore, their emphasis on quality led them to outpower their competitors!
