Telling a Powerful Brand Story

The clearest advantage in a pitch is a story told well enough that the other person can see it. Our home is Pittsburgh, and the production happens with your people, on location. The storytellers people still point to, Walt Disney, Steve Jobs, Steven Spielberg, did that. They put you inside a picture and took you somewhere.

A well-told story brings emotion with it. People do not want it to end. They feel it, and the feeling is what they carry out of the room. Whether you are asking someone to invest, to buy, or to believe an idea, the goal is the same. They should want a part in the story.

Think about the movies you would gladly see again. You can replay them because the attachment was real. The ones you forgot had nothing at stake. You lost interest, and they left no trace.

Emotion is what memory keeps

The memories that stay from early life are usually emotional ones. You can test that on your own earliest recollection. If you want a brand remembered, tie it to a feeling on purpose. A story with no feeling is a story people do not retell.

You can design that feeling

A marketer can build the story so the viewer feels a specific thing. Ideally they want to stay in it, they remember it, and they tell a friend. The experience itself says who you are and what you are about.

Natierra, a food brand with the line "Superfoods for the soul," is owned by BrandStorm, a specialty food company that talks about conscious business and sustainability. On selected products, the brand connects a purchase to a meal for a child in Haiti. They call it "Buy One Bag, Feed One Child," under a Feed a Soul Project. The back of the package traces the food to goji fields in China, and it tells the person holding the bag that the purchase helps provide that meal. The wording is in the past tense, so the help feels underway before checkout. It becomes a direct line between the shopper and a child who needs the food.

Treat a pitch, a campaign, or a product design like the back of that bag. Pair a true backstory with a future someone wants, and you have more than a list of features.

The story travels without the ad

Some stories get repeated when the marketing is not even in the room. Ask someone if they have heard of the shoe company that gives a pair to a person in need for every pair it sells. A lot of people have.

Blake Mycoskie was on vacation in Argentina when he met a volunteer delivering shoes to children. He went along, and he saw how the lack of shoes was tied to illness. That problem became the company. For every pair sold, a pair would go to a child. He had makers in Argentina produce the first shoes. A newspaper article followed, demand outran what was on hand, and the company began putting free shoes on children in Argentina while telling that story in public.

The story kept going. The company launched an annual One Day Without Shoes, asking people to go without shoes for a day so others would understand what a pair changes. AOL, Flickr, and the Discovery Channel sponsored the event. Retailers picked the brand up. An eyewear line followed. The giving continued, and the company was discussed as a form of social entrepreneurship.

Later, Bain Capital bought a stake. Mycoskie stayed involved as Chief Shoe Giver, and the one-for-one policy continued. He said he would use part of the proceeds to back other socially minded founders. Bain agreed to match that effort and to keep the giving in place.

That is a story with a hero in it, and people like a hero who prevails. The connection you want with a customer is the kind of connection a story like that creates. Storytelling is how you get it.

You can offer the customer the hero's role, the feeling that their purchase did the good thing. Or you can ask them to believe in you as the hero, and to come along. Either way, the work is in the telling.

If you want the story to show up in the brand itself, our branding and creative design work is built for that.