How to find stories worth telling for your brand

Facts don’t move people, but emotions do. The best brand stories connect with people’s emotions to inspire, intrigue, and motivate them.

But first things first: what is a story not?

What a story isn’t

A story is not merely a description of facts. It might incorporate some facts but does so through a narrative. For example, just stating what the brand stands for, its point of difference and values is not storytelling. Unless you wrap those facts in a narrative, it’s not a story – it’s just facts.

And facts––although important for your business, are more often perceived as biased and self-serving, rather than intriguing to the reader.

To communicate and gain buy-in to those facts, you need to turn them into a series of stories—intriguing, authentic, strategic narratives with an impactful message that will mean something to people.

What to look for in a story

So what to look for in a story? How can you create stories from nothing?

Well, there’s never just nothing to go on. With brands, there is always a starting point. Be it the founder, the idea, the struggle to find the solution, the setbacks, the successes.

There are a few things to look out for when trying to think of your story:

• Emotion

• Tension

• Connection

• Characters

These four elements are the basis of all strong stories. For example, if you’re a founder, you might think back to the early days when things were hard, there was tension in that you had no idea if your business was going to work. But there was a deep passion, determination, and emotion that drove you. The characters might have been your first-ever customers (family or friends maybe), or the people that kept you going when things got tough. There was a feeling of connection between you all.

This would be an example of a founder story, perhaps. But is it worth elevating to a brand story you’ll retell for years to come?

How to know when your story is inspiring enough

A powerful story is enduring. It becomes an asset for your brand. It becomes enduring, and relevant, and can keep on inspiring people for years to come. And as it gets retold, it gains even more authenticity, traction, and influence. It keeps on living on.

To become a story that lives on, the story must:

• Be intriguing: a combination of thought-provoking, emotionally provocative, interesting, informative, or entertaining to the audience. They must provoke emotion or interest in the audience for them to pop, and for people to engage with them.

• Be authentic: the story must never be perceived as a sales effort. There should be real substance behind it and its message, showing that time, effort, and grit have been put into the realisation and activation of the message. For example, the development of new programmes, a change in company policies, or an effort to be transparent as a company. So before you start working on communicating your stories, make sure you can act on them.

• Be inspiring: an inspiring story draws people into the story and makes them feel part of it. This has to prompt a behavioural response, such as motivating people to act, get involved, or share.

• Be strategic: the story should have a strategic message that’s linked to the brand strategy itself. Rather than just treated as an individual asset, it should be closely tied to the overall strategy and direction that the brand is heading.

Look for your story heroes

To find or create your stories, look for the story heroes: the employees, the founder, or the customers.

Many brands make the customer the hero, which is so effective because it involves the customer in the story itself, inspiring them to act. Think of brands that make the customer feel like a major decision-maker in the creation of the product, or brands that tell the stories of their customers, from Mac users (Apple) to the wearers of their clothes (Nike).

The employee as the hero can also be a source for a memorable story because employees are on the front lines. For example, when I was working on a project for AXA Health, we wanted to elevate AXA Health employees to superhero status, to make people aware of the hard work they do behind the scenes to help people feel good. But we also wanted to show that AXA Health isn’t just about hard work – they deeply care for their employees’ wellbeing. So we told the stories of individual employees and their lives outside of work, whether that’s being a parent, a marathon runner, a baker, or anything else that helps them feel good.

So once you’ve identified your stories, then what?

The next challenge after identifying your potential stories, is to plan how to use them internally or externally. They needed to be presented effectively and creatively for the brand, in a way that will keep them fresh and alive for years to come.

This is where your comms strategy comes into play…but that’s a different story! Your stories should be part of a wider communication programme or content strategy––they simply will not be effective in silo. There needs to be an understanding, effort, and wide-angle strategy behind them for them to hit.