Brand storytelling is an increasingly popular approach to marketing that taps into the foundational human need to connect with others through story. It’s a method that centers your customer as the main character in the narrative, not your brand or your product. When you share relatable stories about life experiences that matter to your audience, you create strong emotional connections with your ideal customers.
Those connections build brand awareness, keep attention on your marketing channels, and establish trust. Not everyone agrees on the best approach to brand storytelling, but everyone knows it matters. Let’s examine why brand storytelling is so important, look at examples of best practices, and explore some ideas for getting started. But first, let’s agree on a clear brand storytelling definition.
A brand story is a narrative that brings your brand to life It tells the origin of your company, communicates your values and mission, and connects emotionally with your target audience An effective brand story is authentic, engaging, and helps build trust between you and your customers. In today’s crowded marketplace, developing a compelling brand story is a must if you want to stand out from the competition.
In this comprehensive guide, we’ll dive into what a brand story is, why you need one, and provide actionable tips and examples to help you craft your own
What Exactly is a Brand Story?
A brand story recounts the origins of your company, why it exists, what motivates it, and where it’s headed. It adds personality and emotion to your brand, moving beyond facts and figures.
Your brand story should highlight:
- Founding: How, when, where, and why you started your company
- Purpose: Your brand’s vision, mission, and values
- Culture: Your brand’s personality and voice
- Offerings: Your products, services, and customer experience
Ultimately an effective brand story speaks to your target audience in an authentic way. It answers the question – why should I care about your brand?
Brand stories accomplish this by framing your company around characters, plot lines, challenges, motivations, and resolutions. Even though brand stories use storytelling elements, they remain factually accurate. The goal is to turn your company history into a compelling narrative.
Why You Need a Brand Story
In today’s oversaturated market, brands need an edge to stand out from the crowd. An authentic and engaging brand story provides that edge in the following ways:
1. Builds an emotional connection with customerss are wired for storytelling. When customers connect with your origin story, they view your brand as more humanized, relatable, and trustworthy. This emotional bond fosters brand loyalty and advocacy.
2. Differentiates your brand
Your brand story showcases what makes your company special. It’s your chance to define your brand on your own terms and highlight your unique mission and values.
3. Improves brand awareness
Brand stories spread organically. When crafted well, they’re highly shareable on social media and word-of-mouth networks. This increases your brand visibility and exposure.
4. Attracts top talent
Today’s professionals want to work for companies with a compelling mission and values. Your brand story highlights your company culture and helps attract talent.
5. Drives sales
Consumers today factor in a brand’s story when making purchasing decisions. Your story can tip the scales for customers on the fence between you and a competitor.
Clearly, brand stories confer major advantages in today’s crowded marketplace. Let’s look at some tips and examples to help you craft your own.
How to Write Your Brand Story: Tips and Examples
Writing your brand story takes thought, reflection, and good old-fashioned storytelling. Follow these tips to develop a compelling narrative that connects with your audience:
Start by defining your target audience
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Who are they? Paint a detailed picture – age, gender, location, values, pain points, etc.
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Tailor your story messaging and tone specifically to resonate with them.
Identify your brand pillars
Your brand pillars – mission, values, personality – provide content and direction for your story. Make sure they are well-defined before writing your narrative.
Follow a story framework
Use a framework like the hero’s journey or Freytag’s pyramid to structure your story with a beginning, middle, and end. This format makes your story more engaging.
Focus on authenticity
Share real founder stories, challenges you’ve overcome, major milestones. This authenticity builds trust with your audience.
Spotlight your purpose
Emphasize how your company makes a positive difference in people’s lives. This provides meaning to your story.
Keep it simple
Avoid buzzwords and business jargon. Use conversational language to make your story accessible and human.
Add vivid details
Pepper in specific anecdotes, images, and emotions at key moments to make your story memorable.
Share customer stories
Case studies and testimonials that showcase how you’ve impacted customers add authenticity and emotion.
Define the brand personality
Use description, imagery, and distinct voice to highlight your brand’s personality. Consistency is key.
End on a forward-looking note
Conclude by painting an aspirational picture of your brand’s future based on current momentum.
Let’s look at some stellar examples of brand stories:
TOMS
TOMS founder Blake Mycoskie built his brand on the promise of one-for-one giving – for every pair of TOMS shoes purchased, the company donates a pair to someone in need.
TOMS brand story highlights Mycoskie’s 2006 trip to Argentina where he witnessed poverty and children without shoes – the inspiration behind his social mission. It recounts TOMS’ humble beginnings starting at Mycoskie’s apartment.
The story ends by emphasizing that 15 years later, TOMS has given over 100 million pairs of shoes to children in need across the world. TOMS brand story seamlessly integrates the founder’s personal motivations, the brand’s humble origin, social mission, and impact.
Mailchimp
Mailchimp’s About Us page leads with a brilliant opening line: “Mailchimp was made for the rest of us.”
The story outlines the company’s founding in 2001 by Ben Chestnut and Dan Kurzius who were frustrated by expensive, clunky email marketing tools. Mailchimp was created to empower small businesses with an easy, affordable email marketing solution.
Fun facts about early growth struggles and quirky office pranks infuse Mailchimp’s brand story with humor and humanity. It highlights that Mailchimp cares about small business success over profits.
Patagonia
Outdoor apparel company Patagonia centers its brand story on environmental conservation and corporate sustainability.
The story highlights how founder Yvon Chouinard taught himself to blacksmith as a young man so he could craft his own climbing gear to fund outdoor adventures. This passion later evolved into Patagonia.
Today, Patagonia donates 1% of sales to environmental groups and pursues eco-friendly manufacturing processes. The story celebrates Patagonia’s evolution while emphasizing its consistent environmental mission.
The common ingredient in all these success stories? They highlight the brand’s purpose, personality, and impact in an authentic, emotional, and compelling narrative.
Now it’s your turn. Use these tips and examples as inspiration to craft your own brand story. Focus on making it relatable and human.
An engaging brand story serves as the foundation to convey who you are across channels – website, product packaging, social media, advertising. It’s worth investing the time to get it right.
When crafted thoughtfully, your brand story has the power to build an emotional bond with customers and elevate your company to new heights. Get out there and start writing your brand’s next chapter!
How to use brand storytelling in marketing
Incorporating brand storytelling into your marketing mix takes time and practice. It will help if you have brand guidelines so that no matter who’s telling your story, they’re conveying it consistently. Here are a few other things to keep in mind when you’re using brand storytelling as part of your marketing strategy.
Why is brand storytelling important?
As with many things in life, people are more likely to connect to something on an emotional level. Sometimes, they can’t even explain why. Perhaps it reminds them of something from their childhood. Or, maybe there’s a positive resolution to a challenge they struggle with. It’s this emotional connection that creates bonds.
When it comes to brand storytelling, you want your brand identity, design, and content to create consistent, positive brand associations. And it’s the marketing team’s job to develop a strategy to do this.
But first, marketers need to understand their audience: what they want, what they need, and what keeps them up at night. Tapping into customer data to establish this understanding will help marketers create brand stories and positive experiences that resonate with their audience instead of just trying to make a sale. A marketing strategy that’s based around compelling stories and customer experiences is more likely to build and maintain strong brand loyalty over time.
Some brands have a meaningful story embedded in their company and product DNA (e.g., TOMS shoes) and some have to come up with a creative story that makes their product meaningful (e.g., most enterprise SaaS companies). From Warby Parker to Nike, here are some examples of some of the world’s best brand storytellers.
Warby Parker transformed the eyeglass industry when they made designer eyewear affordable, better for the environment, and easy to try on at home. Their brand comes from a great story, too. One of their founders spent the first semester of grad school without eyeglasses because he lost his on a backpacking trip and they were too expensive to replace. He and his team decided to fix that problem and do it in a sustainable manner.
And recognizing that eyeglasses aren’t available to everyone — 1 billion people around the world need glasses and don’t have access to them — Warby Parker established the Buy a Pair, Give a Pair program. For every pair of Warby Parker glasses purchased, another is distributed to an individual in need. Warby Parker designed their brand with a meaningful story as a foundation and they use their channels, like Instagram and YouTube, to connect with the pop culture of the moment.
Airbnb is a marketplace, so the product itself isn’t worth telling a story about. Their audience doesn’t want to hear about the technology and filters that help them find places to stay; they want to hear stories about the experience of staying somewhere new. They want to know about the people they’re staying with. They want to know about the homes, the countries, and the experiences Airbnb’s brand makes possible.
No one can tell those stories better than hosts and travelers. On their YouTube channel (with over 646,000 subscribers) you can see what Airbnb is like in different countries, learn from superhosts, and get useful guest tips.
Burt’s Bees started with a serendipitous hitchhiking encounter that led to the creation of one of the most well-known natural skincare brands in the world. The first product to hit it big was their lip balm made with beeswax, which is now found at just about every drugstore.
Burt’s Bees does an incredible job of telling their story on their website. They share their history in a visually appealing way that any brand can learn from, and their core values are prominently displayed. Everything from their ry to their taglines match up with their brand story. With a solid brand identity established, they’ve built a strong foundation for some brilliant brand storytelling.
Over the years, Burt’s Bees has remained committed to conservation and projects that open access to green spaces and steward the land. Since its inception, the Burt’s Bees Foundation has issued $5 million toward this mission. They’re a great example of a brand with a solid identity that considers brand storytelling in everything that they do.
Nike established itself in people’s minds with great storytelling in the 1990s. At a time when commercials were pushing a hard sell (because TV airtime was expensive), Nike let Michael Jordan’s story speak for itself. “Just Do It” and the swoosh appear at the end, and that’s all the space their brand took up. The story made an emotional connection between the fans and the athlete — Nike itself was a tiny part of the exchange.
Fast-forward to today and Nike uses Instagram to share engaging videos and photos that inspire. Many of the stories you find on Nike’s social channels don’t push products directly. They inform, excite, and solve problems. This kind of brand storytelling connects with athletes and builds brand awareness and loyalty over time.
You might not ever have Nike’s $4.1 billion marketing budget,but you can learn from them and start to reach for the substance of their storytelling.
What’s your brand story? | Jeff Freedman | TEDxBeaconStreet
What is brand storytelling?
But it’s not just about telling random stories; it’s about the craft of weaving narratives that resonate with your audience and help your business grow. This is the art of brand storytelling.
What is a brand story?
A brand story recounts the series of events that sparked your company’s inception and expresses how that narrative still drives your mission today. Just like your favorite books and movies characters, if you can craft a compelling brand story, your audience will remember who you are, develop empathy for you, and, ultimately, care about you.
How do you create a brand story?
Make sure your brand, story, and mission reflects through your behaviors and customer touchpoints. Plan the structure of your brand story. This helps you create a cohesive picture of your business and keep your audience engaged.
Why should a brand tell a story?
Stories evoke empathy and make us feel more connected with other people. Compelling brand stories build trust, increase customer loyalty, and inspire engagement. Today’s customers are interested in what your business stands for, not just the services you offer or the quality of your products. That’s why every brand needs to tell its story.
