The need for brand storytelling is fundamental to reach consumers' minds and make an impact to drive their purchasing decisions. In today's world, we have access to a broad range of information, but we're increasingly disconnected due to noise and distraction. In his book permission marketing (1999), Seth Godin wrote we are exposed to one million commercial messages that in one year, 3000 messages every day! (Yankelovich 2007), a market research firm, estimated that a person living in a city 30 years ago watched up to 2,000 ad messages a day, compared with up to 5,000 per day at the time of the research in 2007. About half the 4,110 people surveyed by Yankelovich said they thought marketing and advertising were out of control. This was before social media grew and heavily influenced people’s habits and lifestyles. Nowadays, consumers are much more exposed to advertising and marketing messages as people spend more time on the internet.
(Statista 2020) reported that internet users’ average daily social media usage accounted for 145 minutes per day in 2020, up from 142 minutes in 2019. Ad spending in the social media advertising segment is projected to reach US$110,628m in 2021. Americans checked their smartphones once every 10 minutes 96 times a day, according to recent research by a global tech care company (Asurion 2019). Unless ad campaigns are attractive and clear in its’ purpose and call to action, consumers will skip & ignore them. In partnership with Nielsen, AOL released a research study in 2011 that revealed 27 million pieces of online content are shared daily in the U.S. alone. Results also showed that 53% of time spent on the Internet was directly attributable to content consumption.
How many
marketing messages get stored in an average consumer’s memory, considering they
probably could not care less about advertising and sales talk? One or two?
Three, if we are optimistic? Three out of several thousand! If this is even
halfway true, there must be many companies out there who waste an awful lot of
money on ineffective marketing. Brand Storytelling lets marketers “get inside the
heads” of a prospect’s customer. It creates emotions, paint pictures, and
channel the desires, hopes, and dreams of a customer. Stories are the best ways
to capture customer attention (and hold it), and by nature, they are highly
shareable — people like to repeat stories and pass them around because they
remember them. To retain customers’ loyalty in today’s aggressive competitive
environment, marketers must create a personalized, relevant experience and
differentiate a brand from rivals.
The physical product itself no longer has influences that drive the bond between a brand and the consumer. Human beings actively seek stories and experiences in pursuit of a meaningful life. Similarly, companies need to communicate their messages based on values and clearly illustrate how they make a difference for ordinary customers seeking solutions to their problems. Companies need to rethink how to influence and build emotional connections with their audience and their employees. Brand Storytelling and purpose branding can make widely impact on consumers if they join together. A strong brand builds on emotional values. They have clearly defined values, while a good story communicates those values in a language easily understood by the audience. Strong brand storytelling exists based on its emotional ties with the consumer; therefore, storytelling has the power to strengthen a brand both internally and externally. The stories are circulating in and around the company paint a picture of the company’s culture and values, heroes and enemies, good points, and bad. By sharing these stories, brands define “who They are” and “What they stand for.” As a result, many companies started to open their eyes to consumers’ needs for an emotional dimension in branding.
The Emotional Advantages for Brand Storytelling
The story
behind the brand builds upon its values and culture, delivers both emotions and
values, eventually helps to build a bridge between the company and the
consumer-communicating more than mere price advantage. When companies and
brands communicate and connect through stories, they help the customer shape
his way in today’s world. A well-perceived solid brand is the added value that
a company or product represents, and it is a combination of realities and
emotions.
The memory of powerful emotional images and events may be at the expense of other information. Consequently, it is less likely to remember information followed by something intensely emotional. This effect appears to be more vital for women. An investigation of autobiographical memories found that positive memories contained more sensory and contextual details than neutral or negative memories.
- Emotionally charged events are better remembered.
- Unpleasant emotions are less remembered than pleasant emotions ones.
- Positive memories contain more contextual details (which in turn, helps memory)
- Emotional excitement, not the importance of the information helps memory, and here comes the role of emotional branding techniques.
(Nielsen 2017) studied brand memorability decay over a more extended period for several digital video ads. While recall dropped for all ads by 50% in the first 24 hours, it still stood at that same 50% level five days later for half of the brands. Nielsen concluded from its research that memories could persist either via repetition for specific types of memories or via implicit internalization. Emotional brand storytelling help consumers recognize and recall brand messages as their memory decay will last longer.
An analysis of data from the IPA (the U.K.-based Institute of Practitioners in Advertising) reveals that Ads campaigns with purely emotional content performed better (31% vs. 16%), about double compared with only rational content. Ads with purely emotional make a slightly better (31% vs. 26%) than combined emotional and rational content. Committing to the emotive branding approach requires a deep understanding of consumer motivation. Nike’s pervasive theme of “success in sport” is a case of a brand that centers its ads on a critical emotional driver and builds advertising, sponsorships around it.
Subaru’s Ads Communicate “Love” in its Brand Storytelling
Subaru’s ads communicate “love” through a series of ads that puts the Autocar brand as a symbol of caring for those you love. Whether it is a father caring for his son or daughter, or a parent caring for their beloved pet, the series of ads are more about what the brand represents to the family by communicating the brand through stories, Subaru elevates its brand values and crystalizes how it fits into customers’ lives.
In an (Accenture 2017) study on hyper-relevant customer experiences, 44% are frustrated when companies fail to deliver relevant and personalized shopping experiences, 41% of consumers switched companies because of poor personalization, costing companies an estimated $756 billion in just one year. According to a survey by (Infosys 2014), 86% of consumers say that personalization has some impact on what they purchase; and 25% admit personalization ‘significantly influences’ their buying decisions. 89% of shoppers who engage with retailers via social media channels say those interactions impacted their purchasing choices. 90% of retailers believed consistency across their brand’s engagement points affected customer loyalty. These consumer surveys confirm the need for brand storytelling to engage and to connect with them. Failing to do so will waste many opportunities and marketing resources.
Cadbury Glow Brand Storytelling
Chocolates and personalization best fit together, and Cadbury knew how to use them in its favor. The confectionery giant has found success with many personalization campaigns, raising brand awareness, increasing market penetration in unexplored territories, and building emotional connections with customers. In 2017 the chocolate brand used Personalized Video as a Service (PVaaS) to spread the word about its special Cadbury Glow gift chocolate in India In this region, chocolate as gift-giving is less common than in other nations. So, the integrated social video marketing campaign lets consumers craft a personalized video that contained pictures and names extracted from their Facebook account. Recipients had to watch the touching video when they received a box of Cadbury glow chocolate, either via a QR code or by typing their phone number into the Cadbury glow page. Cadbury achieved a 65% click-through rate with recipients, in addition to a 33% conversion rate for viewers who filled in the following promotion form. The same year, Cadbury created a similar consumer-brand connection with a flavor matcher campaign targeting Australian customers.
The main reasons why brand storytelling is an absolute necessity for branding:
- It builds a more profound and stronger connection with the consumer.
- It adds a human nature to the content and Increases brand recognition
- Storytelling goes beyond advertising; it makes brands more trustworthy.
- It lets businesses connect with customers in a divided and noisy media world.
- Stories help share a brand message; compelling stories go viral.
- A business with great brand storytelling can challenge its competitors easily.
· Stories are the most successful asset to create brand loyalty, making people more willing to promote a product or brand by word-of-mouth, which is the best way to popularize a business.
DDove Emotional Brand Storytelling Series
In fantastic brand storytelling around a soap, Dove decided to include men in its great storytelling approach to marketing. Dove’s emotional story of being cared for and recognized makes a beautiful moment. For years Dove focused on real people and their stories, specifically women who are ‘real,’ as in not supermodels. Dove made its way by telling stories about beauty, whether it is the beauty of a mother and daughter relationship, or the beauty of a face and body generally viewed as an ‘average.’
In Summary, successful good brand storytelling is built around the consumer needs and should be:
- Contagious
- Personalized
- Self-actualization
- Engaging
- Easy to understand
- Emotive
- Believable
- Useful
- Inspiring
- Inclusive
- About a lifestyle experience
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