People don’t buy your ideas or products. People buy into how your product or ideas make them feel. Marketing your brand on the facts alone will never work. You need to open their eyes and change how people not only feel, but how they think. How does your brand improve the quality of their life? You need a brand story.
One of my favorite brand storytellers is Bernadette Jiwa. She says every product, service, and innovation has two elements, the cookie and the fortune. The cookie is the service listed on your website. It’s the window shopping element of your brand. The fortune is the thing that changes how people feel. The thing that moves them to act. It’s your vision, your values, it’s your brand story.
We all know fortune cookies kind of suck. But we still get them because we all love to read our fortunes and maybe learn a Chinese word or two. Too many companies make the mistake of selling the cookie when they should sell the fortune. When you tell your brand story you are telling how businesses tap into the essence of their ideas, uncover their unique abilities and show the value they bring to the world.
The most successful brands in the world do this by building communities, forming life-long relationships with their customers. Iconic brands such as Disney and Coca-Cola have realized the power of their brand story in building connections with their audiences for years. With these relationships, they position themselves as your best friend or favorite relative. With storytelling and engagement, these brands continue to succeed.
Your goal should be to make a connection from the first time your customer sees your logo, visits your Facebook page or reads your blog. A great brand story will make you stand out, increase brand awareness, create customer loyalty and profits. You’re fighting to do more than change what people think, but how they act, and how they feel.
Stories build trust.
At first, I was terrified to put anything I wrote out into the world. My grammar and sentence structure was embarrassing. I struggled to cobble together a 500-word blog post. But I started small, writing my own personal blog. I wrote every day until, magically, I got better and better. Now I regularly write for multiple businesses.
This is part of my brand story. Telling people my struggle of learning how to write makes people trust that I have put in the hard work to become who I am today. Telling your brand story builds trust by sharing authenticity and building a relationship with your customers.
Stories make customers act.
The cosmetics company Lush believes in “making effective products from fresh organic fruits and vegetables,” and in “happy people making happy soap.” They have a commitment to natural and organic ingredients. A great brand story, like that of Lush, makes customers take action.
Whether it’s to make a purchase or share a picture of their bath bombs, a well-told story makes a connection that customers won’t forget. Lush use’s their story to move customers to action by appealing to their minds and their hearts.
Stories make customers care.
It’s difficult to imagine a better branding success than Apple. Founded by two college dropouts who borrowed the money to build their first computers in a garage. Apple is one of the most recognized and respected brands in the world.
You won’t find customers of a brand that care about every single move a company makes than the customers of Apple. When you create a story around your brand, you give people something to care about.
If you don’t have a story, then you’re just another commodity. You have no way of differentiating yourself from the crowd. Creating a story is about providing something that people care about. It’s about forming a relationship built on trust. It’s about creating loyal and lifelong customers that actively want your brand to succeed and thrive. So let’s build your brand story today.
