4 Elements to Create a Memorable Brand Story
The part two of the blog “The Art of Storytelling: It’s in your DNA” continues here:
Good stories leave a lasting impression. Even if the audience can’t remember exact details, years down the road, they will still remember if it was “awesome,” “horrible,” “sad,” “funny,” and even to what degree of emotion the story evoked.
Brands that have a strong story provide the same long term results as a movie or story. And just as with a poor or boring story that is easily forgotten, a brand without a stand out story is quickly forgotten and replaced. The following three elements can help an entrepreneur craft a memorable story that will resonate with the target audience and set his or her business apart.
Brands that have a strong story provide the same long term results as a movie or story. And just as with a poor or boring story that is easily forgotten, a brand without a stand out story is quickly forgotten and replaced. The following three elements can help an entrepreneur craft a memorable story that will resonate with the target audience and set his or her business apart.
1. Create Passion
The first element, passion, involves ensuring that the readers/listeners form enough of an emotional connection to the story that they care about what happens.
2. Create Your Character
Without a character, you don’t have a story. The characters are the ones that the audience relates to, makes friends with, or hates like a real enemy. Of course, as a brand you want to be the protagonist, the hero, the good guy that readers love. But to do this, you have to get personal and real. Yes, the story is about your brand but even more so about you and your team, if you have one. Show your downfalls and struggles. Let your personality shine. And create a character that either changes due to conflict or remains the same in spite of conflict. Both are admirable characteristics, depending on the situation.
3. Create an “Aha” Moment
The Aha moments popularized by Oprah Winfrey, is the point in a story when an audience learns the value proposition of your product or service. You probably recognize the typical marketing narrative: Customer, the main character, faces a problem because something is missing from his or her life. Product provides the solution and thus solves the problem. But where is the climax? Where is the exciting breakthrough that makes a reader see the light? That ‘aha’ moment is where the audience moves from identifying to empathizing with the main character, it’s where the emotional connection happens. And that’s what gets an audience hooked.
4. There’s Beauty in Tragedy
When writing your brand story don’t leave out your mistakes, your blunders, and your failures. It gives consumers the opportunity to connect with their own story. Audiences love the honesty that comes with the open admission of failure, as well as the integrity that comes with reflecting on why things went wrong. Apple’s failure through the non-Jobs era of the 1990’s actually contained advances that helped with their revitalization later on. Many marketers might not want to tell that chapter of their story, but their story would not resonate without it.
Businesses can try to shape their stories in a way that they resonate with prospective customers and so the company is set apart from competitors. Remember that book you couldn't put down? That movie you didn't want to end?
Businesses can try to shape their stories in a way that they resonate with prospective customers and so the company is set apart from competitors. Remember that book you couldn't put down? That movie you didn't want to end?
Great storytelling is an undeniable art. And you need to ensure that you keep these above mentioned elements in your mind while creating a memorable and successful brand story.
Facebook
Twitter
LinkedIn
