Making storytelling part of your brand and marketing strategies can help you acquire what’s becoming the world’s upcoming most expensive commodity : human attention. Nakedi Phala takes you through a discussion on why storytelling as a marketing tactics is the way to go :
Brand’s can’t afford to create passive content that is strictly business. Brands need to dive into their emotions and interact with them at an extensive level like never before. That’s where storytelling comes in – you need brand facts wrapped together with thought-provoking tales to capture the audience’s attention.
The days where brand storytelling was just a nice-to-have; now it’s a must have in order to improve brand engagement.
We all love good storytelling and we are going to dissect points that will be beneficial for your next brand storytelling campaign.
- It will make your brand stand out
Brand storytelling is a great way to make you stand out from the rest, as no brand or organization was established the same way as their competitor. All brands out there have a unique story to tell, and using your story will establish your brand.
Let’s take coca-cola for example. Their establishment didn’t have anything to do with selling soft drinks beverages, but rather, the drink was a medicine to help soothe pain, cure morphine addiction and indigestion.
How many years has it been ? 154 years! And the story still strikes interest amongst Coca-Cola consumers. The brand’s marketers around the globe still use this story to sell the brand. While they might switch between the story angles every now and then, they might switch between the story angles every now and then, they always keep the main story line the same.
Every brand has a story to tell. So why don’t you share your story as part of your marketing strategy, it will add a unique element to your brand.
- It will add a human element
By using storytelling as part of your brand will give your brand some Soul, a good dose of human characteristics.
Humans tell effective stories that inspire and drive societal change. It essentially shows people that you care and that you are aware of the things happening around the world, other than the brand itself.
Bridgestone South Africa, a tyre brand, created an ad that tells a story that has nothing to do with tyres. It tells a story about South Africa runner Caster Semenya’s journey.
In this regard, Bridgestone South Africa put aside all business elements, such as promotion and sales, and instead focused on telling a touching human story.
It’s not always the case that a brand should tell it’s own stories; sometimes sharing other’s stories can build a more positive brand perception than your own would.
- It will help you find your brand’s narrative
Your brand’s views on matters related to social, political and diversity can make it into a powerhouse brand. Nike recently ran a campaign in support of #blacklivesmatters, which was endorsed by another big brand adidas. This campaign received more than 1 400 comments, close to 80 000 retweets, just over 230 000 likes and nearly 80 million views on twitter.
With this it shows that some brand’s have chosen a narrative that they believe in, and show their support through content, by creating exemplary stories as part of their marketing campaigns.
A narrative helps a brand distinguish its identity amongst other brands and consumers will choose it based on the brand’s openness on their beliefs, values and vision.
What does all this mean though ?
This implies that brands, narrative strive to create brand content that is meaningful to its consumers before it refers to itself. Storytelling has the power to attract a bigger audience to your brand’s story and spark discussions and engagement.
Storytelling content is easy for audience to remember as it provides context and gives them something more than just facts.
