How to Make Your Brand Memorable When You Don’t Have a Gazillion-Dollar Budget

What do you think of this ad?

Nice, right? Kind of stoic and inspirational. Nike is known for making some really beautiful, inspirational ads. But let’s imagine that we take down the iconic Nike swoosh and replace it with the Under Armour logo. The ad still works because, even though it’s beautiful, it’s generic.

When you’re a multi-billion-dollar company like Nike or Apple, you can get away with doing pretty generic ads. The only way for a generic ad to be memorable and successful, though, is if it happens to be marketing an already memorable and successful company.

The same principle applies to video. Here is a beautiful North Face ad:

Imagine switching out the North Face logos for Patagonia logos. The ad still works.

Any company that’s trying to build a brand that’s not yet established and easily recognizable by the masses, and doesn’t have a multi-million-dollar branding budget, needs to make ads that are memorable. One way to do that is to incorporate a story. We are wired to remember stories; it’s how information has been passed down through the ages.

For example, when companies use character-based advertising, the character’s story embeds itself in our memories and the company becomes tied to the character and their story. Lebron, for instance, is so connected to Nike that, if we start watching an ad with Lebron, we might automatically recognize it as a Nike ad, even before we see the logo.

It’s the same for Steph Curry — he’s part of the Under Armour brand, their protagonist, their leading man.

You could never switch the logos in these ads. The characters and their stories are too memorable; the connection to the brand is too strong.

Dos Equis built a super recognizable character that is intertwined with the brand — The Most Interesting Man in the World.

We’ve all seen the ads and recognize the tagline. BUT, when they tried to replace the old character with a new Most Interesting Man in the World, there was a super negative reaction, and the new character failed to gain the traction that the old character had with their audience.

Why the hate? Because we had developed an emotional connection to the protagonist, which helped us care about the brand. Imagine Captain Crunch cereal switching out the iconic breakfast cereal-loving naval officer with a new protagonist (Principle Peanut Butter? Mr. Mixed-Berry Munch?)… even if the product stayed the same, people would have a hard time seeing the brand the same way because the Captain Crunch character has been telling the story of the cereal for as long as we can remember!

Being recognizable isn’t the only great thing about having an iconic character to distinguish your brand — your character also adds a layer of emotional connection to your brand. Successful brand characters typically fall into two categories — relatable and aspirational.

An example of a relatable character is the cheerful but frazzled mom character we created with the Chatbooks brand. The Chatbooks mom is extremely relatable to the demographic most interested in Chatbooks — she’s a mom who loves her kids, experiences the highs and lows of motherhood, is super busy and has a chaotic life, and is upbeat but honest about her experience:

There are tens of thousands of comments from women who saw the ad and felt a connection.

When Chatbooks launched the campaign it paid for itself within 72 hours. It caused a large initial spike in revenue, but even after the spike, Chatbooks’s monthly revenue settled in at approximately 2x their pre-campaign levels. Chatbooks essentially doubled their company with a single campaign.

An example of an aspirational brand character would be Camp Chef’s Grill god. Every backyard griller wants to impress their friends and family with “5 Star Food.” Grill god acts as our guide and mentor as he shows us the right tool for the job.

Camp Chef already had a long history of retail success. But with the help of this campaign, they were able to transform into a major e-commerce player too. This chart shows the massive growth in their e-commerce sales. The most beautiful part is that their retail business kept growing even as their e-commerce business was exploding.

At Harmon Brothers, we typically create character-based ads to help our clients’ brands stick in your memory. Our mission at Harmon Brothers is to Share Better Stories because ultimately, great stories are what you remember. Stories help the audience relate to the product, aspire to the lifestyle, emotionally connect to the character and brand, and makes the audience want to see more because they’re entertained.

What are some of your favorite story-based ads?