Your brand has a story to tell. That’s not a metaphor—telling your “brand story” isn’t some marketing doublespeak. Storytelling is as old as the human experience itself. It’s how lessons are passed from generation to generation, it’s how we learn about who we are and the relationships between each other, and it’s how we understand complex ideas. Your brand is no different. Tell a good story and you’ll have customers eating out of the palm of your hand.
The operative word, of course, is “good”. We’ve all read atrocious stories and wasted enough hours sitting in front of idiotic films to recognize crap when we see it. It’s easy to write. Sit down in front of a computer and start typing the words that pop into your head. It’s extremely hard to write well. Here are a few writing basics you can and should apply to your own brand story.
WHAT EXACTLY ARE YOU TRYING TO SAY?
Seems simple enough, doesn’t it? In fiction, we call this the “theme”. What is your story about? Not the sequential events—that’s an outline. What is the larger message? In fiction writing, we tend to have a few overarching themes. Man vs. nature, man vs. himself, etc. In brand storytelling, the theme is not necessarily so epic. Product X may perform particular functions, but those functions are not the theme. To resonate with prospective buyers, you need to talk about what larger issues Product X solves. What problems, issues or needs are being solved by Product X? The theme derives from the problem being solved. Understanding what you’re solving by your writing allows you to clearly develop a solution. It’s a bit like developing a mission statement. You should be able to describe your theme in a single sentence. Think of it a bit like a thesis statement in an essay. The single thesis statement will tell you what you need to say and what you need to support through examples in the brand story. Once you figure out what you’re trying to say, you’ll need to start figuring out how to say it.
WRITE FOR YOUR READER
Having a keen awareness of your audience allows you to tailor your storytelling to appeal to them. Specific groups of readers have specific needs, desires and vernacular. Fans of the Twilight books have different needs than fans of Fifty Shades of Grey. Both have common elements—they’re unconventional love stories, they both take the heroine into dark worlds previously unknown to her—but they satisfy different audiences. Shakespeare wrote for his audience. The jokes, earthy humor and thinly-veiled jabs at the monarchy and religious figures appealed to a low-brow audience. Shakespeare wrote commercially. He told stories that were designed to present his product to the widest audience possible. What is your audience wanting to hear? How do you speak to them in their voice, at their speed and in their chosen venue?
SHOW, DON’T TELL
A big mistake novice writers make is to rely on description rather than action. The world around us is a constantly moving entity. Your brand story needs to contain forward movement. Your story will likely contain many moving pieces—web content, social media content, video content, print advertising—that all need to work together as part of a broader story, while also being able to stand alone. How do you make each piece vibrant and engaging? Use action. Verbs are powerful things, and finding the right verb can replace lines and lines of unnecessary copy. Is there a better way to say what you’re saying? Say the words you’re writing out loud. Read them to other people. Hear how the words fall. Storytelling is a lot like songwriting. There’s a beat behind everything. Find your beat.
ALL STORYTELLING IS CHARACTER DRIVEN
In a traditional fiction story, characters are created to fulfill certain objectives in the story, and the story is built around the struggles and challenges of these characters. The same is true in brand storytelling. Your characters are most often your users and potential customers. Your audience needs to be able to picture themselves in the story, which means using the product or service. When you know your audience (through research and demographic data), you can build brand characters that share your audience’s stake in the story. They become surrogates your audience, which allows your audience to easily step into your story.
USE THE EDITING THUMB TRICK
Editing is one of the most difficult but most important pieces of a good story. At least twice as much time should be devoted to editing as to creating. There are two really good editing tricks I’ve picked up through years in publishing and printing. First, look at each sentence individually. Find an adjective? Put your thumb over it. Read the sentence again. Does it still make sense? That means you need to cut the adjective. The second trick is to read backwards. With the advent of autocorrect, you may be typing too fast to notice that your “if” became “of”. If you are expecting to see “if”, your mind will often read “if”, regardless of whether “of” is there now. Reading the text backwards (right to left, bottom to top) will kick off your brain’s habit of glossing over words and allow you to catch more mistakes.
GOOD WRITING ISN’T DONE BY COMMITTEE
Too many cooks will inevitably dilute your message. You operate in a competitive environment. Your job when writing evocative brand stories is to synthesize all the messages into a cohesive identity. A story is compromise. There are often lots of characters, each playing a valuable role, but all of whom are part of the larger story. Hitting all the important facts is vital. That’s kind of the whole point of the thing. But producing a white paper and creating a brand identity through storytelling are two different animals. The more saturated your writing, the less likely it is to be effective.
Not all storytellers can write effective brand stories. Just like not all marketing copywriters can write a good story. Find someone with the ability to analyze data, to extrapolate behaviors based on that data, and to provide engaging, creative content. I’ve built my career through both storytelling and copywriting. I’m a published writer and accomplished copywriter. You can reach me at jrosenplot@gmail.com, or at 812.822.2077.
