Throughout all of history, humanity has been enamored with storytelling. From the sprawling epics of heroes told around a fire to a poem written hastily down in the margins of a school notebook, we carry these stories with us. We daydream about characters we come to know and love, take inspiration from their deeds, and immerse ourselves in worlds that are not our own.
But these stories don’t just fade from our minds when we’re off to work; every brand has a tale to tell, and all it takes is to realize it. Weaving a narrative into your branding, marketing, and copywriting efforts can make your company legendary. It will shape how clients talk about you, build trust and legitimacy, and bring your brand to life.
Communication is Key
What is the secret to a good campfire story? People! It may not seem like it, but storytelling is a collaborative effort. For a brand to be engaging, it needs to get others involved. You need the funny side comments and wild hand motions for the story to come alive in the heads of your audience.
Speak From Experience
A story is a living, breathing thing, and writers need to keep up with the beats in the story to uncover the personal anecdotes, struggles, and triumphs. Humanizing brands takes frequent research into the industry space and careful communication to ensure that your brand’s voice is being heard.
Consider branding or project planning sessions with a marketing agency to facilitate this. Attending copy interviews, answering questionnaires, and even offering a tour of your company’s location will significantly improve understanding between your teams. Together, you’ll understand your core values, mission, and audience better than you ever would on your own. You know yourself better than anyone else, and a writer’s job is translating your inner thoughts into a captivating tale.
Mightier Than Any Sword
So, how do you turn a brand into an epic? Imagine every word on your website, advertisement, marketing materials, collateral, you name it, as one consistent document. If someone were to look over every page, one right after another, what would they see? It’s essential that each piece of the story fits a specific purpose and adheres to the overarching plot or theme of a chapter.
Let Your Brand Light the Way
Like any good story, there’s some setup involved. Ensuring visitors are led along in a structured, organized fashion when engaging with your brand is important. You don’t want potential clients lost in the woods, looking for the trail to follow, and missing the bigger, amazing picture! A well-structured narrative can serve as the digital lantern of your brand, guiding visitors to continue down the website and explore.
Everything you produce through your brand, be it a project, product, or even just an email, works to pen a memorable experience for your audience. You want to entice those listening in and grant them a tale they can remember and retell elsewhere. This word-of-mouth potential can extend your brand’s reach as clients become storytellers, explaining your narrative to their own social networks.
Regarding the word choice, you have to keep all your messaging aligned and on-brand but use fresh language to maintain the reader’s interest. Marketing collateral, such as flyers, mailers, and brochures, is a great example of this in action. A small promotional flyer, for instance, will only discuss what is being promoted.
Conversely, digital and traditional ads invite them to read further into the story. The purpose of any ad is to entice the reader to engage elsewhere, perhaps to learn more on the main website or perform a certain action, like signing up.
Stay Awhile, and Listen
Come, sit by our fire, and learn more about how professional writers can turn any brand into a living, breathing legend. Hit the books and read about what makes Rock Paper Simple awesome. Consult your muse and contact us today!
