Brand story must resonate
🚀 This article was originally published in “Economic Daily”
Many people think that writing brand stories must have ups and downs or be inherently topical. In fact, this is not the case. A truly moving brand story relies on resonance. The following five steps can help your brand or product tell a story that makes people excited, willing to share it, and even translate into trust and purchasing action.
- The brand story is not about how great we are, but why this is important to you.
Many companies start with the company’s development history or award-winning records. This information may be important, but the real beginning of the story should be something that the other party will care about.
For example, if you are in the health food industry, don’t say “Our products contain 12 kinds of amino acids” at the beginning. Say, “Have you ever been so tired in the morning that you are too lazy to open the cap of a vitamin bottle?” Such a beginning will make the audience immediately identify and nod in agreement.
The first step in Brand Story is to find the entry point that resonates with customers: is it a kind of pressure, desire or a small trouble in life? Or is it a need that has never been well treated? You have to start with the person’s life, not with an introduction to your company.
- Start from the problem, not the product function
“Please start telling your story” reminds us that the reason why stories are attractive is that they have conflicts and twists. This principle also applies to brand storytelling.
For example, Dyson vacuum cleaners never say “how fast our motor rotates per second.” Instead, they say “Have you ever vacuumed the floor and opened the vacuum cleaner to find it was full of dust?” They start from the inconveniences of life and then bring out solutions and breakthroughs, making people naturally believe: This product was made for me.
So you have to ask yourself: It’s not what features the product has, but what pain points does it solve for users? Only by reframing your brand story from the user’s perspective can you truly impress people.
- Stories are not about stacking information, but about constructing situations.
In internal corporate presentations, marketing activities and even recruitment advertisements, it is common to see complicated specifications, service content or flow charts. But these materials will not make people remember you because they lack pictures, feelings and memory points.
Instead of saying “We are an ESG sustainability consulting firm,” it would be better to start like this: “We once received a call at 3 a.m., which was the voice of a client who was about to collapse due to a sudden environmental audit. We sorted out contingency measures within three hours, assisted in on-site response, and saved the company from paying a huge fine.”
You see, this is story: there is time, emotion, action and twists. And the most important thing is: it allows people to see what you do, not hear who you say you are.
Every company, no matter what industry it is in, actually has such a story fragment. As long as you start recording, organizing, and refining these fragments, you can weave them into the most moving paragraphs of your brand story.
- Let go of perfection and talk about real struggles and choices
Many people worry: “If I say that our company has made wrong decisions, will it have a bad image?” In fact, it’s just the opposite. Rather than singing the same praises, what builds trust more is the process in which you are willing to admit your mistakes, adjust your course, and move forward more firmly.
When you are willing to say, “We have also fallen, but we have learned something from it,” that sincerity is more convincing than any marketing rhetoric.
- Practice speaking to the world in the same way you speak to one person.
The last key skill is to adjust the tone. When many professionals write brand stories, their tone will unconsciously become like writing official documents. But a truly influential statement should be spoken in a colloquial manner, like speaking to a friend.
Imagine that instead of writing a brand profile, you are chatting face-to-face with a potential customer or partner. This tone is not only more natural, but also closer to the mainstream context of modern brand marketing and human resources communication.
When you start to start from the perspective of audience and transform the function of a product into a story situation, when you dare to talk about the struggles and choices in human nature, when you put down the flowery rhetoric and speak with a sincere tone - you will find that no matter which industry you are in or which brand you represent, as long as you speak well, everyone is willing to listen.
Further reading
- Why content creators need a content strategy
- Life in a Foreign Country and Self-Media: Teacher Li Sixuan’s Experience Sharing Meeting on Social Media Strategies for Traveling to the Netherlands
- How to monetize knowledge: Five suggestions for professionals
