Three Hidden Lessons of Brand Storytelling

Article

By Jeff Rosenblum

In a world where consumers are relentlessly bombarded with marketing messages, the next generation of great brands needs a new way to stand out, be considered, build loyalty, and create brand champions.

Brand Storytelling is emerging as a way to drive engagement and build differentiation, particularly in the mid-funnel. We are witnessing the rise of industry-redefining work ranging from category-creating stories from Yeti, planet-saving stories from Patagonia, and brand-redefining work from Barbie.

While at the incredible Elevate conference in Sundance, Utah, I saw amazing content from The North Face, Marriott, Northwell Health, and our very own Questus.

The audience learned a lot about how to create powerful brand stories, while I found myself attracted to some of the less overt lessons for brands considering investing in long-form stories. Here are the three hidden lessons:

Collaborative Culture is the Secret Weapon: When watching incredible content from brands like The North Face, it’s hard not to think, “How the hell did they pull that off?” Brands are creating incredible long-form content ranging from ten minutes to multiple hours. The secret is to smash the silos that traditionally exist so that leaders from finance, marketing, operations, customer service, analytics, and other departments understand the opportunity and how to leverage the content best. Somebody is signing some big checks for content that is harder to measure than traditional advertising. It requires an incredibly collaborative culture to get buy-in from the C-suite and fully leverage the opportunity from the entire organization.

Don’t Underestimate Attention Spans: Over and over again, we hear that audiences have incredibly short attention spans. Some research shows that humans now have shorter attention spans than goldfish. But that’s simply not true. When brands create incredible stories, the audience is willing to invest hours in the content. Just think about how much engagement the Lego and Barbie movies created. The same can be true for any brand creating a story in any format. Great stories create great attention spans.

Brands Need Boring Marketing: While we all love powerful brand stories, they need help to drive the audience down the sales funnel. Brand stories can create emotional engagement near the top of the funnel. Still, the audience needs additional content to help them understand what makes the brand’s products different and better than the competition. I love how brand stories typically let the brand take a back seat to the overall story. That helps make the stories more engaging. By leveraging analytics, brands can subsequently target the audience with traditional advertising and functional content that leverages the emotional engagement generated by immersive stories. Boring marketing doesn’t win awards, but it supports the incredible content that does.

Great brand storytelling is ultimately about empowerment. It’s about helping people accomplish what they want in life through inspiration, education, and information. Great brands can no longer be built only through targeted advertising and clever messaging. Now, it’s about understanding emotional and functional needs at every step of people’s lives. It’s about moving people towards their goals, not interrupting their journey. Great brand stories build an army of brand champions who carry the messages forward better than traditional advertising ever could.