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Storytelling for brands is the art of crafting a story that creates connection and engages customers on a deeper level. But it’s more than just a personality-laced narrative; the right brand narrative can increase your brand’s reach, impact and boost your revenue 20-fold. 

So what are the pot of gold characteristics of good storytelling for brands? Slip onto my flying carpet and I’ll show you how depth, meaning and purpose create the storytelling sweet-spot.

HOW DEEP IS YOUR BRAND?

Good storytelling creates brand awareness in two dimensions; breadth and depth. Breadth is surface level and common knowledge about the brand; the range of products and where to buy or consume them, the information you find on the website, the knowledge of the product category and its biggest competitors. Breadth is also known as ‘top of mind awareness’.

Depth is an intensifying of the scope; how easily customers can recall or recognise the brand in a buying situation. Depth is achieved through creating Brand Salience – the memory links of a brand and its connection to other memories. Salience is successful based on the quantity of triggering identifiers a brand can create, as well as the quality of them.

These can be as innate as loyalty or nostalgia; my penchant for buying Nikon cameras because growing up, I remember my father clicking the timer of his 35mm Nikon film camera and running to join the family photo before it snapped the shot, for example. But it can also be pragmatic; price-point, a special offer that’s hard to forget, a clever ad campaign, or perhaps, a particularly interesting post you saw on the brand’s Instagram page.

Back to storytelling… When a brand is engaging its audience in storied communication, it implores multiple angles and clever resources to illuminate the customer with information that sticks and creates salience. This can be done by weaving in the brand’s values, ethos, history or more nuanced stuff like company culture, the founder story or a touching charitable action the brand did and shared in a heart-string tugging video clip.

These aspects come together to create evocative mental connection for future recall, using emotion, experience, even one’s morals and aspirations, to create that psychological connection, the residue of which you are likely unaware of – that is, until you’re standing in the baby aisle looking for the diaper brand that donated 3-million diapers to childcare non-profits during the pandemic, because that inspired action aligns with your beliefs.

THE MEANINGFUL BRAND HOOK

What does a brand mean to you and what does a brand mean to me? Brand loyalty can be discovered, passed down or learned. The brands we invite into our lives have become part of our individual ecosystems according to the value they add. Purely functional, at base level; sentimental, somewhere in the middle; and aspirational, at the top of our hierarchy of needs.

Something we can probably agree on? That our affinity for a particular toothpaste brand is a preference for taste, and possibly, natural ingredients; rather than anything sentimental. But what does it mean to have deeper loyalty to a brand? It’s start’s with human connection.

Storytelling stirs our emotional connection and empathy puts people at the centre. When you tune in to people and communities; what they’re feeling and what they desire, you can create brand relevance with human truth. By paying attention to more meaningful metrics; not who’s buying, but what are they going through? You can tap into their consciousness; what is your audience yearning for and experiencing? You can find what is meaningful to them, what makes for a meaningful existence. This is the place to meet them.

Meaning in brand storytelling, means taking a wide step around cookie-cutter content churn and taking time to craft a narrative that is enriching and meaningful; add value, hold space, give back, be inspirational, give-give-give and build trust. In brand worlds, as in real life, building relationships takes time.

IN A DIRECTION OF PURPOSE

Brands that serve the test of time – notice, I said serve, not stand – are brands that build greater value into their mission and the way they do things. Right now, we’re living in the era of the conscious brand movement; consumers are more conscientious than ever. It’s an exciting time to be alive, really. We’re seeing brands sell their products and services by showing and telling us how they give back to communities, are champions for diversity and are off-setting their ecological footprint through proactive campaigns and contributions.

Patagonia is one of those rare specimens leading the way; they not only offer a sustainable clothing line, but they also encourage customers to repair their items before replacing them – and have you seen their stitching? They make it to last in the first place. Patagonia also invites customers to recycle their old gear and buy second hand items. This approach is rooted in ensuring their supply chain is safe for the environment, their staff and their customers. They are living for the future – and so helping to shape it.

Brand purpose is rooted in a brand’s positioning, it’s a brand’s North Star and reasons for being beyond making money. Purpose takes the brand promise and delivers on it. In these quickly shifting times, doing the right thing, doing it well, doing it better than anyone expected, taking it to the next level – and the one beyond that? Those are brands that are going to change the world. Take a stand, start a movement, be something more in ways that count.

Remember that old chestnut called Corporate Social Responsibility? These campaigns were often devised around earning caring kudos as a PR tactic – it was simply about creating perception; a layer of icing on an already baked cake. Not a core ingredient in the brand’s make-up where the ingredient makes the cake. These days, the responsibility is real and brands are stepping up.

WHY DOES IT MATTER?

We live in a world where brands are some of the boldest icons that exist in popular culture – some, say Louis Vuitton or Bentley, are illustrious and aspirational, while others are every day and common place, but no less iconic for their timeless mass appeal. They hold true power to communicate to impact the world, to create stories of reverence, to inspire their customers. This is connective beyond measure.

Brands have become not only purveyors of design and artistry, but synonymous with the highest levels of creative exploration and expression. What a brand puts out there is important because it is powerful, because it informs and directs culture, because, for better or worse, brands create our future.

What stories is your brand telling?

Have you embedded depth, meaning and purpose?

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