[Build Backlinks Online] Giving a Voice to Your Brand

Build Backlinks Online has posted a new item, 'Giving a Voice to Your Brand'


Posted by gfiorelli1

Commerce is our goal here at Tyrell. More human than human is our motto.
-Blade Runner


Those who had not heard of storytelling cast the first stone.


And those who are not thinking of it, or maybe have already begun to speak
in-house or with their customers that it is necessary to give a voice to their
brands, cast the second.





The question is, do we really know what "brand storytelling" means?


Do we really know why it is important for increasing brand recognition,
optimizing customer retention, and (hopefully) attain that status of thought
leaders in our niche that we all aspire to achieve?


Do we really understand why it is also important from an SEO point of view?


Finally, do we really know the rhetoric of storytelling â the laws
behind a good narrative?


The truth is that everyone can tell a story, but only a few know how to tell
it well and naturally. Fortunately, it is an art that can be learned.

Storytelling

Stories and irrational impulses are what change behavior. Not facts or bullet
points.
-Seth Godin


One of the things that surprises me most when it comes to us, the internet
marketers, is that we still often tend to think analogically:


Having A, doing B, performing C, I will obtain D.


I have a product, I write some "great content," I promote it, and people will
come like bees attracted to a field of flowers.


Unfortunately, things are not so anymore. To tell the truth, they were never
so.


Our mistake, paraphrasing Seth Godin, is that we tend to create nothing but
bullet points and present nothing but facts. We forget that our audience reacts
to everything specifically because of its emotions, so we donât really
work on those emotions, which are rationalized in just a moment.


The secret of storytelling is not in its final expressions (so many in a
digital era) but in the act itself of telling a story.


Telling stories is what helps human beings rationalize and understand
emotions, and thus accept or refuse a statement.


For this reason, humankind has told stories since it was living in the caves
of Altamira or Lascaux. Culture was transmitted though stories, legends, and
myths; religions and states have been founded on stories.




The 300 Spartans fought against the immense Persian army at Thermopylae not
just because Leonidas guided them or because they were the bravest warriors of
ancient Greece, but especially because a mythology composed by hundreds of
stories assured them they were the descendants of Heracles.


Citing the Big Fish character of Wil Bloom, "a man tells so many stories that
he becomes the stories. They live on after him, and in that way he becomes
immortal."


For this reason we love family stories, and for this reason we relate to
brands with stories we lived while using and enjoying them.


Think for a moment about your youth, and you will notice how you can write
down a never-ending list of brands you remember because of the emotions they
helped you feel. Personally, if I think to when I was a teenager in the '80s, I
cannot help but remember brands like Commodore, Atari, Saba (the first color
television my family bought) and many others.


Neuroscience explains quite well how evolution has wired us for storytelling,
as Leo Widrich of Buffer explained so well on LifeHacker.


But the most interesting conclusion neuroscience offers to us is that the
brain of the storyteller and the brain of their listeners start acting in
synchronization when a story is told, as the same areas of their brain start
being used.


There are other interesting theories, including Jung's conclusions about
archetypes and myths, and if you want to dig into how to use literary modes for
internet marketing you can read this post I wrote a few months ago.



Brand storytelling

Storytelling, then, is possibly the best way to convince a person of
something, whether it be voting for a candidate for president, choosing one
religion over another, adhering to certain moral conduct, or buying one product
rather than another.


I can already hear the distant murmur of a thousand voices saying, "But the
product that I have to sell is a bolt!"


Once again, that's the shortsighted mistake of seeing only the end result and
forgetting everything that led to its creation. We stop ourselves at the what
and forget the why and the how.


What do you think of when I mention Red Bull? I am sure that you think about
adventure, extreme sport, and a crazy guy who skydived from the stratosphere.
And what if I mention Lucozade? Maybe if you are into energy drinks you know of
it, but I am quite sure that many of you, as was my case, have just now heard
its name for the first time.


The products are practically the same: bottles and cans of energy drinks. Red
Bull, though, has been able to create stories around its brand while Lucozade
has not. And people love stories that respond to their needs, desires, and
dreams.


As reported by Ty Montague on Medium, Dietrich Mateschitz, the founder of Red
Bull, explained the reasoning behind the tagline Red Bull gives you wings: "[it]
means that it provides skills, abilities, power, etc., to achieve whatever you
want to. It is an invitation as well as a request to be active,
performance-oriented, alert and to take challenges. When you work or study, do
your very best. When you do sports, go for your limits. When you have fun or
just relax, be aware of it and appreciate it."


Red Bull, hence, proposes itself as a lifestyle and not just an energy drink.
For that reason, its Brand is far more memorable than Lucozade.

Where to start

There is a world of stories hidden in the About Us and Mission pages (it's a
shame that those are usually hidden in the footer menu).


The biggest mistake a marketer can make is not understanding that brands are
the final expression of a company, and that a company is just something real
people created in order to achieve something (which usually isn't "making
money").


Let's check out a few examples:


Moz was founded because Rand Fishkin and Gillian Muessig had the vision of
helping people doing better marketing.
People, who were convinced there are ideas worth spreading, have created TED
Talks.
Patagonia has as its mission to "build the best product, cause no unnecessary
harm, and use business to inspire and implement solutions to the environmental
crisis."
Betabrand's mission is to "design, manufacture, and sell a stylish array of
anti-nudity equipment known as "clothing."
REI's mission is to "inspire, educate, and outfit for a lifetime of outdoor
adventure and stewardship."
ZenDesk's is to "help you deliver exceptional customer service."
Fitbit's mission is "to empower and inspire you to live a healthier, more
active life."
Nike wants "to bring inspiration and innovation to every athlete in the world."
And, one of its mottos is, "If you have a body, you are an athlete."


Missions are an expression of the values that guide a company and are the
ethical basis of its stories (the how). The protagonists of those stories are
not only the company's products, but also (and especially) the people who use,
live with, and make those products their own.




The Blues Brothers had a mission. What about you?

The schema of brand storytelling

Even the simplest story has very sophisticated mechanisms working behind the
scenes. The listeners don't always see them, but they know them and expect them
to be present. If they aren't present, they wonât laugh when they are
meant to laugh or cry when they are meant to cry.


In his essay Ars Poetica, the Greek philosopher Aristotle described the six
elements of every story:


Plot
Character
Thought
Diction
Song
Spectacle

In more modern terms, we can translate "thought" as "theme," and "song" as
"rhythm."
Plot

It is thanks to Aristotle that we usually say a plot must have a beginning,
middle, and an end, and that events of the plot must causally relate to one
another as being either necessary or probable. Most importantly, a plot must
arouse emotion in the psyche of the audience.


In this simple scheme, the middle is especially important, because after the
status quo is introduced in the beginning, during this phase we have:


The accident, which is what imperils or upsets the status quo;
The anticlimax, which is the lowest point of the story, when everything seems
as if it won't be solved;
The climax, when someone or something happens that turns things around, helping
the hero find a solution


After those events, the end usually represents the establishment of a new,
better status quo.


From a brand storytelling point of view, the plot is the how, as in how the
values of the brand (its why) responds to the needs of its audience.


For instance, using Moz as an example, the mission of helping people do better
marketing is fulfilled by the creation of tools built under the spirit of the
mission tenets (the TAGFEE principles), which respond to the needs of every kind
of internet marketer. The community, whose knowledge encompasses every
discipline of inbound marketing, responds by using those tools. This is the main
plot line of Moz.

Characters and theme

Intrinsically related to the plot are the characters and the theme.


The main characters are the heroes of the stories, whose actions determine the
plot of the story. The secondary ones are those who provide the main characters
with information, materials, goods, services, or whatever is needed to advance
the plot.


Using Moz as an example again, the main character is the user â maybe
someone who has just started her adventure in internet marketing â while
the secondary characters are the products and (this being the characteristic of
every business with a strong, active community) the Mozzers.


Users and brands, therefore, are the characters of every brand story, with the
users being the main characters.


With the users as the main characters, it is then easy to understand how
important is to know them as well as possible before, during, and after the
release of a product. Hence the strategic importance of personas, audience
targeting, the continuous feedback from the users, and the post-sale follow-ups
and growth hacking.


The theme is the universe where the plot takes place, and the laws governing
that universe in brand storytelling are the tenets (for instance, the TAGFEE
tenets), which make the rules with which the mission will be achieved explicit.


This universe is usually an ideal world the users would love to live in,
because it offers the answers to their needs, and it is a universe that only the
brand can offer them.


The brand universe can be totally mythical â a representation of reality
as we want it.

Diction, rhythm, and spectacle

Once the plot, the characters, and the theme are set up, we can start thinking
about the diction, rhythm, and spectacle.


Diction is the expression of meaning in words, and it is a consequence of the
tone and style.


In brand storytelling, and here SEOs may play a great role, diction is not
just how the brand talks to the users, but also the creation of brand language
where the language spoken by users is enriched by those that Dan Shure
brilliantly defined as Propwords.


MozCon, MozBot, Roger, Whiteboard Friday, Mozinar, Mozzers, and many others
are the propwords of Moz, which are immediately understood and appropriated by
the users.


Diction is what helps create a indissoluble relationship between keywords and
the brand, creating the so-called branded keywords.


Rhythm is usability. When we narrate a story we always use an underlying
rhythm, which helps the story flow so the listeners won't notice the rhetorical
mechanisms behind the story itself.


Finally, spectacle is the organization of appearances that are simultaneously
enticing, deceptive, and superficial.


The web expression of spectacle is graphic design.

Examples of brand storytelling
Dumb Ways to Die

The Metro Trains public company of Melbourne (Australia) had one thing clear:
people don't pay attention to signs and recorded messages.


So, in order to ensure its message about how we all must pay attention when in
the metro station was heard, and thereby diminish the cases of accidents due to
distraction, Metro Trains decided to produce a song â Dumb Ways to Die
â and launch it on YouTube.


What happened after is the story of maybe the best case of transmedia brand
storytelling ever created until now.





Spread the TEDx, Buenos Aires


We all know about TED Talks, and maybe many of you have attended one of the
community-generated events called TEDx.


Well, TED Talks had a problem in Buenos Aires: Not many people there knew what
the heck a TEDx was, simply because no one had the ability to explain it to
them.


So, consistent with its mission that there are ideas worth spreading, TEDx
decided to use what could have been its best brand ambassadors, the taxi
drivers:





NIKE â Find Your Greatness

NIKE has done brand storytelling since before the existence of the internet,
but its "Find Your Greatness" campaign was the first held entirely without
buying classic television ad spaces. Instead, it used all the possible digital
channels could to make its story, based on its "if you have a body, you are an
athlete" principle, touch its audience.





Oreo Daily Twist


Oreo is the classic brand that we tend to associate with little memorable
moments of our daily lives. It reminds us of when we were kids and having
breakfast, and the simple emotions attached to those memories is able â
because of the way our brain works â to make us remember other unrelated
events.


Based on this simple idea, Oreo created the Daily Twist campaign.





Conclusions

When doing brand storytelling, if we follow the principle of narrative
described above, we will be able to design an ongoing conversation with our
users, who â and this is the great difference between analogical brand
storytelling and digital one â will start creating new stories related to
the brand.


Here is where inbound marketing, in its core meaning of creating brand stories
and presenting them to the right audience in the right place and at the right
time, gains a bigger meaning.


And here is where branding and SEO collide, because all the stories we tell
will compose our story, and all the stories we tell will help us create our
unavoidable existence as an online entity (and you should already know what that
means in the eyes of Google, both right now and in the future).


As Tracey Halvorsen put very well: "Today, more than ever before in the
history of modern civilization, individuals [and brands â my annotation]
are empowered with the tools to be storytellers and the technology to see their
stories spread far and wide in the blink of an eye."

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