Brand Storytelling is a very powerful tool in any brands arsenal.

I’ve written a previous article posted on this site called ‘Neuroscience and Storytelling’ on how our brains are wired and why stories are such an effective communication tool, so this piece will not cover the same ground.  I will assume you have or will read that article if you are interested. This article will therefore concentrate on how to go about defining and using brand storytelling techniques to build your business.

Why should your company care about developing a brand story?

Put simply, it works. It’s one of the things most successful companies have in common – and do really well. They have a clearly defined and expressed brand story. They tell engaging stories. Powerful stories. Funny stories. Compelling stories. But all the stories they tell sit within an overarching and considered framework of the larger brand story and are designed to help forge a connection with their audience.

Over time, and well-managed, that connection becomes a relationship and establishing an emotional relationship between brand and audience is one of the key things the brand and marketing execs at any company are trying to achieve through their brand and marketing activities.

Recently, in conversation with a recently graduated designer who I have been mentoring, I asked him to do some work to define the brand story. His response clearly exposed a lack of training and understanding of what a brand story really is and why he, as a designer, would be involved in its telling.

To my mentee, the brand story was merely the inception or origin story of the company. (we’ll return to the origin story later). As such he considered it to be something a copywriter might be involved in expressing but thought it was nothing to do with design.

I will concede that brand storytelling does include the inception story and the company’s history, but it is also just as importantly, about the purpose, mission, and values – the why of the brand. Expressing those aspects throughout the entirety of a brand’s customer touchpoints will inevitably include a designer’s unique input. 

In this article, I will try to explain what makes an effective brand story, why your business needs one, and what steps you can take to start expressing your own.

What Is Brand Storytelling?

Brand storytelling plots a series of key points that help build an emotional connection between a brand and its target audience. It encompasses a summary of your company’s history, mission, purpose, and values, within a narrative structure that expresses them in a way that brings them tangibly to life for the target audience.  (That tangibility is often where the designer gets involved by the way.) 

Storytelling tools and techniques can be used to create branded content that expresses the values and vision of your company and, in doing so, generates an emotional response.

The copywriters will know how to use language to do one portion of this task – but as some of the strongest triggers for emotional connection are visual any graphic designer worthy of the title should be able to apply colour theory, the personality and character of typefaces, the choice and style of imagery, the nuance of layout and the other skills of their trade to help craft the story to be told and present it in the most effective way possible. 

Why Does it matter? 

Psychologist Jerome Bruner found that details communicated in stories are 22 times more memorable than when they are communicated as basic facts and numbers.

Additionally, the  Harvard Business Review found that emotional connections are significant drivers of brand loyalty and that emotional connection represents one of the best indicators of future customer value. 

When brand loyalty is significantly driven by emotional connection, which is primarily achieved by brands and customers having shared values, then the power of brand storytelling is self-evident.

Brand storytelling also works as a complementary factor to SEO strategies. Getting content noticed and read by the audience and therefore favourably ranked by the algorithms.

How is brand storytelling different to content marketing?

Content marketing can include brand stories, but not all content marketing is brand storytelling.  

Content marketers will create educational and promotional items that attract new customers, engage current customers and also increase brand loyalty. Content marketing is therefore just one of the channels available to tell your brand story. 

What makes a good story?

We all know what movies and books we like. One of the key factors to keeping our brains engaged is that the best stories surprise us. There are plot twists. They make us think and feel. We are hard-wired to respond to stories. Stories get stuck in our minds and that helps us remember information, ideas and concepts.

Powerful Brand Storytelling is simply powerful storytelling

The elements that make a brand story compelling are the same that make any story compelling:

Empathy: If your audience can see themselves in the story – perhaps even place themselves into the shoes of a protagonist then the story has captured them. 

Attention-grabbing:  What grabs our attention can be different at different times, when we are in differing moods it may alter. For a brand, it’s most advisable to define and establish a distinct tone of voice and express a distinct personality. If this is done consistently then your audience will be able to identify your content quickly. (We’ll expand on this later).

Authentic: People like honesty. Even self-deprecating honesty has its place. Anyone who knows anything about writing knows about the ‘hero’s journey’.  The hero has to learn lessons along the way, they have to face their fears and themselves. Often the biggest test is accepting they are flawed and dealing with that.  When brands are honest their target audience generally responds positively. Be honest about your values. Talk about your company’s unique features but also be up-front about the challenges you face and mistakes you’ve made (assuming you’ve done something to rectify those and ensure they don’t happen again).

Relatable: Show you understand who your customers are and what challenges they face. Speak to them in simple language, drop the hype and the jargon. Avoid using industry-specific terms or overly technical language if possible. Plain and simple usually wins the day. 

Consistency: Consistency should not mean boring. Your audience should know what to expect from you (ie. is this in character for the brand) but should still look forward to seeing what you have for them next. 

Aligned: Your brand story should always be aligned with your business goals. Brands that integrate the brand story and values into all areas of business life – including marketing, sales, and all internal and external communications, and who are mindful of how they express the brand at every customer interaction, see more growth in the long run.

Provoke action: Find a suitable place within your own brand story to place your call to action. Nudging your audience to become your customers is why we bother to build any brand presence after all.

How to go about creating Your Brand Story?

Setting out your brand story gives you the foundations for your future marketing strategy.  It can be used as a road map for content, communications, and marketing campaigns. So, how do we create an effective Brand Story?

1: Establish your origin story

 

We mentioned the inception or “origin story” earlier. This is simply the story of where you and your company come from and the events that brought you to the present day. 

But in brand story terms it’s more than simply presenting the facts.  The origin story is an important part of your brand storytelling and should introduce your personal goals, your values and your challenges.

Including your goals, values and mission and honestly presenting challenges make the story much more relatable and ‘human”. 

In the origin story of your company consider:

• Why was it created? 
• Who founded it?
• How was it founded?
• What is the company’s vision? 
• What successes have you had? 
• What challenges have you faced? 

How did you overcome them?

2: Build your hero’s journey

The Hero’s Journey is probably the most popular storytelling templates that you can use for building your brand story. Some writers even claim that every story ever told sits within the framework of the Hero’s story.

 This framework plots an emotional arc which we connect to and that resonates strongly with the audience.

The hero in brand terms is your audience of prospective customers.

 The hero faces a challenge, but your brand has the answer. Your brand becomes the trusted, companion, adviser etc – and you get to show how your solution solved your customers’ problem, and rejoice with them in the final result.

You start writing your hero’s journey by answering the following questions:

• Who is your hero (customer)?
• What are their needs and wants?
• What is the problem they face, and how are they trying to solve it at present?
• How can your brand step in to help them? 
• How would they encounter you?
• What is the solution are you offering?
• What does the resulting transformation and brighter future look like?

3: Think about your brand personality

Once we have the framework we need to think about the way the brand is expressed within the story. This is commonly referred to as the brand personality and tone of voice. 

To be effective a brand personality attributes human characteristics to your brand. The established model is drawn from the work of Carl Jung and the 12 personality types he identified.  A well-defined brand personality can help connect your brand with your customers on a much deeper level.

You can quickly find the Brand Archetypes wheel or framework with a quick Google search to help establish your brand personality. I would however suggest this is best done in conjunction with a brand development professional as this model is not as straightforward to use properly as it may first appear.

The brand archetypes tool can also be used to help identify key personality traits found among your target market but this does require some proper research and insights to be done effectively and I would suggest speaking to an experienced branding professional to do so.

Each archetype has been carefully defined and has an associated set of emotions and motivators. Businesses can pick which archetype most closely matches their company personality and can then. align your brand archetype to the personality embodied by your ideal customers. 

Once the archetype is established you can adopt the ‘personality’ and characteristics within your communications. Knowing your personality and that of the target audience defines the style and language of your messaging. This is commonly called your ‘tone of voice’.

4. Brand Purpose

A brand purpose is usually expressed as one sentence that communicates the value you create in the lives of your customers. It should emanate from your brand story. 

Here are a couple of well-known examples:

• Patagonia: To build the best product, cause no unnecessary harm, and use business to protect nature.
• Dove: To help women everywhere develop a positive relationship with the way they look, helping them realize their full potential.

It can be tricky to pair things back to one sentence of intent but a brand purpose can be a guiding star for future company decisions. Many a company has been kept from scuppering their ship on the rocks in rough seas by following their purpose statement relentlessly to safe harbour.

5. Brand Values

Identify three or four brand values that matter to your company, and specify why they are important.  Try to keep them clear and concise. 

For example:  Adidas: Performance, Passion, Integrity, Diversity

After many years working with brands I now usually ask my clients to take the creation of brand values a step further. Brand values expressed purely as words like the above could be applied to almost any business. In fact they are often simply expressions of doing good business. How many times have you heard people say their values are Honesty, Integrity and Passion? 

The same words crop up time and time again.  I generally ask my clients to think how that word is evident in how they operate. How could they actively prove that a key value is diversity? What does that diversity look like in their business, in their actions and in their decision-making?  How can you demonstrate any stated value in the form of an action that affects how you do what you do?

This simple request takes values from being abstract words that could appear on the reception wall of countless companies to being much more concrete, action-based differentiators of the brand.

It’s a simple request that has often stumped C-suite executives for a while. But in properly considering how their values impact on their business actions they become real values that stand for something.

6: Define your brand story and its purpose

Define your brand story and the messages you want it to convey. This can include the company story and brand narrative you want to build for your audience and what you want it to inspire that audience to do. 

Potential goals to build your story around include revenue growth, organic traffic, increasing followers, or building more awareness of your brand. 

Building a story does not mean manipulating it but it can mean some aspects of your story are emphasised more than others.

A technique some use to help here is to make a two-column list. Column one should be your goals and column two should contain the existing resources you have available to achieve them. Those resources will not be exclusively financial. A popular product that can be leveraged, or a large social-media following that can be mobilised, are resources that can further your brand storytelling goals.

7: Write down your brand story

Now it’s time to write your brand story. With the wealth of information you’ve gathered, you are now ready to write your brand story.

Try to keep it short, between 200 and 300 words. Ensure your brand story answers key questions about your customer’s challenges and needs, why your brand exists, and your brand’s mission. 

Here are a few quick points to consider:

• What is the wider context that your customer operates in?
• What are their key challenges and needs?
• Why does the brand exist? 
• What is its core mission – how do you deliver transformation in your hero’s life/story?
• What is the future you envision for your brand? 
• What unique thing can your company deliver?

As you consider these questions, it’s also helpful to dedicate time to establish your brand’s tone of voice. If you can write your brand story in your brand tone of voice you’ll generally find other messaging starts to flow a lot more freely.

If you are working with a brand professional they may well include all of the above in a brand style guidelines and writing style guidelines document/s. In my experience, such documents can be invaluable to communicate the overall brand to new employees, partner organisations, creative and marketing suppliers – and as a “touchstone” to keep the brand on track.

8: Share and Develop Your Brand Story

Once you have it, share your brand story throughout your entire organisation. The brand story should serve as the narrative for everything your company does and everything it portrays to the world.

The brand story should inform all marketing and public relations campaigns but it should also inform the way you run human resources and manage your teams. The brand storytelling should have an impact both internally and externally. It is a narrative that the brand has to live up to and deliver upon.

You should share your brand story with employees during onboarding, to properly communicate the essence of your brand. Many companies use introduction videos or simple ‘white-board animation’ to do this.

Your brand story should also provide the foundation for your content marketing strategy. Use it as a starting point when creating content plans, producing content, and when you are bringing new writers, designers and content creators into your company or your supply chain for creative services. 

A brand story that is not used in these ways is a waste of time. Your Make brand story needs to be a bedrock for the company and it should to be a “living document” that evolves and develops with your company. No business is ever static. Your business marketplace will alter with new players entering the fray and new technology likely to disrupt things. So it’s best to review the brand story regularly to see if it needs to adapt and to ensure it reflects feedback from your customers. (Collecting effective and insightful customer feedback is a whole other article waiting to be written but I can’t get into that here!)

Final thoughts

Research has proven that most consumers align themselves with brands. They view their purchases and by inference the brands they support, as an extension of their own identities and values. Brands come to represent their ‘tribe’. They want to be part of a community that shares particular ideas and ideals. If they can enter into the narrative of the brand story they quickly feel this connection and affiliation.

Defining your brand story and reinforcing it via brand story marketing presents your ideal customer with an open door through which they can easily enter and become a member of ‘the tribe’.

Your brand will be front and centre of your audience’s mind – and holding that mental real estate is a powerful place to be. Your brand will be first in their consideration – before your competition. 

Your brand story should run throughout your content marketing and messaging to market. Whether traditional advertising, information on your website, a blog, or your social media post, consistency to that brand story, presented via your considered tone of voice, is how you will see results.

Brand storytelling is a primary way to differentiate your brand. It helps you stand out in the market. It establishes an emotional connection with your target audience, and it helps build a solid base of loyal customers. 

It’s time to get your brand story working for you.

Music as a metaphor

It’s a simple metaphor I’ve used to explain how branding works to various people who are struggling to get their heads around it.  Just think about music. (I’ll admit it’s not a perfect metaphor but it does work on most levels)

Drop the R

Drop the R from Brands and you get Bands. And most people I’ve met have a favourite band / recording artist. They understand the subcultures that build around the different styles of music and how that can affect perceptions.

They understand how fans align themselves with certain bands. The bands who they feel speak to them (and for them) become incredibly precious.  People form very strong attachments to the artists they feel particularly aligned with.

Bands become emblems that help to define us. And these are not connections that we hold lightly.

Fans will part with great sums of money to own limited edition releases or a particular item of memorabilia.

Just consider this list:

Kurt Cobain’s MTV Unplugged Guitar: $8,013,000.

John Lennon’s ‘Love Me Do’ Guitar: $3,206,000.

Bob Dylan’s lyrics for ‘Like a Rolling Stone’: $2,725,000

Wu-Tang Clan’s Once Upon a Time in Shaolin Album: $2,672,000

David Gilmour, of Pink Floyd’s, ‘Black Strat’ Guitar: $5,298,000

A test pressing of Elvis’ first single, ‘My Happiness’, went for auction in 2015 and eventually sold for $300,000

Memorabilia sales like these are probably well outside the pocket or even comprehension of most people. But we all witness the outpourings of grief expressed when people like Elvis, John Lennon, Kirk Cobain, Price, Michael Jackson or David Bowie died.

A fan can develop a powerful emotional connection to an artist or group that they have never met. And those associations and band emblems become tribal marks. People will go as far as to have the band logo, lyrics, signatures or faces of their idols tattooed onto them – indelibly stating their affiliation and claiming membership of a particular tribe.

This is not new. The Who or The Jam badges were emblazoned on the parkers of almost every Mod. Their Rocker rivals (who as the name suggests listened to Rock music) would adorn their leather and denim jackets with badges of the likes of Rainbow or Deep Purple or Status Quo.

Music is intrinsically linked to fashion – and both have come to identify different sub-sets of youth culture, with each generation breeding its own fashion style and music icons. Mods, Rockers, Skin-heads, Punks, New Romantics, Baggies, Emo the list goes on and on because each new generation needs something to call their own … and usually in opposition the their parents’ tribe.

Like fans and their favourite music, we can become loyal fans of particular brands. We can align and therefore to some extent, be identified and understood by the brands we align with.

Divisive alignment

The Apple, Android divide is an obvious example I could site. A Rolex serves the same basic function as a swatch. A LandRover performs the same A to B function as a SmartCar – or even a Tesla. But what each brand stand for and the associations built around the brand, that by inference to some degree transfer to their users, are very different. Brands and bands both become part of our self-image and self-identification. It’s worth noting here that we often define who we are (or want to be) by what we are not. This creates an ‘us’ and ‘them’ dynamic. And we intuitively understand what the ‘us’ tribe is, what is does, how it actsand sounds.

When we see our favourite band do something that does not seem to fit within our expectations, we experience jarring and even discomfort. It feels wrong and can upset us.

Just imagine if Iron Maiden made a transcendental, electronic music album. And this same logic extends to brands too.

Even if you don’t understand the nuance of how branding works, you can understand the surprise of meeting a Punk who then pulled out a violin and started playing classical music. (We could argue that Nigel Kennedy built his career on this very juxtaposition). So, if it came to light the senior staff at Greenpeace had investments in oil & gas their members would feel betrayed.

Some artists have tried to switch genres. Generally, it is not successful. Do you recall pop-princess Kylie Minogues’ dalliance with alternative music? (Don’t worry most people don’t).

Her fans were fans of the pure-pop Kylie. They didn’t want this new version. And this tribalism and fairly narrowly defined lanes is pretty normal for most musical artists (once established). But artists are human, and wish to explore different aspects of their personality, and express different things.

And brands can feel restrained and want to expand their offering also.

Some brands are big enough to be able to step into ‘new arenas’ with enough swagger that they can make it work.

Again, if we think of Apple’s early days as a computer manufacturer – we would probably define them at that time as being focused on tech hardware. We might not have expected their move into software and apps and no-one predicted their successful move into streamed music and TV.

I’ve never heard or read anything from any fans or music journalists who foresaw Beyoncé releasing an album that would dominate the country music charts either.

Authenticity

The trick for a successful brand extension seems to be authenticity. The move may feel odd to some but if it’s still essentially in line with what the brand or artist stands for – and is true to their general direction of travel, it can work.

The Sex Pistols (& Punk movement generally) stood for anarchy, and tearing down the established order. Interviewers knew the band members were likely to swear, be offensive and even dismissive. That was their brand – and they delivered on their promise. Their brand position was divisive, it attached those that aligned with the frustration and rigidity of social expectations and repelled those who didn’t view the world in that way.

Anti-conformity informed every aspect from how they spoke in interviews to how they dressed, how they performed and behaved (or misbehaved if you prefer!).

Beyoncés ‘Cowboy Carter’, country music album, appears to come from a genuine place – and fully aligns with her history of wanting to see black artists and people respected and valued in all fields. Even those not usually associated with them.

Like Beyoncés unexpected album, on paper, the idea of sports car manufacturer Porsche producing a 4×4 seemed questionable. Some even suggested it would undermine their brand position. But we can’t deny their success. It was an extension of the brand that people could accept because the core elements of what Porche create and stand for, could be transferred. The aspirational nature of a well-engineered sports car is not too far a stretch to a well-constructed ‘sporty’ 4×4. It’s a logical brand extension.

But could Ozzy Osbourne suddenly release an R&B record? The historic Black Sabbath fans are unlikely to follow him down that road. It’s not a stretch his brand can make. The transfer of our understanding of Ozzy and his musical heritage does not allow us to accept him as an R&B artist.

In the same vein, the public is sceptical when the big oil companies start talking about ecology and green fuels, (the reversal of my Greenpeace example). It’s too different a road and a mental reach too far.

Divisive difference

Music has its genres. Branding has categories. They different words for the same basic act of placing things into boxes so we can understand them more efficiently. We all do it.

We categorise bands in a ‘mental library’ in our heads and we even create complicated subcategories. Oasis and Blur both sat in the ‘Britpop’ section in the record store and so they fit the same category in our minds. But there was also well-documented and long-running animosity between the two giants of brit-pop Some ignored the fact the two bands were feuding – but some fans also took it to heart and they faced a binary choice. One or the other – not both.

Once categorised we know what we expect, we understand the promise that the brand/band makes and we feel secure that it will be delivered. Any movement from that expectation undermines our trust.

Brands like bands can develop and grow – but it generally needs to be a journey that includes their devotees.

Who could have imagined at the hayday of Beatlemania that the mop-topped Fab-Four would become long-haired hippies producing experimental music later in their career? The Beatles ability to change so radically was because their audience was on the same journey and experiencing the same seismic cultural shifts and political upheavals together with them.

David Bowie made a career of reinventing himself. Ziggy, Aladdin Sane, Halloween Jack, The Thin White Duke, The Soul Man. He took on these different characters in order to say and explore different aspects of himself and his art.

One could even argue that Bowie’s brand was not to have a brand.

But his brand was in fact all about that perpetual change and reinvention. Bowie fans expected it – eventually! (Although the initial demise of Ziggy Stardust took both fans and his own bandmates by surprise sum-what).

But Bowies’ characters do help us understand the idea of brand personas. Each persona is unique – and our understanding and expectations of each are different.

As I said at the start of this piece, the brands/bands metaphor is not perfect. (I can’t think of a brand that has embraced near-constant change in the same way Bowie did).

But I do know the music metaphor has helped many people who were struggling to comprehend branding to get a handle on how branding affects all aspects from behaviours to language, aesthetics and even culture.

An effective brand aligns every expression around a set of core values, just like The Sex Pistols, every action and expression flows from a central idea.

We relate to different people in different ways.

How I relate to my best friend is different to how I relate to an old school friend, which is different again to how I relate to someone I only met a few weeks ago.

Why am I stating this universal truth. Because it’s the same for brands – and the people who try to tell you otherwise are hugely oversimplifying.

All of the above could be classed as friends – but there will inevitably be a hierarchy. Which is largely defined by shared experiences – about knowing who they are – and how they behave, shared connections, affection and trust.

Our best friends generally become best friends because we have similar values, similar interests and because of what we have been through together – shared experiences.

There is a verse in the Arctic Monkeys song A Certain Romance that states that basic premise:

“But over there, there’s friends of mine

What can I say? I’ve known ’em for a long long time

And they might overstep the line

But you just cannot get angry in the same way

No, not in the same way”

Forgiveness

This type of forgiveness and goodwill is seen in most established relationships – and it translates to our brand relationships too.

If a company that has been a personal favourite for a while oversteps the line, then we just don’t get angry, or judge them, in the same way.

If a politician behaves badly our eire is tempered more if they belong to the party we support – but if our political foes make the same error we become enraged. Double standards: definitely. But also typical human behaviour.

We characteristically seek to understand and to forgive more, when we are committed to a relationship. (And usually, the longevity of that relationship is a key factor).

In branding terms this has been summed up in the much used: Know, Like & Trust.

If someone enters our extended friendship group, but whom we don’t particularly like personally, then it’s unlikely we will ever become more than casual acquaintances, even over many years of moving in the same circles. If we do like them but they repeatedly prove they can’t be trusted then eventually we’ll draw back and keep them at a distance.

Don’t push me coz I’m close to the edge

Once or twice we might forgive them. If the indiscretion is something we perceive as ‘pretty minor’ we’ll tolerate them for a while. But eventually, consistent breaking of trust, even for minor things, will mean we simply stop wanting to be around them or associated with them.

That one friend who always drinks too much, shoots their mouth off, gets you into trouble and dodgy situations … if they are a lifelong buddy then we have more patience and will tolerate more – but there is a limit to that patience.

We also tend to cut people more slack when we know what other pressures are going on in their life. The friend whose parent or partner is terminally ill will not generally receive the same level of judgement from us that they might expect otherwise. We recognise that circumstances may alter their normal behaviour. But if we are also experiencing unusual pressures, then two stressed parties interacting do tend to create a very tense environment and in time something will snap.

Again, this translates directly to brand relations. If there are external pressures affecting the relationship a previously forgivable misstep can suddenly create a huge chasm and disconnection.

So what advice can I give to help brands in this regard? (I’m not going to presume to offer any relationship advice – there are relationship counsellors out there if you need them, who are far more qualified to offer thought on that subject!)

In brand management terms:

1. Stay true to who you are.

Trying to be something other than yourself is a mask that will very swiftly slip when times are tough. Difficult times have a habit of showing us who we really are and exposing the truth.

There is an urban myth about a female deep-cover spy in the Second World War being uncovered when in childbirth she swore in her mother tongue. It’s a nice story but I’ve found no evidence to support it.

However, it is based on the insight that it’s incredibly difficult to live behind a facade continuously – it’s far better to “keep it real”.

As author Anne Morrow Lindbergh is often quoted as saying:

“The most exhausting thing you can do is the be inauthentic”

2. Be consistent

This is a key factor in brand building.

If your friend was so erratic that you had no idea what they would do or say next it might be amusing for a short time but it does not lay the foundations for a mutually beneficial friendship. You will always be on edge.

A brand that shows up in the same way and stands for the same stuff, saying the same things – is a brand that people can align with in confidence.

Angela Ahrendts of Apple Inc (who knew a few things about brand building) stated it thus:

“You have to create a consistent brand experience however and wherever a customer touches your brand, online or offline”.

3. Be honest

Honesty really is the best policy. If a brand does make a misstep then owning up, speaking up and fronting up quickly is the best possible plan of action.

When things go bad, history has proven that the best thing for a brand is to acknowledge the problem and then clearly state what they are doing to rectify the situation. There’s even evidence that in doing and following through on their promises, a company can even strengthen brand loyalty.

I’m going to quote three people this time:

“In crisis management, be quick with the facts and slow with the blame.”

 Leonard Saffir, Public relations executive

“In a crisis, don’t hide behind anything or anybody. They’re going to find you anyway.”

Bear Bryant, former Alabama football coach

“When written in Chinese, the word ‘crisis’ is composed of two characters. One represents danger and the other represents opportunity.

John F. Kennedy, 35th U.S. president.

Summing up

Relationships are massively important to all of us. In many ways, they help define us and nurture us. There is immense power in relationships – we all recognise that fact and seek out different people to fulfil different roles in our lives.

Our brand relationships are the same. Different brands fulfil different roles for us. For a brand to become a much-loved lifelong companion it has to understand what role it fulfils for its band of loyal followers – and then be the very best version of that it can be. If you represent a brand, be it a business or personal brand, then you consider what type of friend you are, what role you fulfil, how your connections relate to your brand, and why is worth revisiting regularly.

We all know The Wizard of Oz movie, even if we’ve not actually watched it, it holds such a huge place in our collective cultural history, that we all feel like we have.

But what has The Wizard of Oz got to do with business branding? Bear with me and I hope it all becomes clear.

The movie starts with a tornado ripping through the world Dorothy knows. I don’t think it’s hard for anyone in business to draw a parallel with the last few years of Covid, Brexit and the ‘Truss/Kwarteng mini-budget’ as the perfect storm … a tornado, destroying much of what we knew of the business and economic landscape.

After the tornado, Dorothy finds herself in a strange world where being true to herself and consistently forging towards her end goal are ultimately the route to her salvation.

Like Dorothy, following her path (her yellow brick road) businesses need to be consistent in the pursuit of their goal and in their direction of travel. For each of us, that means being true to our brand and staying firmly to the path set by those brand values.

A good brand strategy defines that direction of travel, uncovers your values and illuminates your ultimate goals. It’s the mapped-out plan from where you are to where you want to be. Your yellow brick road.

Being true to your brand values and guiding principles when the going gets difficult can feel like we are battling Wicked Witches and strange flying monkeys hell-bent on diverting us from our true path. But if we can stay on the path – and stay true to ourselves, then we attract the right travelling companions along the way.

And like Dorothy’s companions on the road to Oz – a company’s brand journey needs a considerable amount of courage, a great deal of heart and a substantial amount of brain power to make it all work.

How we behave in business matters.

How we treat and engage with the people we encounter (be they suppliers, collaborators or clients) all speaks to who we are – our core brand!

How we act, how we engage, how we do things, how we look, what we say – these are the messages we send out into the world that reflect who we are. They define your brand.

What signals are you sending out in how you portray your business and how you actually do business?

Every time you post to your socials? How you choose to dress? The way you treat your waiter at a business lunch? Everything we do or say, every action we take (or choose not to take) reveals something about us, the things that matter to us, and the values we hold.

Collectively these signals tell people around us who we really are and give them an insight into what they can expect of us.

Your logo, your website, the language you use, how swiftly (or not) you respond to emails and even how your receptionist answers the phone are all signposts your business puts out into the world – all combine to create a ‘perception’ in people’s minds.

The same thread of brand expression should run through every interaction people have with your company. Like the words in a stick of Brighton Rock – wherever you bite into the rock you get the same experience. Brighton Rock is consistent, each mouthful delivers the same… It always says Brighton and every bite delivers a week’s worth of sugar whilst nearly breaking your teeth!

People like to know what they are going to get. People like consistency. It’s how Coke and McDonald’s have built their huge empires. The world over, if you buy a Coke or a Big Mac you know exactly what you are going to get. That familiarity and consistency is the key. We can rely on it.

Every contact and interaction with your company feeds additional information into the mind of your customers about you and about the product or service you offer. Every interaction feeds another detail to the perception people hold of you and therefore each interaction needs to be both considered and consistent.

If you want to take control of public perceptions and mould how your clients view you, then you need to be actively engaged in brand management. Your brand is the sum total of the various signposts your customers encounter – and what those signposts point towards. It frames what people think about your company and what you do.

This should be a true reflection of who you really are. Otherwise, it is a false sign – like a mask. And once the mask slips, like Dorothy seeing behind the curtain – people swiftly realise that the Wizard of Oz is not so really wizardly after all.

And once you lose their trust it’s practically impossible to win back.

We’re all fully aware that the movies are full of illusions. After all, Judy Garland was 16 playing a 12 year old in a land inhabited by munchkins, witches, flying monkeys, living scarecrows, tin-men and talking lions. But effective branding can not be built on illusion or fantasy.

Drop the illusions

Brands need to be real. Your branding activity should aim to build awareness, affinity and belief. Or as it’s more commonly stated in business circles to illicit: know, like and trust.

All brand activity is ultimately aiming to deliver greater trust. Breaking that trust is like throwing cold water on a fire.

And here my Wizard of Oz analogy breaks down a little. Dorothy’s cold water, thrown to extinguish the burning scarecrow (that the Wicked Witch had just set alight) splashes onto the witch and melts her. (I’ve no idea why, if water was so fatal to witches, she would allow a bucket of water to be anywhere near her person – but hey, it’s a fantasy land).

Dorothy ultimately triumphs by staying true to who she is. ‘There’s no place like home’ in a business sense is much like Dorothy’s journey. We have to take the journey, we grow in the process but actually, the things that make us who we are – our authentic selves and core values are constant. They were there at the start of the journey – we just didn’t quite know how to use and express them fully.

We usually need others on the journey to help uncover those values and to keep us true to them. Anyone who knows anything about classic storytelling knows that through the ‘hero’s journey’ they discover their true selves. What makes them who they are will be honed and amplified in the process.

If you don’t have a clear brand strategy. If you are not clear about what you stand for and how you wish to present that to the world, then you are likely sending out mixed messages. and confusing – or even repelling – your target audience.

We all need a brain, a heart and courage on the journey.

In Oz they symbolise what makes us human – intellect, emotion and action. Spend some time thinking about your end goals. Muster some courage because most of our business journeys will encounter some trials and tribulations along the way. Take heart and allow humanity and empathy to inform your decisions. We are not robots (or tinmen).

Building your brand strategy we help you travel to your destination with integrity and authenticity and you’ll most likely defeat your foes along the way without having to do anything more than a little fire-fighting.

 

Every business wants the marketing and communications items they produce to deliver results. But we all know that most of the items we receive may get a few seconds of our attention, at best, before they are cast aside.

Marketers and designers get blamed when returns are not at the expected and projected levels. But I’d suggest it’s a tad more complex a scenario than it first appears.

Generating communication items that create a good ROI is never simple. It’s all about those first seconds – capturing attention, raising interest and instilling a feeling that is strong enough to stop your audience from instantly discarding your email, newsletter, brochure etc. into the trash. Making it past the instant edit of their ‘opening the mail’ routine is key.

Creating items that people keep to hand is a challenge for every marketeer or designer. 

Let me share a couple of real life examples.

I had a business contact comment on my business card last week: “It’s always on the top of the pile on my desk… it’s still the best business card I’ve seen in ages.”

This week we met for a 1-2-1 and I asked if I could quote him – just so you could know you can be sure this is genuine and not a fabrication (which I would never do anyway), the above quote comes from Scott Willis of CFO Hub. Thanks for the encouragement and for allowing me to quote you Scott.

Now, I have no illusions about the fact that at least 80% of the communication pieces I create, for myself or for my clients, are destined to end up in the trash pretty swiftly. Either physically thrown into the waste paper/recycling bin or moved into the electronic bin icon on a computer screen.

The big challenge for any business (and particularly the design and marketing teams) is to ensure that the items they send achieve their aims before they hit the trash.

Or, better still, that they are kept around for as long as possible to give a greater chance of the right people seeing, and engaging before they are cast aside.

How can you achieve that elusive ask?

There are 3 recognised ways.

1. Make the item useful

2. Make it aesthetically pleasing

3. Make it relevant to the customers’ needs

… and ideally, it should be all three.

Please note, I didn’t say to make it beautiful. We all know beauty is in the eye of the beholder – but intrigue or unusual design can be more engaging and deliver better results than following the established conventions and traditions that are commonly regarded as ‘beautiful’.  Different and interesting will trump beautiful but boring most of the time.

Be different

Scott evidently finds my business card unusual or intriguing enough to keep it around. That’s partly because I designed it specifically to achieve that end. It was purposefully designed to be different – to stand out from the crowd. To grab attention and to be remembered.  I’m often told that people remember my card.

For a start it’s square – not the usual oblong business card shape and size. Therefore it doesn’t fit the various filling systems people use to store the cards they collect.

But Scott is only in his early 30s and firmly fits into the digital native generation. Like most of us he probably just adds his connections directly into a CRM system or connects with them directly via LinkedIn. (I have another electronic card that makes that process super streamlined but I won’t get into that here).

But I’d like to think there is more to Scott keeping my card than it simply not fitting his chosen storage system. That there is ‘that indefinable something’ that means he hasn’t simply cast my card into the bin. Maybe, it is because he wanted to book that 1-2-1 meeting and the card acted and he kept it to hand as a visual reminder? The actual reason it is still on top of the pile of cards on his desk is not as important as the fact that it is still there!

Whatever the reason (for him) the intent behind the design worked. Maybe it was the design itself – or maybe it was the spot varnish on the face of the card highlighting the stylised S2 text that forms our logo. Maybe he just liked the colour.

The fact is that the totality of the card design meant he kept it to hand. When sat at his desk he has a constant reminder of S2 design and of me personally. So the desired action was achieved.

Good brand design is all about getting noticed. Being recognised, respected and remembered.

I tried to embody that thinking within the approach and design of my cards. Modelling tangibly the strategies I promote to my clients. Strategy and an understanding of human psychology are two of the most vastly underrated aspects of any good branding exercise.

Unfortunately, lots of companies concentrate their efforts on the aesthetics of their marketing output and not its actual impact. Useful and relevant are arguably more important to your target audience than how good it looks.

Now that might seem a strange thing to say as a designer, but it’s true.

It’s not an excuse not to make things look good and user-friendly – but I’m sure we all have things in our houses and in our offices that we keep around simply because they are useful. They serve a purpose and that purpose is more valuable to use than how they look.

After all, my office filing cabinet is not particularly good looking – but it’s useful and the service it offers me is relevant to my daily needs. The same goes for my stapler or the case for my glasses.

However, design can be a huge aspect of why transient items of communications and marketing do make it beyond our initial ‘edit’.

So, what other items can I tell you about that I know have held some ‘keepsake’ appeal?

When I was looking for my first full-time job after completing my degree, I created a CV that I know won me more than one interview opportunity simply because of its design and construction.

I graduated in the early 90s when we still trawled our large portfolios around to physically visit the creative directors of agencies in their offices. We also still used the Royal Mail to send out the letters and CVs that we used to secure those interview opportunities.

My CV wascreated to be get itself noticed from the piles of other CVs arriving at those agencies – and was specifically designed to immediately capture attention as soon as the envelope was opened.

When removed from its envelope my CV would quite violently ‘pop-up’ into a self-constructing pyramid. The mechanism was triggered by an internal rubber band which was held in its ‘primed’ state by the tension of the envelope. The envelope itself was an unusual corrugated card design, which suggested psychologically that what was inside was unusual, that it was valued and that I had invested in this opportunity to present the contents to the agency.

Once ‘popped’ the resulting pyramid was about 17cm tall, and the different faces of the pyramid held the usual details found on any CV.

I know that some recipients kept it simply because of its novelty factor. Some kept it, they later told me, to figure out how I’d made it.

One recipient specifically called me to tell me it ‘nearly took his eye-out’ – bouncing off his glasses. But he called to talk to me even though he was not hiring at the time.

I also know that CV lived on the desk of my boss (at the first job that I did land) for a few months. I also know it was retrieved from his bin on at least one occasion because he couldn’t figure out how to collapse it and ‘it took up too much room in the bin’! Not the reason I expected it to be retained but I wonder if the same thing happened at other places I’d sent it? I do know that I got call-backs well after I’d secured that first job and well beyond the period you’d expect a normal CV to generate calls.

A few years, and two jobs later, I was working at a small agency in West London.

I was commissioned to create a ‘coffee table item’ to promote all the arts and cultural events throughout the coming year scheduled to take place in the borough of Kensington & Chelsea. From the Royal Opera to Notting Hill Carnival and a myriad of about 60 other events from poetry readings to ballet.

The final items created were an A4 booklet accompanied by a website and an online calendar of events. The graphic styling was very adventurous for a local council and the paper stock used was unusual, the layout was both modern and bold – but also allowed for the individual events to retain a sense of individualism. Our client loved it and it still remains one of my own personal favourite pieces of work.

But more than that, it did what it needed to do. It was useful to the intended audience and it was striking enough to hold its place on the coffee tables of the Kensington and Chelsea residents throughout the year of events it covered. And beyond!

I know this for a fact because I happened to show it as a sample to a potential client of a few years later and they instantly responded with “Wow, you did that. We had that in our house for ages. Always wondered you’d designed it. I think we only threw it out recently when our toddler spilt his juice on it and ruined it.” (I’m paraphrasing as I don’t recall their exact words)

I’m not telling you these stories simply to take a walk down memory lane – nor to brag. One example pulled from every decade I’ve been working is hardly an extensive or impressive list.

But with these stories, I do want to challenge everyone involved in devising communications, be it marketing or purely an information piece, to think a lot more about what they are doing – and to consider how they present their items a little more strategically.

How will that next piece of communication get noticed? How will it stand out from the plethora of items we each get bombarded with daily? Apparently, the average person in the Western world sees between 4,000 and 10,000 advertising messages every day! Getting noticed, commanding your audience’s attention, capturing their interest beyond the instant toss into the trash and earning the right to engage them a little further… this is precisely what all our communications efforts are aiming for.

After all, if you don’t have their attention, you won’t have their business.  

Good communications items, and good marketing, are created through a union of great copywriting married to great design – these are the foundation stones needed to get yourself noticed.

Once noticed you have a chance to communicate a little more. If the design and copywriting do their job you start to engage your audience enough to grant you a few seconds of their time – and in that time and ‘attention transaction’, you get an opportunity to plant your flag in the mind of your audience.

If you can claim that ‘mental real-estate’ in their minds as the go-to company for your service then you have achieved what 95% of businesses fail to do. And once you have claimed that mental real estate it’s far easier to defend it than it was to claim in the first place.

Getting noticed in our busy world is arguably getting harder. I’ve not even talked about the specifics of social media in this post – but the core principles are the same.

Make an impact – get noticed, be seen. No one wants to be invisible.