Why Your Brand Story Still Matters

In the early 2010s, as brands and agencies emerged from the aughts and sought new ways to differentiate in increasingly crowded markets, there was a noticeable rise in the concept of brand storytelling.

The 2000s had been largely defined by transactional marketing and feature-focused advertising, but the rise of both content marketing and social-media adoption towards the end of the decade had opened up new opportunities.

Suddenly everyone was talking about this thing called “brand narrative” and ways they could “tell their brand story.”

Pulling from literature, the idea of brand narrative was rooted in the belief that compelling storytelling could create emotional connections between brands and their audiences.

The thinking was that by connecting with audiences emotionally, rather than just logically, brands could spark engagement, increase loyalty, and supercharge brand recall.

Words like “authenticity” and “ethos” were used by corporate marketers as well as creative agency practitioners, and Google’s “Parisian Love” commercial showed what an incredible narrative could do.

But then everything changed again.

Strategy and user experience (UX) began to overshadow just about everything else, including the focus on narrative.

Digital transformation created the need for robust digital strategies, everyone began talking about data analytics because everyone wanted to measure everything all the time, and consumer expectations skyrocketed as they came to expect seamless, intuitive digital experiences across every channel.

All of that was good and necessary, but it led us away from narrative as a core feature of branding—or, at the very least, deprioritized it.

Brand narrative was still important to brand writers and brand strategists, but it mostly faded into the background as a discipline and became a subset of UX, increasingly more integrated into broader strategic and UX considerations.

Which is all really just to say that storytelling became something different from what it had been, something much more tactical and measured.

The steps to figuring out the (strategic UX) story that needed to be told between a website’s hero image and the CTA—which are meant to capture attention, establish context, highlight the value prop, create a connection, and guide the user’s eye through a visual hierarchy and content flow—are similar, but still different, from those involved in figuring out the broader brand story.

Which isn’t bad by any means.

It’s just that a UX story is much more logical in nature, while a brand story is much more emotional.

The point I’m making here is that we can’t abandon one in favor of the other.

Both stories matter, perhaps now more than ever before—and they should cohere—but brand stories need to be revived, reanimated, and reconstituted so they’re once again leading the storytelling efforts.

Bringing back brand storytelling

I submit to you that we’ve now reached a point in time where we need to think deeply about brand narrative again—and not just as a brand tactic, but as an essential part of our experience in business.

I say this because we know that humans are inherently social creatures. We know that stories are the most effective way to transmit important information. And we know that personal and emotionally compelling stories are better remembered than facts alone.

Which begs the question then: What story are you telling about your brand? What story are you telling about your brand to your employees, your customers, your management team?

Moreover, what type of story are you telling? Is it a legacy story? A values story? A future story? Or some other story all together?

We tell stories in business because stories unite organizations.

When employees know the story they’re supposed to be telling, that story gets cemented into the foundation of the business, which means that story gets cemented in the minds of your customers.

Stories are powerful tools, but it’s important to remember that they’re powerful in both positive and negative ways.

A boring story is one thing—worst case scenario: people simply won’t pay attention.

A confusing story, on the other hand, can be detrimental.

In many cases its far less damaging for customers to take no action than wrong action.

Put another way, being forgotten (a boring story) is better than being remembered for the wrong reasons (a confusing story.)

Reimagine the story if you must

Case in point.

Not long ago, we worked with an organization whose legacy that went back decades.

The three letters that made up the company’s name stood for the last name of the founder, who’d sold the business ages before and hadn’t been a part of it for many years.

A major point of frustration for employees, especially the sales team, was trying to explain what the name meant when customers asked.

Some employees knew, and some didn’t. Regardless, the moment a customer asked, the employee was put in a difficult situation where they were either frustrated or made to look uninformed.

Rather than an opportunity to tell a story that created true differentiation and connection, it was a negative experience for both the employee and the customer.

The solution, of course, was to create a new story.

Own your brand story

In order to transform how both employees and external audiences perceived the organization, we needed to provide them with a new narrative, by which I mean a new story to tell about the name.

We helped them redefine the acronym, and by doing so, we gave them a fresh, coherent story that aligned with their vision, values, and services.

This new story empowered employees with a clear message and ensured their brand identity resonated strongly with clients, partners, and the market at large.

One of the big lessons here is this: If you don’t control the narrative, someone else will.

Sure, there are lots of things that are out of your control, but there are certain things that are within your control.

The story you tell your company about your company is one of them.

In Conquer Your Rebrand: Build a B2B Brand that Customers Love and Competitors Envy, Bill Kenny writes, “Without a clear, compelling story, a brand leaves it up to customers to fill in the gaps.”

You don’t want your customers filling in the gaps.

You need to be the one to tell your brand story.

Now’s the time.