Just as storytelling introduces a character, plot, and conclusion for that emotional transfer of information, your brand story uses what you do, who you are for, why you do it, and how you do it to elicit a specific emotional response from your audience. The best brand storytellers understand what sentiments and emotions capture attention, resonate, and even compel action for their audiences.
Story is 22 times more memorable than any other piece of information you will ever share. Storytelling helps your brand reach its objectives by:
- Aligning your brand’s messaging
- Informing decision-making
- Capturing attention in oversaturated markets
- Building brand trust, reputation, and awareness
- Increasing engagement, website traffic, conversions, and sales
Storytelling basics
The three main story elements are plot, characters, and conclusion. The plot is what’s happening in the story, while the conclusion is what happens to the characters in the end. You can also think of emotion as its own fourth essential story element.
Each story has a story arc which has five parts: exposition, rising action, climax, falling action, and resolution, which can be rearranged to create different story structures. There are at least eight common story structures. The most used is the mountain, where tension and drama steadily increase until the climax happens near the end of the story.
Steps
Generate multiple viable ideas for your brand story and story arc from which to choose.
Combine empathy with audience research to design a brand story that makes an emotional connection with your audience.
Align each story element, like the characters, plot, and conclusion, with your story mission, and create your brand story outline.
Add depth and intersectionality to your brand story through ideation using the SCAMPER model.
Creating low cost, low effort brand story concepts to prototype and test, using the Napkin Pitch model.
Benchmark and test your brand stories against the success indicators of emotion, reaction, and lasting action to see if they are viable and resonate with your audience.
Last edited by @hesh_fekry 2023-11-14T10:13:49Z