We all love a good story! Whether it’s passing down oral histories from one generation to another or simply curling up with a good novel, we all want to hear compelling, fascinating and rewarding tales that expand our horizons and educate us about history and the human condition. When we think of stories, we usually think of specific mediums for telling a story, such as books, movies, television and the song and stage, but have you ever considered that branding can tell a story as well?
You may not realize it, but good brands are incredibly effective at telling the story of a business or organization through various branding elements. A brands logo, tagline and even brand colors can communicate a great deal, especially when cultivated and designed to appeal to a specific target market and ideal customer. Without a brand story to communicate through branding, your brand can come across as generic, muddled or even questionable, which makes establishing and effectively communicating your brand story a vital component of our DIY online branding course, Go Ahead. Dream Big.!
Your Journey, Your Brand
A common and incredibly damaging mistake that small businesses and entrepreneurs make is to believe that their own journey as an entrepreneur or expert is boring, and that their brand story must be strongly embellished or even fictionalized in order to be powerful and compelling. Even if you are able to successfully build a brand around an embellished or fictional story, your ideal clients and target market will be able to see through this story and will write off your brand as being inauthentic. Your brand story starts with your own journey, and that journey has to be portrayed authentically in order to legitimately deliver on the promises that your brand makes to existing and prospective clients.
Your Brand Story Has To Be Authentic
It’s important to understand the roll of authenticity in your brand story. For instance, an outfitter, or a company that sells gear and supplies to outdoor enthusiasts, doesn’t need to be staffed entirely by veteran outdoor enthusiasts, but your ideal clients and target market, who are mainly composed of outdoor enthusiasts, expect authenticity in their interactions with your brand. If they determine that the authority implied by your brand story is fraudulent, they will have no desire to interact with your brand in the future. Many brands are built around the stories and journeys of founders who have subsequently passed away or who are no longer with the company, but that doesn’t affect the authenticity of the brand as long as the company or organization standing behind the brand still delivers a customer experience that is authentic to the original story.
Tell Your Brand Story The Right Way
You may not believe that your personal journey isn’t “good enough,” but it may just be that you haven’t had the expert guidance and resources to properly articulate, refine and document your journey in just the right way. In this module of the Go Ahead. Dream Big. program, we provide the tools and guidance you need to do just that, enabling you to create a brand story that is both authentic and powerful and effectively incorporating it into your brand!