What is brand storytelling and why does it matter?
Your brand identity, values and ethos play a big role in the reason why people visit you, buy tickets to your events, join your membership scheme, donate or become loyal advocates and attenders. Our job as creative marketers, especially within the arts, is to bring about connections between audiences and art and storytelling is, in fact, an art within itself.
Storytelling is an important aspect of any brand strategy and can help you showcase your brand values so you can connect with your stakeholders on a deeper level and help to build trust and loyalty. But how do you write engaging stories?
Storytelling is not just about the words you use, it’s also about your visual branding and identity and creating a synergy between what you’re saying (narrative) as much as how you visually express it.
“Marketing is no longer about the stuff that you make but about the stories you tell.” – Seth Godin
Before you start writing your brand story, think about what sort of emotions you are trying to convey or evoke through your storytelling. Are you trying to reach new audiences or create deeper connections with current audiences? Do you want to provoke an action, for example donate, join a membership scheme, buy tickets or is it simply brand awareness? Ensure your stories are relatable and relevant to increase engagement and are authentic to your brand, purpose and values, perhaps even the challenges you face, and above all keep the audience in mind when creating your narrative and visuals. Remember, audiences who share your values are more likely engage and build loyalty with a brand that resonates with them.
Once you’ve established why you’re developing a brand story and who it’s for, it’s time to get creative and distil your origin story, purpose and values into a visual narrative that inspires your audience, or new audiences, to connect with your brand and helps differentiate your organisation from the crowd.
The importance of visual branding and identity
How your brand is perceived and how it resonates with audiences has a lot to do with its visual identity, including but not limited to: logo design, font, brand colours, website accessibility and design, social media & PR presence, brand values, word of mouth and overall aesthetic of your branding. However, through imaginative storytelling, accompanied by a strong and distinct visual identity, you can start to influence how you’re perceived and reach new audiences, as well as create deeper and more meaningful relationships with current stakeholders, without the hassle of a rebrand.
A brand’s visual identity and subsequent creative content should seek to convey its core values and evoke an emotional response from customers, this is turn can generate higher engagement rates and create a level of authenticity and relatability that aligns just as much with their values and your brand values.
For example, a wedding photographer might want to communicate a professional and polished service on their website and socials with high quality photographs, slick design and an authentic approach that will ensure your wedding day will be perfect and sympathetic to a bride and groom’s wishes, with example portfolio images and testimonials to reassure other potential clients of their professionalism. A craft business might want to post candid behind-the-scenes images of their workshop online, alongside a hand-drawn logo and bespoke design elements, to communicate a down-to-earth, approachable and authentic ethos to their craft and encourage their audience to engage with their brand and become part of their crafty community.
Whatever your compelling narrative is, from your origin story to your overall mission, how you display and curate this will have a lasting impression on your personality, your customers and wider community. But what if you’re good at storytelling but not design? Whilst there are a lot of additional expectations that often get assimilated into a marketers’ remit, design included, if design isn’t your strong point then seek external (or internal if you’re lucky) support to realise your new brand narrative and visuals and create a house/style guide to inform all future communications and marketing collateral.