Brand stories play a crucial role while we try to make your brand known to your target audience. You can do that by creating a brand story. A brand story deals with your journey and your achievement in a storytelling manner through which your customer will get an emotional connection with you.
The importance of a brand story relies on building trust with your customers, personalizing your brand with customers, bringing in people towards your brand thereby creating loyalty, and so on. Some classic examples of best-brand stories are as follows:
- Apple, Think Different
- Google, Parisian love
- Warby Parker, How the Glasses are made?
The brand story bridges the gap between you and your customer, so you should make your story something touchy such as bringing out something emotional, and curious, about something interesting about your product or the milestones you’ve come across. This creates a sort of trust, emotional connection, and relationship between you and your customer. Brand story has a similar effect to that of a kid listening to a story.
Storytelling is, “If your stories are all about your products and services, that’s not storytelling. It’s a brochure. Give yourself permission to make the story bigger.”
Jay Beyer, a content marketing strategist and keynote speaker,
As per the survey conducted by Buffer, a social media platform states that 73% of marketers believe that their efforts through social media marketing have been “somewhat effective” or “very effective” for their business.
“Marketing is no longer about the stuff you make but about the stories you tell.”
Seth Godin an author and Entrepreneur,
What is a brand story?
A brand story is the art of narrating to your customers the past and present scenarios of your business. It also tells about what was pushing you hard to keep yourself up in the market. Sometimes you can let your customers know how the product or service you offer. This creates an openness between you and your customer. Therefore, you become closer and closer to your customer to that point where you are a reliable Brand.
How Companies are going through Brand stories?
The companies are getting a chance to provoke emotions through brand stories. As we discussed earlier, reliability and emotional connection allow the company to manipulate the customers to buy or at least try the product. As a result, they invest in new launches and innovations in the market. Customers who have built trust at this level will automatically purchase the product or service offered.
The story deals with the mission and vision of the company as well. In addition, this has an advantage to the company in an upper hand by allowing a company to demand premium subscriptions and features on payment to their customers. Through brand stories, a company will stand itself ashore in a unique manner by creating a separate Space for them.
This makes the company stay on top in a market with more competitors. The overall impact is if a company has a good narrative, they have the power to get their customer’s support and contribute towards their growth significantly.
Brand Story of Apple Inc., Think different
The Brand Story of Apple focused on the “Think Different” Slogan used by them in their advertisement from 1997 to 2002. The campaign created by the Los Angeles office of advertising agency TBWA\Chiat\Day was directed by Robert Ridley. It made them get through the Super Bowl.
The Ad was based on George Orwell’s dystopian novel ‘1984’ featuring a woman who stops men from following the tyrant / Dictator on the screen mindlessly. This was a huge risk taken by the company. They gave a befitting reply to their rival IBM and commented on the political issues at the same time.
The idea of the theme came from Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak who loved the novel 1984. It cost them around $650,000 to feature a British discus thrower as the woman lead.
Although Think Different is grammatically incorrect they decided to have it to attain colloquial advantage just like ‘Think Big’. It was a befitting reply to IBM’s slogan ‘Think.’ Steve Jobs narrated the same in his voice. This was made for the Super Bowl advertisement.
Tips for Compelling Attractive Brand Story
- Make your audience get into your shoes: Through the brand story, you can make your audience understand you. The narrative should focus on an explanation of the brand and the product. It should be realistic and relatable rather than being an exaggeration.
- Refer to some real emotional elements/ situations you crossover-(the pain point the customer faces): Toconvincetheaudienceyoushouldtalkaboutthe issues your customer faces as a result, of using your product/services. This can be anything ranging from the cost of the product, quality of the product, and communicating issues that make a customer feel dissatisfied towards a product/service.
- The breaking point that turns you into a business: The Story will be more and more interesting if it includes why you have started this business. You might have started your business based on the demand for a particular product or service, a gap in the market, or financial motives. This will help the audience to know a bit more about you in understanding the background story responsible for your advent in Business.
- Clearly define the purpose of your business existence: Express your views to the audience about why your business exists. This relies on the goals, vision, and mission of the company. This varies from person to person and has two aspects such as:
- Personal: Let your audience know that your goal relies beyond making profits. They should get to know how much you value your business and the company. This also focuses on achieving the goals and objectives one had, milestones they have crossed so far, and how much you are satisfied with your business.
- Social: This aspect focuses on what you have done for the society. It might be the job opportunities you have created. Your contributions to society in preserving the environment and addressing the social issues in the story will benefit your audience’s concern towards your company.
- Personal: Let your audience know that your goal relies beyond making profits. They should get to know how much you value your business and the company. This also focuses on achieving the goals and objectives one had, milestones they have crossed so far, and how much you are satisfied with your business.
- Connect your USP to your Brand story: USP (Unique Selling Proposition) refers to the area of benefit that sets apart a product/service from others in a market. This feature will have a significant impact on the story.
Example: If your brand manufactures organic herbs and cosmetics with no paraben and silica, this will be an added value that keeps you apart from others in the market. Thus, a brand story when connected to USP creates trust and reliability from your customers. - Refer to some real-life elements (For example Sports matches, Movies): Using real-time elements will help your audience understand you easily. For example, if your brand story is inspired by a Soccer game then, you should use elements like how you faced the challenges just like the players do attain victory at the end. And just like players how you gained the support of the audience victory after victory by building trust and instilling trust with the audience should be narrated.
If your brand story is inspired by a movie it can have a quote or a similar replica of the scene in the brand story. For example, a quote from the movie “The Pursuit of Happiness” said by ‘Chris Gardner’, “You got a dream… You gotta protect it. People can’t do somethin’ themselves, they wanna tell you you can’t do it. If you want somethin’, go get it. Period.”
Much like Chris’ pursuit of happiness, our brand is driven by a simple yet powerful philosophy: that true fulfillment comes from following your passion and never giving up, no matter what it takes. We have embraced this as we strive to create products that inspire joy, confidence, and well-being in the lives of our customers.
This brand story draws parallels between the journey of the brand and the inspirational message of the movie, emphasizing themes of perseverance, resilience, and the pursuit of dreams.
- Use the right tonality to focus your target audience: There should be proper usage of words and language for communicating the narrative of a brand story. It should work well across different channels. If the right tone is adopted to deliver the brand story it will be an effective tool in conveying the story in the right manner. The language should be poised and polished respectively.
Conclusion
Thus these are the vital steps to be put into consideration while crafting a brand story. Although the crafting of a brand story focuses equally on structural and functional aspects if not crafted in the right tone it will lose its main target the audience. A brand story is created to impart the importance of brand awareness among customers.
As Steve Jobs, founder of Apple once said, “The most powerful person in the world is the storyteller. The storyteller sets the vision, values, and agenda of an entire generation that is to come.” Brand Storytelling plays a vital role in the positioning of a brand.
