A brand story is more than an eccentric website or colorful words. It’s the holistic collection of feelings, signals and beliefs behind your brand that tells consumers who you are, what you do, why you do it and why they should care. As we’ve worked at creating beautiful, meaningful brands at MESH, the power behind good storytelling continues to grow more important every day.
Make Your Story Engaging
Before you put your pen to paper, think about the things your audience cares about – the concerns that keep them up at night or their hopes and dreams for the future. Listen to their stories first, then tell a story that addresses their problems or obstacles by illustrating how your brand and its product or service will help them succeed and overcome their unique challenge.
Make your consumer audience feel like they play an integral part in the story by letting them be the hero. Successful, engaging brand stories always focus on the human and personal elements behind the person living the story.
When customers are engaged, they feel connected to your brand in a profound way. Keep your customer audience engaged with your brand story and soon it will be one that audiences trust and share with others.
At MESH, we created a branded campaign for Belgard Hardscapes centered around their consumers’ desire for personalized outdoor living. The story behind the campaign, “Make Outside Your Kind of Beautiful,” combined inspirational copy and impressive visuals to engage Belgard’s customers who want more out of their outdoor living space.
The brand story invites customers to imagine their perfect outdoor living space and presents them with the products and items to make that vision of “inspired outdoor living” a reality. The story gives Belgard’s customers the freedom to realize their dreams for their own backyard.
Learn more about our work for Belgard Hardscapes here.
Provoke an Emotional Response
The best stories pull on our heartstrings, hold us on the edge of our seats and leave us crying with laughter. That’s because the best stories acutely tap into our emotions. Your brand story should do the same.
When we talk about your brand connecting on an emotional level with consumers it’s important to understand that the goal isn’t to rely so much on feelings. Feelings are fragile, vary with each individual customer and are difficult to predict.
Instead, we want to spark motivation with our brand stories. Motivated customers are more likely to act upon their emotions, which is why we created a story about love and friendship rather than mimic the melancholic despair of a Sarah McLachlan adoption ad.
Your story needs to make an impressionable, emotional impact while using an emotional appeal to move customers to your brand ahead of your competitors.
When our team of writers, designers and strategists worked on the brand story for Friends of the Animals we wanted to tell a story that let the animals speak for themselves while introducing potential adopting families to their next best friend. The story brought best friends together forever while helping to find homes for more than 2,000 animals in the greater Baton Rouge area.
Check out our award-winning work for our furry friends here.
Illustrate Your Unique Value
Your story should not only define your brand, but define what makes it unique.
Uniqueness adds value to your story by making your brand fresh and interesting. Let’s face it, no one likes to hear the same story twice, but everyone loves an original story.
With the right story, your brand is no longer just another search result or product on the shelf, but a brand that plays an integral part in your customers’ identity and connects directly to their lives.
That’s exactly the approach we took when creating the brand story for Haspel. Sure there are plenty of southern clothing brands, but none with the storied blend of sophistication, professional class and youthful style of Haspel. Oh, and the distinction of creating the iconic seersucker suit.
From the college campus to Capitol Hill, the story of the modern Haspel gentleman connected with aspiring cultural gentlemen young and old looking for a lifestyle brand with statement style. It’s the power of Haspel’s unique story that led to the brand’s significant growth in both its recognition and bottom line.
Click here to see and read the Haspel story for yourself.
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Creating a distinct brand and successful business starts with a story that engages your customers, motivates them with emotional cues and captures the unique selling proposition or characteristic behind your brand.