True Story: Why the Best Brands Tell the Best Stories

The world of branding is still a mystery to many — and it’s no wonder.

The general public sees branding as the equally unsavory sister to advertising, con artists who somehow convince us to buy things we don’t really need, or promise us results that more than likely won’t happen.

The fact is, commerce is driven by choice, and determining one thing over another requires us to make certain assumptions about why we’ve decided to buy something and ultimately believe in a particular brand.

Enter storytelling.

Stories drive every aspect of our lives. We tell stories every single day: what we did, whom we saw, or what we ate. Storytelling give us the ability to follow the timeline of an experience and prove that we were able to mine that experience for understanding and “truth.”

Great branding is nothing more than telling a compelling story that resonates with a particular audience. We all love stories. Bedtime stories. Scary stories. Stories that carry us through a narrative arc and make us feel something. They connect us to a common understanding about life and a particular situation.A successful piece of  advertising is as much a parable about daily life as it is a campaign to earn our vote.

The story of a little rabbit going to sleep at night (Goodnight Moon.) Or, why particular toothpaste will suddenly make you incredibly popular.

So when a client asks me to develop their brand they’re really asking me to help them discover the compelling story that can be used to drive their business and make it meaningful and relevant in a sea of other brands and stories.

At this year’s 2012 Superbowl, that most sacred of American holidays and the time when big brands pull out the big bucks, the commercials that win are usually the ones with a memorable story. At a cost of $3.5million for a mere 30-second commercial, how you tell that story is critical (it’s also why so many commercials this year have been “leaked” well before the big game, in order to take advantage of lower ad rates.) Some brands are buying up to 90 seconds this year. Why? It’s the story, stupid.

These days it’s rare to get that many eyeballs watching a television at the same time, which is every ad will maximize each second to tell a compelling story.

In his book, Tell to Win (Crown Business, 2011) Hollywood producer and author Peter Gubar writes that a great story can, in effect, move mountains. “Telling a purposeful story in a business environment where vital information is embedded and grows organically in the narrative is singularly the best way to energize a product or service into a call for action.”

So when Americans fell in love with the brand Tom’s, the wildly popular take on a European espadrille shoe, they fell in love with founder Blake Mycoskie’s story of how he wanted to be able to give shoes to poverty-stricken children in Argentina shoes. His story sold shoes. More importantly, his story was inclusive: it made the consumer a part of the story.

Similarly, last year’s 2011 Superbowl ad for Volkswagen Passat featuring the “Darth Vader Boy” was a hit simply because it told a simple story of a young child believe he had the “force” to make things happen simply by raising his hand — in this case it was starting a car. It was charming and cute, sure, but it also hit those Gen X-ers still nostalgic for those innocent 1970’s and 80’s of their youth. The ad garnered 13million views, and counting.

So a brand, beyond its logo and sometimes even beyond its product, has the power to captivate and promise an intimacy that feels uniquely ours if it tells a good story, one that,  like a great bedtime story, makes us feel safe knowing that inevitably, there will be a happy ending after all.

Leave a Reply

Click here to cancel reply.

You must be logged in to post a comment.