Business and brand storytelling can move markets, inspire audiences and delight investors. They also don't have to worry about tripping on access firewalls, as they are based on pull-based merit and what the audience wants. It is time business - both large and entrepreneurial - pay undivided attention to what can inspire audiences to shower love on their brand and business.
"Great stories happen to those who can tell them." --Ira Glas
The media universe is a blur of banners, clickety-baity links, search algorithms that keep changing clothes faster than ever, cluttered communication and a deluge of content that pours in from every feed and media channel. It becomes difficult for consumers and audiences to remember you. On top of that and rightly so, privacy norms are becoming firewalls with strict standards and which will increasingly blow away intrusive ads and phishing banners right from the gate. The point is simple. Whoever tells a better and more influential story that is relevant, wins.
Read on to find out how you can make your brand and business stories memorable
Unlogo
You and your business are just not your logo, your ad or your mnemonic. That is the most humiliating reduction of value that you can subject your brand or venture or business (many think this is "branding" unfortunately and what a brand is. The slightly more adventurous will even add some music to it).
Consumers don't eat logos. They are increasingly mistrustful of ads. Logos and ads are good street signs but not everything. They are conversation openers. Imagine recruiting someone in your team on the basis of her/his name or the summary on their CV! Why would you then expect consumers to buy your products or services on the basis of your logo and its size?! and how "catchy" your ad is? Consumers are not flies that you "catch". This condition of businesses is called logo-diseased.
Not for a moment are we undermining the value of logos and identities. They are very critical, but they are just the beginning or the summation. There's lots to do in between. The logo is the marker, a badge. And the sooner and quicker, businesses and founders get this - the better it is for their brand and business.
Pro-Story
Candidates are hired, products are chosen, brands are preferred because of their experience, their life stories and skills, their unique perspective - and not because of their names or logos. What do your target consumers relate to, both emotionally and logically? What do they empathize with? What transforms audiences from detached to engaged?
Storytelling is big for business, critical for startups.
To keep your brand focused and engaging is very critical, especially if you are a venture or a start up which has just started its innings. For the brand to grow, engage, vibe, cultivate interest and socialize, you would need storytelling with engaging content and relevant narratives.
AS SOMEONE REMARKED - "THE WEB IS FULL OF GOBBLEDYGOOK-FILLED MISSION STATEMENTS, CONJURED UP BY COMMITTEES WITH THE ONLY AIM NOT TO OFFEND ANYBODY. BIG CORPORATIONS CAN AFFORD TO BE BORING. BECAUSE THEY HAVE TONS OF MONEY TO BUY BRAND AWARENESS."
If doom-scrolling is the bane on the audience side, doom-branding (branding furiously without depth, relevance or differentiation) is the waterloo for business.
Even doom-scrollers stop at great content
Within all this deluge and content-bursts, what the audience and your customers remember and notice are powerful stories and narratives that literally paint the picture about you, your product, brand or purpose. You remember the brands that tell stories. These are the brands that make themselves noticed, engaged and matter. Customers and audiences swear by the brands and businesses that touch them with stories that evoke relevance. Not the ones that scream with logos. Nor the ones that flash a plasticky smile on channels.
Business storytelling and brand storytelling, are powerful ways to engage and inspire audiences. But there is a method to its design.
Untemplate
Getting your story, your "unique" story that tells the "unique" you does not have to be templated or standardized or jump-shrunk. Well, why should it be? A template or a box simply reduces you and your fantastic story to being a data point. A blip that occurs during this content-storm that the consumers, investors and audiences go through. Make your audience care, that is the operative term. Stories make audiences care.
Ads are meant to be what they are - say you are the best. They are too short to trust and often too glossy to deceive. Stories on the other hand stick, by putting across their narrative, the struggles, the resolution, the journey with moles, warts and all. Stories are credible. They connect with people's deepest motivation. They evoke trust with details. Relatable, relevant details while being "unique". And hence they are shared, thereby multiplying the love for your brand, product or cause.
This is what McKinsey says:
"More specifically, we find that successful brand campaigns embed their messages in stories that touch, thrill, or amuse their target audience. Increasingly, consumers also expect their favorite brands to create value beyond product benefits. While a compelling story may get the attention of the audience, winning loyalty requires additional efforts from brand leaders: does the campaign go beyond brand communication? Does it embody the identity and the values of the company? Campaigns that meet these criteria are more successful than those that focus solely on rational benefits. This observation is indicative of a broader trend toward responsibility that extends beyond a brand’s customers. Increasingly, consumers hold brands accountable for the impact of their conduct on employees, society, and the planet as a whole. Our research on generation z (born 1995–2010) shows that young consumers are particularly mindful of ethical consumption, transparency, authenticity, and equality." - McKinsey (Source).
Irrigate (don't drown)
Storytelling and intelligent, relevant content helps create a kind of a content park where audiences, customers and consumers love spending time, engaging and learning. A good content bank allows businesses and brands the freedom and time to sweat the fruits without getting frenzied and hurried on what to put next.
CONTENT NEED NOT BE CHAOTIC LIKE CLOUD BURSTS. CONTENT DELIVERS BETTER, AND IRRIGATES WELL WHEN THEY ARE A FOCUSED NARRATIVE. DRIP IRRIGATION IS BETTER THAN A CLOUDBURST. SO TELL "YOUR" UNIQUE STORY WITH HOW IT SHOULD BE TOLD. EVEN SLOW TELLING IS MORE EFFECTIVE THAN ASSAULTING CUSTOMER SENSIBILITIES WITH AN AVALANCHE OF NON-COHESIVE STUFF.
As Marketing Charts puts it with reference to a Kantar media study - "The trust consumers have in advertising is at risk of deteriorating further, as the use of consumer data becomes more frequent and potentially insensitive. Overall, more than half (54%) of respondents agreed that targeted ads based on past online activity are intrusive."
POV
Stories and brands without a POV are like sterile bread. Undifferentiated and without a perspective. Perspectives are what makes content unique and read-worthy.
A POV touches us. Either you empathize with the story or get inspired or fantasize. Stories work because they are narratives that take you along on an adventure and leave you to draw your own lessons, and allow you to take what matters to you from them. Stories move us. They can tap into our pain to create empathy, they can tap into aspirations to inspire.
Hence your brand story needs to pack in a POV. The customer will only relate and emotionally engage if the brand appears to be relatable at some level rather than being frigid or distant.
Relate
Stories make it human because stories count us in. The story sucks us in, at least the good ones do. We identify with its characters, its plot, and its lessons. We rise with their triumphs and droop with their failure and triumph again. And by doing that we live them and memorise them. We become part of the story.
We might forget names and faces. We tend to forget dates and charts. But a good story? We don’t forget it. We don’t forget its constituents.
If we rally our stories around a purpose it resonates highly with consumers. Consumers and communities relate to the "why" of your business rather than just the "what". It is about resonating your beliefs and values that your brand lives by everyday, with its communities. This needs a inter-disciplinary team that works by your side to research, analyze, design-think, ideate and create content that has theme-relevance and character.
Anchor
Stories simply, connect best. There’s science behind this. The listener’s brain is activated to connect the story to her/his own ideas and experiences - a process called neural coupling. Soon the listener’s brain activity starts “mirroring” the storyteller’s.
In English we probably call it empathy. Good stories that are emotionally charged also release dopamine in the audience’s body that makes the story remembered. The cortex starts storing these bits of information and when the time comes, these stacks of information start interconnecting and leading to further creativity and ideas.
Tailor
However like every bird finds its tune, every story must tailor its themes of storytelling. After all your business, your brand and you are unique. What is good for the goose is not good for the gander. The worst damage you can do your brand is to template and commoditise it.
Working with the right creators and curators, who can help determine and identify the most ownable, brand-authentic stories is a must. Your stories must resonate with not only with what your brand stands for but also stay in character.
We are, as a species, addicted to story. Even when the body goes to sleep, the mind stays up all night, telling itself stories.” - Jonathan Gottschall, The Storytelling Animal