What is Brand Storytelling?
Brand Storytelling: An Introduction
The benefit of the phrase “brand storytelling” is the meaning is in the two words: brand and story. It’s simply telling the story of your brand.
But what does that mean and why is it important?
By employing brand storytelling, you’re leveraging the messaging strategy of storytelling to increase your brand’s value. This ultimately creates a stronger connection between your organization’s brand and your target audience.
Brand storytelling is not a one-and-done strategy. It’s the continuous act of telling your brand story. You’re investing in a long-term, strategic approach to craft the message of your brand through telling your story.
In order to unpack brand storytelling further, let’s define the terms. We’ll start with the easy one first: what is a story?
What is a Story? | Character, Desire, Conflict, Reward
A story is the chronicle of a character who wants something and overcomes a series of obstacles to get what they want.
It’s a framework for communicating an experience and teaching a lesson through it.
Jordan Peterson has this fantastic model of meaning creation and it really fits in well when you think about how stories are created. As you go through life, you experience three different types of events:
Negative: Problematic events that inhibit our progress and cause us to change our plan
Neutral: Events that have no bearing on our progress
Positive: Events that add value to our journey, but can also expend emotional energy. In general, they tend to distract us.
When we tell stories, we learn very quickly that if all we put into a “story” are neutral events, no one cares about it...because it’s very boring. Neutral events have no impact on our progress toward a goal.
For example, if I told you about my morning and said, “First I woke up, then I walked down the stairs, then I poured coffee, then I sat down and drank it, then I went to get dressed, then I came back and drank more coffee”....you’d be very bored and confused. It’s boring because it just chronicles events. It doesn’t hold attention. It’s not a story….it’s just a series of events. And we know it’s not a story, because as you’re listening to that series of events, you’re waiting for something...the twist, the turn, the problem...waiting to hear how I overcame that problem. That’s what a story is.
A story is the depiction of our struggle and how we overcame that struggle.
Now on the flip side of that, let’s think about stories with only positive things. At first you may think, “Yes, I love positive stories.” Think about that again. There’s a difference between positive stories and a story which only discusses positive events. We actually hate listening to stories where its nothing but positive stuff.
I was recently in an entrepreneur discussion group where we reviewed videos together then discussed them. One of the sessions featured an entrepreneur telling her business journey. Her entire story was about positive thing...after positive thing...after yet another positive thing that happened to her. As the video dragged on, the entire group watching became demoralized because it was such an unrealistic account of someone’s journey of getting something. It literally sounded like she was handed a silver spoon at every twist and turn. And because of that, there was nothing we could learn. We were waiting to hear about interesting problems she encountered and how she overcame them so we could apply that approach to our own journeys. But that never happened. Instead, it became annoying and unhelpful.
When we hear about someone going through problems, we empathize with them. Our heart reaches out to them and we want to see them succeed. The majority of us want good things to happen to people. In a sense, we want good things to happen to people who deserve it. And that means, the deserving comes from the struggle.
To recap so far:
We don’t want a story that has just neutral events because that’s boring and we bounce immediately.
We don’t want to hear someone talking about just positive things because that’s offensive. It’s just someone bragging. And they’re adding zero value to that engagement because we’re not learning anything.
Learning and attention happen by talking about the struggle and how someone overcame it.
That’s exactly why we use the framework of a character who wants something, who is driven a desire and must endure a series of obstacles to try to obtain it. That payoff is not guaranteed, but the structure works either way. Even if they’re encountering a series of obstacles in a tragedy and don’t get what they want, we pay attention. Because we want to see what characters do to overcome the struggle. Romeo and Juliet didn’t get what they wanted. But that story is timeless, appealing to audiences over hundreds of years.
Stories are the Basis of How We Communicate our Human Experience
I believe stories are the foundational code of humanity. Stories are how we put information together and how we communicate that information to each other.
We each have an identity which is based on what we call a personal narrative. There’s a story we tell ourselves over and over again. It reinforces who we are. Within that personal identity is our own worldview and our own cultural worldview. And those themselves are cultural narratives. They’re world narratives that we’ve built.
Stories in essence are the glue that ties society together. It’s the glue that ties your personhood together. And it is how we relate to one another, how we engage with one another and how we form relationships.
Story is the most powerful messaging tool out there.
Now that you understand story, it’s time to move to defining a brand.
What is a Brand? A Company’s Emotional Impression
A brand is the impression you feel when you think about an organization.
Let me explain. Think about these two things right now: Six Flags and Disney World. What popped into your mind? What did you feel when you thought about each of them? Disney World has weight. It has meaning. And you feel that when you hear the phrase “Disney World.” It’s not the same for Six Flags.
Brand is an emotional experience; it’s an impression that you have. You literally feel the weight of the brand when you’re encountering it. And that brand weight and brand value is a culmination of everything within that organization. So everything within that organization is brand. Not just the design. Not just the logo. Everything.
I like to think about the brand as the personality of a corporation. It’s difficult to communicate in words what someone’s personality is. But after you engage with them, you have an overall feeling or impression about them.
Their personality isn’t dictated simply by their name. In the same way, a company’s name doesn’t communicate it’s brand. It’s only after engaging with that organization and understanding who they are that an impression starts to form when you hear its name. That’s why when we say company names like Apple or Nike, you can feel the brand. You know their personality and what they’re all about because you have experienced them.
Brand is the culmination of everything, not just the visual marketing materials. It’s very closely tied with the company culture and the expression of its value.
Here are all the parts that make up a brand:
Marketplace value: Value generated directly through a product or service
Delivery mechanism: Distribution channels, UI/UX, packaging etc.
Customer experience: How customers are treated by employees
Company culture: The true values the company upholds and expresses
Visual style and tone: How that style captures and reinforces the above across all the marketing materials
Now that we know what a story and brand are, let’s talk about how we are going to tell your brand story.
Two Levels of Storytelling: Macro and Micro
There are two levels of story being told through brand storytelling:
The Macro Story
Microstories
The Macro Story
The macro story is ultimately your brand narrative which is told in two ways:
Marketplace Place: What your audience says about your company
Authentic Purpose: Your company’s origin story or story of purpose
Marketplace Story
Think about a company like a person. When you’re introduced to a new person, you typically hear a story about them that is told by other people. For example, a business associate may introduce you to someone by saying “this is the realtor who helped me find our dream home in Atlanta in only one day.” That’s essentially the marketplace story or what your audience says about you.
Here’s another way to think about it. Are you familiar with Donald Miller’s StoryBrand framework? He basically gives you a template to shape your brand story in a way that embraces the fact that people are already telling a story about your company. This enables you to get right in line with your customers so you’re speaking a very similar language to what’s already happening. It’s an entire framework to help you understand how to see your company from the perspective of your customer. If you haven’t checked it out before, I highly recommend reading Building a StoryBrand by Donald Miller. (I love that book. It basically changed my life!).
And although I think Donald Miller is an amazing marketing genius, there’s one aspect where I feel the book falls short: it doesn’t discuss thinking about marketing in terms of it being a literal relationship between the company and other people. And I believe it is. I like to think about marketing from an interpersonal relationship perspective and apply the same codes we use within our own interpersonal relationships to a marketing context.
Authentic Purpose
So as you’re beginning to build an affinity or affection for someone, you don’t just want to hear their marketplace story. Eventually, you want to hear their story from their own mouth. It’s a sign that they’re trusting you. They’re bringing you into their inner circle and strengthening the relationship between you. And that's when someone gets vulnerable and actually shares their origin story with you. They let you know how they got to where they’re at now.
Tiers exists within the origin story. You’ll get the Sparknotes version the first time, but then you can continue to dig and dig. And eventually you’ll hit into that emotional depth that builds a relationship.
When thinking about your purpose, I’m not talking about a fake corporate purpose created from corporate terms. Don’t run around panicking trying to write down your purpose statement and end up with corporate drivel. Rather, stop and realize your company does have a purpose. Talk to the founder who created it. Or better yet, start with the problem you’re solving for customers. That’s the purpose you’re serving in the marketplace.
I believe a brand narrative is a combination of both those things: your marketplace story and your authentic purpose or origin story. It’s reflecting back what your customers are saying as you tell the purpose of your company.
Microstories
And as you tell this macro story, you are also telling microstories in tandem.
Microstories are just pieces of content that point back to the macro story. Think of them like anecdotal demonstrations of your macro story. They include things like customer testimonials or short impact videos. Eventually they become a series of small stories that thematically echo your macro story.
You don’t have to tell the same story every single time. Microstories just need to be themed and fall into the same theme each time.
Let’s take a look at Disney. They have a catalogue of films, but they also have a very defined brand image. You won’t find an R rated movie in their catalogue. You may ask: well what about Fox? They bought Fox so they could have R rated content in their catalogue under a separate brand identity. They could never release them under the Disney brand.
The Disney brand is the one targeted to families and children. You should feel safe letting your children watch Disney films and shows (side note: not saying you have to agree with that, but that’s the image they are putting forth). So because of that intent, the content in their library has similar themes. You know what type of flavor of film you’ll get when you watch a Disney movie.
The same thing goes for how Marvel is forming their own brand identity now within Disney. You start to know what you’re going to get from a Marvel film. Sure, there’s some variation, but all within a clearly defined space.
So, microstories aren’t all the same story, but they’re building to one larger story. There’s definitely variation, but it’s to a certain limit. And they serve the purpose of continuing to develop that brand identity by echoing the themes you’re expecting..
Quick Summary
To summarize this all quickly, brand storytelling is simply using storytelling as a message strategy to build brand equity. Ultimately you’re building a stronger relationship with your customer base so you can increase the value of your product and offering...which increases the impact your organization has within your community, the marketplace or greater society at large. It’s the act of telling a story over time through all your marketing materials in order to build your brand. It’s not just telling a single story. It’s the act of continuous storytelling.
Disclaimer: We are a participant in Amazon Associates, affiliate advertising programs. By using the Amazon links above, at no additional cost to you, we are able to earn a small commission to help us continue to create content like this.