In today’s competitive market, an authentic brand story can help your business to stand out.

Especially in the overcrowded online environment, your business narrative makes a difference. With each scroll, there’s a new batch of fast information trying to catch our eye for just a few seconds. Entire marketing campaigns are built around this premise. This is why compelling storytelling that employs the right kind of emotion can make a business memorable for the consumers.

In a great narrative, emotions and facts are blended together to create a seamless experience for the customers, which is why marketers consider storytelling to be the future of marketing.

Why Are We Drawn to Storytelling

Storytelling puts humanity under a magnifying glass by using universally relatable characters. Even when they are fictional or non-human (like the hobbits in “Lord of the Rings” or the animals from “The Wind in the Willows”), characters still have human traits we can identify with. Protagonists might be equipped with impressive skills, but they also have shortcomings. Just like us, they falter in front of danger, only to find their resolve when needed.

Stories appeal to our emotions. Through storytelling, we can understand and assimilate information much easier than learning cold facts. We are more likely to remember the same information when it’s told in the form of a narrative than when it’s presented with statistics and numbers.

An article in Forbes calls humanity the “new premium”. Today’s audiences, especially millennials, are less influenced by the hard sell. Instead, they value transparency and human-centered experiences. With the right narrative, you can take the customers on a memorable journey to explore humanity. 

Ideas to Help You Design Your Brand Story 

The scaffolding of great storytelling is simple: a hero overcoming obstacles to reach a goal. When it comes to a business, your hero can be the company, its founder, a key person within the organization, or the customer who experiences your product.

Basic structure: Hero → Obstacle → Goal

Version 1: Company → Business activity → Revenue & recognition

Version 2: Customer → Needs → Solution

Your brand story doesn’t have to be a work of art, however, piecing together your narrative requires a certain amount of creativity. Here are some exercises to boost your imagination and help you design your story:

Find Your Origin Story:

Entrepreneur biographies are a great source of inspiration for aspiring business owners. A strong brand stems from a clear vision. The best way to start designing your narrative is to think of the genuine intentions behind your company.

Close your eyes and let us go back to when you were a child:

• Think of the very first interaction you had with a similar product or business. What were your thoughts?
• What were your dreams back then? 
• Were you already on a path to start this business?

Now skim through your memories to find any crucial moments that have led you on this path. Any needs, interests, and passions that made you start this journey, whether they relate to the business itself or to a certain lifestyle.

Remember the Early Days:

Stories about the early days of a company give us an insight into how business is done. When we hear about initial struggles and how they were overcome, we become hopeful about our own endeavors. 

Underdog stories and tales of becoming are relatable and make for a great narrative.  Sophia Amoruso, an acclaimed entrepreneur, started her first business by posting vintage clothing on eBay to make ends meet. We get inspired hearing about a child prodigy becoming a pop sensation, a tech genius starting a multi-million dollar company in a garage, or a baker with an artisan shop becoming a Michelin star chef.

Remember the first days after you got your business license:

• What was the first thing you did?
• How was your activity in the days that followed? 
• Did you paint walls, assemble desks, bring coffee, or any kind of manual labor?
• Were there people by your side that now have a key role within your company?
• Do you remember any fun anecdotes or inspirational moments, perhaps a breaking point or a situation going sideways?

Define Your Customer Character:

When you start building your narrative you must consider your audience. What type of people would relate most to your values. Finding your buyer persona helps you create content for the target audience. 

Try to imagine your favorite character from a movie, TV show, a book, or any other medium. How vivid are they in your imagination? Characters speak to us, the more we know about them, the more we can understand their intentions and behavior. Let’s exercise our creativity and take inspiration from a writer’s handbook. 

Think about our ideal buyer persona. Make a character profile sheet and begin to write down details about this character.

Discover their name, physical description, and background:

• Where did they grow up? 
• What is their occupation? 
• What were their hopes and dreams?
• What is their relationship with the family? How about extended family?
• What are the most significant moments in their personal life? What about professional life?
• How would others describe them?
• What would be the results of their personality test?

Go beyond the most obvious information and dig even deeper. Here is a character profile template you can use for your brainstorming.

Design a Meet-Cute

The “meet-cute” narrative is not just for romantic comedies. The premise of boy meets girl revolves around meeting the one, which can be a good inspiration for your company story. 

Think of your customers as characters who are looking for the perfect product. When it comes to their needs, your business can be the one. Finding the right solution can improve your daily activities and, sometimes, it can even be a life-changing event (just think of the invention of the smartphone and how it has changed our personal and professional habits).

Imagine a meet-cute between a consumer and your business:

• In what circumstances would your customer be looking for your product? How would the environment look? Are there any specific colors or sounds that come to mind?
• What would be the defining moment that would build their loyalty towards your business?
• How would their lives change after discovering you?

Let’s Get Creative!

If you need help to design your services, get in touch and let us discover together how creativity can help your projects grow.