Jon Thomas is the Communications Director at Story Worldwide. He will run an interactive storytelling workshop at WOMMA’s School of WOM, May 9-11. He tweets as @Story_Jon.
What are the essential elements of a compelling brand story?
Every authentic brand story unfolds in its own way. It’s not necessarily specific elements that you want to hit, but it’s unearthing what your brand’s story truly is. Not just what your brand does as a business, but how it make peoples’ lives better.
Every brand has a story to tell. A successful brand story always comes from the perspective of the audience. Whether you’re Country Crock Butter Spread or Lexus, you need to look at your story from the audiences’ shoes - how they perceive you, how you’re going to help them, and how you live within their world.
You certainly want to reveal something about yourself. A lot of people say that vulnerability is the new black. The more you add the elements of vulnerability and honesty, which often go hand in hand, the more you expose about your brand. This is especially true in hard times. Make sure you remain honest and true to your story and audience. Always put their needs first, even if it isn’t positive for you.
For example, if your brand story is focused around safety, you have to ensure that safety is always always first. Admitting that you have to recall a certain product because of X, Y and Z reasons is part of your story. Ultimately your story won’t center around your products being inferior, but about how you were honest and put safety first.
What aspects of the intended viewer do you consider when crafting a brand story?
Audience is where you look first when you’re trying to unearth your story. This ensures that you’re focusing on what’s most important to them as opposed to what’s important to you. If taste is the most important thing yet you’re cutting back on taste to lower cost, you aren’t focusing on your audience. It’s going to create an inconsistent brand story. If taste is important, then taste should be part of your story.
You absolutely have to focus on your audience when you’re crafting your brand story. Who are they? What do they need? What are their lives about?
Get down to a granular level of detail so when you talk about your audience or customer, they have a name. You aren’t telling the story of an average customer. You’re talking about Mary. She’s 35 years old, has two kids, and drives a minivan. Try to get down to that level so you can really understand who they are.
When you start to focus your content on stories that are going to be useful, engaging and entertaining, you need a specific target. Someone with a face and name and parts of their lives that are relevant. All this will increase how relatable the story is for your audience.
What do marketers need to consider as they develop brand stories that will be distributed across different media?
Don’t focus so much on the channels. There are agencies or people that are hyper-focused on a specific channel. They may be able to tell a brand story on that channel. But the problem with that is that they’ll sell that channel into you whether you need it or not. Also, the channels change. They were different two years ago and they’ll be different two years from now. So when you’re looking at your story, don’t ask, “How can I tell this through Facebook?” Find where your audience is and how you can reach them. Concentrate on where your audience is and how you can create content that they’ll find useful in that place.
We like to say that we tell our stories in weird and wonderful ways across a multitude of channels. That’s what we believe the future of marketing is all about.
