Brand Storytelling.
A Primer.
What Exactly Is Brand Storytelling?
Brand storytelling, we’re told, is one of the key challenges and opportunities for marketers. When you consider that people think, recall and express themselves in terms of stories, it’s no surprise that storytelling is a hot topic.
But in order to be a more effective at storytelling in general, and brand storytelling in particular, it might be worth our while to take a step back and explore what we mean by a story in the first place.
The word “story,” after all, is used to refer not only to books, movies and newspaper articles. It’s also employed to describe things we normally don’t think of as storytelling. Photographers, for example, will discuss a static image in terms of the story it tells. Potters, composers, designers, architects and other creative practitioners also speak of their creations in terms of storytelling.
And indeed, at first glance a great deal of marketing and corporate communication doesn’t seem to conform to the way we commonly understand the term.
So let me lay out some basic storytelling principles that, broadly speaking, transcend media, whether it’s a novel, a television commercial or a Powerpoint presentation.
Successful storytelling, in any medium, will incorporate one or all of the following tenets, which to a certain degree overlap.
Principles of Storytelling
1) Stories move forward
At its most basic a story is a sequence of events that moves forward. Stories have a momentum and a trajectory. That might sound obvious, but it’s not easy to achieve. A considerable amount of skill is needed to get a reader to want to turn the page, or a viewer to sit at the edge of his or her seat waiting to learn what’s going to happen next. I’m sure all of you have had the unpleasant experience of enduring a poorly constructed story. Stories like these seem to get bogged down, or “go nowhere.” They’re boring.
2) Stories have dramatic tension
What keeps a story moving forward, and therefore keeps us engaged, is conflict. A protagonist or hero wants to achieve something: get the girl, or find the money or escape from harm. The storyteller puts obstacles in the way their desiere. If the protagonist gets what she wants, we enjoy a happy ending. If not, a sad one. Along this journey to towards his or her goal goal, the character learns something important, and we learn it as well.
3) Stories are unified
Stories revolve around a central unifying idea, a principle whose origin goes back to Aristotle. A choice is been made by the writer or photographer or designer to focus on one thing at the expense of all others. Every element of the story points to this central decision and supports it. The success of the story depends on how efficiently it drives home this main message.
Stories are also unified formally. They maintain a coherent perspective, tone-of-voice and, in the case of visual storytelling, a consistent look.
Brand Storytelling Means Applying These Principles To Brands
Brand stories move forward, they set up a problem, resolve it, and are held together both by a Unifying Idea and unifying formal elements.
This happens on both the macro and micro levels.
By macro level I mean the overall story of the brand: its history, its vision and where it is right now.
To uncover the brand’s macro story, we might ask what is its origin, its purpose, its mission, its vision. Moreover we’d want to recognize the problem that it is addressing and how it is solving that problem. How that problem may have changed over time and may continue to change. What the obstacles are, and how the brand helps people overcome them. And, of course, we’d want to be able to distill the brand to a Unifying Idea, often expressed in terms of a promise. We’ll also want to unify formal elements of the brand, like its visual style and its tone-of-voice.
By micro level I mean employing storytelling principles in each individual piece of marketing material that the brand employs to communicate within the enterprise, to its partners and its customers.
Web sites, for example, need to be designed so that the user is guided logically through the story you want to tell. TV commercials need to set up a problem and resolve it, and if possible offer a sense of drama. And of everything needs to be unified, not only within itself, but within the macro brand story described above.
Brand Storytelling Helps Us Make Sense Of The World
The function of stories is to help us make sense of the world around us: who we are, why we’re here and where we’re going.
Stories help organize our lives and give it a sense of purpose, meaning and, at their best, beauty.
As brands become one of the primary vehicles for storytelling, we have a responsibility to make sure they offer people the sense of stability and hope needed in our turbulent time.