Brand storytelling: The most effective tactics for reaching audiences
Looking to start a brand storytelling strategy but unsure where to get started?
Here are the common tactics brands use to bring a brand storytelling strategy to life.
Tell your audience’s story
This is pretty straightforward: You find people who are in your audience (either customers or people who are just followers of your brand) and tell a story about them.
Photos, videos, articles – any of them will do.
A great example is Canadian clothing brand House of Blanks and their series of stories about artists, creators and entrepreneurs who create while wearing their clothing.
These are, for the most part, real-life stories about real-life people (not made-up characters, which are also effective – we’ll cover them below).
Tell your own story
This is one of the biggest mistakes in brand storytelling: Thinking that every story you tell needs to be either about your or your brand.
Even though it’s overused, though, it can still have an impact.
This might involve telling the story about the people who created your company or maybe the people who work there now. Or it might involve a story about the market: How you are solving a problem that has always existed.
An example of this is a TEDx Talk from Peter Georgariou, the CEO of kharmadharma. He talks about his story and how it ties into his organization’s brand.
Tell a story that reflects your audience’s values
This is where fictional stories can have the most impact.
You can take a value – freedom, love, independence – that matters to your brand and tell a story about it.
The best part? As long as you are talking about a value that your brand shares with your audience, you don’t even need to make it directly about your brand or its products.
By way of example, consider the “All Is Beauty” campaign from Simons. It takes a shared value between brand and audience – beauty – and tells a story about it.
Even though it has nothing at all to do with Simons’ product offering.
Sacrificing something
Stories are about sacrifice. In most stories – take movies as an example – a main character makes a choice, one that reveals their true character.
Brands also have the power to sacrifice.
Nurofen, a UK-based pain relief medication, built a whole campaign around based on advocating for empathy around women’s pain – a bold choice that, undoubtedly, didn’t appeal to everyone.
Exploring a conflict in values
Challenger brands have built their entire brand strategy around pitting values against one another.
Take an example that gets cited often in the agency world: Oatly.
The oat drink company makes explicit what its fighting against: “recklessly taxing the planet's resources.”
Many brands say what they’re FOR. Few do what Oatly does and make explicit the values they are against.
That’s what storytelling is: Exploring a conflict in values.
Creating a character
This one’s my favourite.
The best way to tell a story about your brand (in my opinion) is to literally turn that brand into a person (or animal).
There are too many examples to count here. Tony the Tiger. The Monopoly guy. Michelin Man.
A more contemporary example is the Geico gecko, a little lizard who goes on all sorts of fun adventures.
Looking to get started with brand storytelling?
I am a brand storyteller with more than 15 years of professional experience helping to level the playing field for the world's worthy causes by equipping them with the brand storytelling tools they need to succeed.
