How to write a brand story

Telling your brand story has become one of major necessities to grow brand in this over advertised era.Understanding your brand is vital to move towards writing your brand story.Follow these steps to find out how to write a brand story & make a difference in market place.These story telling examples will help you create that ultimate brand story

1.What is the customer need?
Understand what the customer basic need of customer is. Make your brand as something that satisfies that need .If your brand is satisfying a major need it goes towards along way and makes it a strong differentiator

Understand the purpose of your brand. Why does your brand exist?
Jim Stengel along with milward brown had done outstanding work on top brands. They unearthed some outstanding findings. The study was on top 50 brands across all categories which outperformed the competition. All the top 50 brands grew three times over their competition with names like apple, google, pampers . All the great brands of the world are built on ideals

2.What is your vision of your brand?
What will your business take customer in the future? Paint a picture of the results you want to deliver for your customers. This will have a bearing in everything from design basic newsletter to how you will scale up your business.

3.What are values of your brand?
If your brand has value system, manifestation of same to the world can be your story. Values help to identify who you are & what you stand for. These values become the guidelines for the staff to interact with your customers. They help influence customers buying process as customers like to buy from brand whose value they can relate to personally.

5) What is your solution: Product?

Tell the story of why the world needs your products .Tell how the product matters to the world. Tell how you will do this better than anyone else currently doing and how status quo will be broken.

6) How do your people enact your brand?

Brand Experience is taken care of here. How do the words & action of your people make your customers feel? does people take back good experience , is it being put as part of company culture. do your people uphold your vision & values of your business

Mail Chimp is an online tool for making newsletters. Hey make experience a part of their customer lives, their point of difference is that they add fun to the customer experience with Freddie a cheeky monkey as mascot. Every time you feel like you are dealing with humans and that is special about brand experience.

7) What is value that you deliver?

How much did you pay for that rose on Feb 14th?Wasn’t it more.But you still bought it coz it was worth it.Similarly the real value of your product is not your MRP, but the customer perception it has. it lies in how you make them feel?

The value is in the intangibles: the connection, happiness, safety, fun, security, belonging and love.The way your package your value to the customer becomes your major brand story

8 ) Your brandname, tagline & your content &copy-what does it tell about you?

Your name & tagline should covey the brand essence to people.it should set expectations to customers, it should set out your vision to the world.Your content & copy is the way you communicate your brand personality.it should be interesting to stimulate conversations.In 2013 during a 30 minute black out of NBA game. Oreo team posted on twitter “power out? No problem” with an image of Oreo cookie with caption “ you can still dunk in dark”.The tweet was retweeted 16,000 times and Oreo stole the show with a single relevant tweet

9) How does your Design standout?

Design does two things- it helps customer to make brand decisions and it also shapes customer experience. It can make product more desirable by changing how people feel. It can be your brand signature. Your design can make your product stand out and communicate your brand personality

10) What is experience that you deliver to your customers?

Craft an experience for your customer. Make him feel delighted, pampered,nurtured, listened to,delighted. Make your customer experience good that your customer can’t wait to share.Instagram differentiated itself by ease of use & by the fact that social sharing was made part of its user interface

11) What is the Perception that you drive among your customers?

How do you make your customers feel about their purchasing decision? Do you want to be seen as aspirational or accessible. You want to be a mass brand or a class brand. What are associations that customers attach to your brand?

12)Does your distribution channel respond to customer wants & needs?

In this age of ecommerce, newer business are taking shape just by changing customer experience & building their stories through an effective distribution strategy.I tunes made it easier to buy individual songs than buy the whole album. Amazon changed the whole book distribution game to put Border stores out of business

13)Does your location fit in with rest of your brand story?

Where would your customers want to see you? Think about their values, choices & habits. How does your location make customer’s feel? Do they add to your brand story.

IKEA stores are outside of the town giving customers a feeling of adventure, thus adding to their brand story. The strategy is to build stores out of town close to major road networks. The land thus gets cheaper & these get translated to customer in low prices.

Lot of brand stories are built on scarcity or ubiquity. Instagram was built on ubiquity story whereas  handset brand was built on scarcity bit.Do you want to be present in every store or want to be selective about yourself

15)Can you create your own community?

Rooftop honey saves bees & connects people to local food. Movember raises men health awareness issues to make it’s own community.Don’t just think age demography of your customer; think mindset, aspirations. views. problems.Does your brand have a purpose that brings your customers together as a community

It’s no more about big marketing budgets. it’s about your story. Big corporations like P&G or unilever may put in lot on advertising , but if you have right story, it will spread virally .

People want a reason to care about you and to believe you. you have to give them that reason. your job is not in changing how they think & do but how they feel

Go create your  brand story from these  15 technniques  and story telling examples shown here & others and your brand  building starts here