Brand Storytelling: the start

Everything that comes into contact with a business ends up telling a story: this is the new awareness that lies behind holistic marketing and empathic brand concepts. Each element of communication, every choice and every action – not only the products and/or services that one offers – together form the brand values and the reputation of a company.

These factors are nothing but stories that fill goods with meaning and make them perceptible to their target. To engage the target audience, therefore, it is necessary to make interesting stories, renewing them every time they are told so that no one’ll never get bored listening to them [just as you do with a film remake] and, at the same time, eradicating the risk of losing the brand recognisability.

The most important thing of all, though, is to avoid creating expectations that could be disappointed: creating a horror trailer for a romantic comedy, when the comedy is bright and enjoyable, would have the sole effect of disappointing the viewer.

ONCE UPON A TIME…

Rather like every respecting fairy tale begins with “Once upon a time …”, any brand that aspires to success – whether related to a context “business to customer” or to a “business to business” sector – defines the opening words of its narrative starting with the trademark and the corporate identity in which it appears.

The trademark is none other than the visual synthesis of the universe of values the brand represents. Colours, shapes, lettering, through the construction of a visual metaphor, must be able to represent the empathic “mood” that the brand aims to share with its target market.

The corporate identity, then, declines to follow specific guidelines with respect to the positioning of the trademark and other distinctive visual elements; it will become its consistent and organic expression in any context of application.

The brand story starts here, but obviously needs to be continuously updated, developed and serialised so one can communicate through all media tools eligible to express it, structuring a real narrative system.

Interested in this subject? Read about how to serialise and develop a brand in next Wednesday’s post!