Why is brand storytelling popular?

Brand storytelling is getting lots of press these days.

Why?

For me, there are three big reasons.

Cut through the “AI slop”

Allow me to start by bypassing, almost entirely, the question of whether or not content should be written with AI (because one of my personal rules is to not spend my time writing about something that really bores me).

Instead I’d just like to acknowledge a feeling I have, which is that people are at the very least weary of content that is AI-generated vs. written by a real person (there are whole services devoted to detecting if something sounds like AI or not).

It turns out, it’s pretty easy to just throw a bunch of words up on a page. But that doesn’t make it something somebody wants to read.

That’s where storytelling comes in.

Meaning. Emotion. The conflict of values.

It turns out it’s more difficult to imbue a piece of writing with the key tenets of storytelling when it’s not one human writing for another human.

It’s what comes after an organization defines their values

Organizations all of shapes and sizes have spent the past decade on stuff like mission, vision, purpose and – yes – values.

It wouldn’t surprise me, at all, if organizations were asking: Now what?

Brand storytelling is all about elevating the way to interact with audiences to the discussion of values.

Organizations are using brand storytelling to take those values – values that, for many, still exist solely in PDFs and internal emails – and using them as the basis for telling relevant and compelling stories to engage key audiences.

It’s hard to do well

Storytelling is hard enough on its own. It requires a specialized skillset that can only be honed with years of training and/or practice.

But storytelling in the service of building a brand? With marketing channels and other key questions added to the mix?

That’s an even more specialized skillset.

Storytelling is one of those needs that feels like it’s been around for decades. Everybody wants to do it. But few actually know how to do it well. Or, if not well, consistently well.

Any time something  – like a news article – makes ripples in this world it causes organizations to take another swing at cracking the code.