A brand story is pretty much useless if you don’t apply it. The reason many brands don’t do justice to their story is that they treat it as a background exercise. Something the brand keeps to itself. But the true and valuable purpose of your story is to guide and shape your market narrative, particularly over the longer term. So it’s well worth taking the time to think through how you can make the most of your brand story.
Most brand stories are not even stories
So many brand stories don’t read as the journey of the brand, past, present and future. Instead, they come across as summaries of the strategy or as nice pieces of prose that describe the brand in colourful terms. The problem here is that such “stories” lack the basic components of a story. They do not establish a character or a motivation for a quest. There’s no roadblocks that need to be tackled. They don’t talk the brand through stages. Things don’t resolve into a powerful future.
The most powerful thing a strong brand story provides is a context for brand decision makers on where they are in their story. A good story retells the intentions and strategy of the brand in a story format that everyone can share.
There are many different ways to tell a story – in terms of perspective, priority and shape. And all of these should be deliberate decisions.
A powerful way to connect
Mark once described brand story as the living bridge between your history and your purpose. It is a powerful connector chronologically but also at a human level, because it’s the most accessible way for people to understand what is happening around them. A story is so much easier to understand and absorb than data points or lists of features. That’s why we talk so much about the need to connect your strategy, culture and story.
The most obvious use of story is as a basis for your positioning of the brand to customers. Tomasz Syzmonski has posted some great examples of how big brands have loomed larger in the public psyche by becoming master storytellers. Apple has told the innovators’ tale. Coca Cola has hailed the taste of happiness. Disney has created a magic kingdom of stories within storyworlds. Patagonia has thrived on an ongoing story of activism.
Apply your brand story with intent
All these brands have excelled at defining who they are beyond what they offer through the power of their story. But while that is very important, it’s not the only use for your brand story. Once you have a strong brand story sorted, here’s some ways you can apply it to positive effect:
Share your story internally
So many brands don’t inculcate their story into their culture in ways that people embrace. They fail to build a storytelling culture and to use story to build powerful legends that motivate belief and action. Your story and its language should be present in conversations across the organisation because, amongst other things, it should form the basis for how the brand sees its history and its future. A great question to ask of any major initiative is, “How does this fit into or change our story?”
Plan the long journey
Your brand story provides consistency and forward motion for your storytelling. It enables those responsible for brands to use the storyline as a backbone for things like product releases and updates. Synergising your story with your long term strategy and even with things like your market releases enables the whole organisation to move the brand forward and also provides people with more ways to engage with you.
Consolidate messaging and briefing frameworks
Your brand story should form the basis for your objectives and for your messaging frameworks, both internally and externally. A synopsis of your story is also a powerful tool to include in major communication campaign briefs because it provides a context for what needs to be achieved and where it needs to lead.
Build out content marketing
Your brand story should act as what we call The Long Arc for your more tactical storytelling. Ideally, all the stories you release should take their reference from the brand story and serve to elaborate on it. In our Long Arc workshop, we talk about the need to provide “degrees of proof”. These are the various levels of story that sit under your brand story and work to endorse it in various ways. They range from chapters – which are the monumental moments for your brand – through to anecdotes – the little stories that people can quickly share and that add illuminating detail.
Invest some time to leverage your brand story
If you’re ready to take the time to make the most of your brand story, or you’re looking to revitalise your current story or even create a new story for your future, Long Arc is our storytelling workshop. It’s an opportunity to appraise what your story is and the best ways for you to articulate it. More on how we can help here.
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Photo by Malvestida on Unsplash