whats-a-brand-story-and-why-does-your-business-needs-it

What’s a Brand Story and Why Does Your Business Need It

Modern marketing tells a story. Whether it’s a story about price, customer service, or a more human tale, trends in advertising for the last few years have leaned heavily on storytelling.

The effectiveness of these campaigns is often based on your storytelling abilities. Here, we’re going to dissect the idea of a brand story. We’ll describe them, provide you with some examples, and explain why your business needs one.

So let’s get started!

What Is a Brand Story? Why Should You Use One?

Storytelling is a powerful way to breathe life into your brand, and it should be a constant in any marketing plan. It’s every bit as critical as a quality logo and concise mission statement. Perhaps even more so!

While there are other types of stories to be told in marketing, the goal of a brand story is to give your entire brand a colorful background and relatable meaning. A great brand story provides an artistic backdrop for consumers when considering your products. By crafting and promoting a great brand story, you’ll endear your brand to customers for the long haul.

Marketers must know that:

  • A narrative is building around your brand already, with or without your interference.
  • A brand story can be positive or negative, and its connotations can survive for years!
  • By giving your products and services an identity, and by capturing and sharing the stories, you bring your audience on a memorable journey.
  • For consumers to form a personal connection with your brand, company stories must be authentic, creative, and inspirational.

All those points are well and good, but a bit vague. Let’s look a bit closer.

What Makes a Great Brand Story?

A brand story doesn’t need to be precisely factual. The best ones will:

  • Motivate people, both inside and outside your organization
  • Illustrate what your brand stands for
  • Include an introduction, a crisis, and a resolution
  • Be relatable to your target market
  • And help your organization identify the ideal customer

Equally important is the excess advertising noise that doesn’t belong in your brand story. Consider these things to avoid:

  • The number of years you’ve been in business
  • Your internal sales goals
  • A sales pitch
  • Blatant product advertisement
  • Price information or value comparisons

These “dos and don’ts” give us some excellent parameters, but little inspiration. Let’s consider some outstanding examples to get those creative juices flowing!

Brand Story Examples We Love

creative-brand-stories-for-marketers

The Honey Bunches of Oats Lady

Post cereal has used the human tales of a real employee, Diana Hunter, on and off since 2002 to explore a positive brand narrative for Honey Bunches of Oats. Throughout various campaigns, Hunter has described her workday and laughed about smelling like the factory while grocery shopping.

In a very human way, she’s made rhymes and entertained us without ever mentioning the price, serving size, nutrition, or the parental Post organization. She isn’t a supermodel. She’s relatable. Hunter makes Honey Bunches of Oats appealing, both as a delicious product and a great place to work. Her homegrown American accent and infectious laugh are the icings on the cake!

This brand story tells us how great it is to work at the cereal plant, how wonderful it smells, and imbues a certain amount of patriotism. Honey Bunches of Oats isn’t the most economical cereal on the market, but it’s delicious and domestic.

Juan Valdez & His Trusty Mule, Conchita

On the other end of the truth spectrum lies Juan Valdez and his mule, Conchita. Unlike Diana Hunter, they’re entirely fictional!

The Colombian Coffee Growers Federation is a non-profit organization that serves more than 500,000 Colombian coffee producers, most of which are family farms. They created Mr. Valdez and Conchita in 1959 to tell a story of rich tradition among Colombian coffee growers.

While Hunter is a genuine person working at a modern plant, Juan Valdez tells a more symbolic story. He’s like the Johnny Appleseed of coffee, and his image instills tremendous pride in the hearts of Colombians around the globe.

  • He’s an important cultural figure in South and Central America, and an important pop culture figure.
  • His story is one of dedication, a love of coffee and coffee beans. He gives the audience a warm, friendly feeling.
  • For decades, audiences have savored the idea of Juan Valdez rising early to attend to his coffee crop.
  • We can’t help but admire his grit and dedication, and we’re happy to spend our dollars supporting the “Juan Valdezes” of Colombia.

Note that Juan Valdez never speaks about the price points of coffee products, nor the caffeine content. His story doesn’t claim to provide a solution for coffee drinkers, nor expand on coffee quality. This brand story is one of tradition.

Today, Juan Valdez Cafés are springing up around the world. Customers know that a portion of every coffee purchase they make through Juan Valdez supports Columbian coffee growers, and we feel connected to them through this inspiring brand story.

Now that we’ve put forth some examples of quality brand stories let’s talk about how and why WEBITMD will help you create a compelling narrative to achieve your goals.

Develop Your Brand Story With WEBITMD

We can help you craft a brand story that illustrates the type of customers who are the best fit for your brand. Our unique approach, the WEBITMD Growth Stack, includes everything from brand awareness to content-rich education. The Growth Stack brings together modern marketing strategy & tactics to drive measurable business growth, with a strict focus on your bottom line. Our clients to focus on running their businesses. We focus on growing them.

With the WEBITMD Growth Stack you’ll:

  • Avoid wasting time and resources on the wrong audience, and focus instead on your ideal customer base.
  • Make a long-lasting, emotional connection with prospects.
  • And frankly, make customers love the brand. They’ll look beyond issues like price when considering the value of your products.

Ultimately, an interesting and meaningful brand story will help your product stand out from the competition. It provides a hub for highly-persuasive, positive content that customers can cling to. This all leads to better ROI of advertising campaigns, higher conversion rates, and a loyal customer base that will come back to your brand time and again.

Whether you’ve already got some great ideas for a brand story, or you’re at a total creative loss, we can help!

We’re experts at crafting the sort of narratives that build your brand identity and attract your ideal buyers. Contact WEBITMD today to learn more about brand stories and the WEBITMD Growth Stack approach.



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