How to Use Stories to Elevate Your Brand

Summary

In this captivating session by The Futur, the role of storytelling in marketing and branding is explored, illustrated by the natural human affinity towards stories anchored in emotional experiences. The narrative structure, drawn from Joseph Campbell's Hero’s Journey, serves as a blueprint for effectively crafting stories that resonate with audiences, elevating a product from a mere commodity to a cherished brand. The key to successful storytelling in branding involves understanding the characters (audience), their desires, and the obstacles they face, thus creating engaging narratives that compel and connect. By delving into the intrinsic desires of the audience and the obstacles they encounter, brands can craft tailored messages that bridge gaps and enhance their market presence.

Highlights

• The human brain remembers stories with emotional connections, crucial for effective branding. 🧠
• Products with stories create stronger brand equity, elevating them from mere commodities. 🏷️
• The Hero's Journey, a classic storytelling structure, is essential for brand storytelling. 🌟
• Emphasizing character, want, and obstacle helps tailor stories to the audience's desires. ✍️
• Crafting customer profiles allows brands to target specific audiences effectively. 📊

Key Takeaways

• Storytelling is crucial for enduring brand memory; it's the emotional core of human memory and marketing. 📚
• Stories convert products into brands by adding a narrative, thus achieving premium positioning. 💼
• Understanding the audience's character, wants, and obstacles is key to crafting impactful brand stories. 🎯
• The Hero’s Journey framework offers a pathway to design relatable and captivating brand stories. 🛣️
• Customizing client engagement strategies ensures brand messages align with audience expectations. 👥

Overview

Storytelling plays a pivotal role in branding as it taps into our inherent way of remembering — through emotional connections. This episode of The Futur dives deep into how storytelling transforms marketing efforts, replacing plain facts with engaging narratives. The idea is simple: when a product is woven into a narrative, it turns into a brand. This transformation is not just creative fluff but has tangible financial metrics.

The session emphasizes grasping the audience's core characteristics — who they are, what they want, and what hurdles they face. Concepts from Joseph Campbell’s Hero’s Journey are introduced as a compelling framework. By creating relatable heroes facing challenges and triumphing, brands can form deeper connections with their audience, enabling products to stand out in a crowded market.

Furthermore, the discussion touches on innovative strategies like designing customer avatars and tailoring engagement tactics to match specific audience aspirations and obstacles. By talking directly to potential clients' mindsets and emotions, brands can effectively lead audiences through transformative journeys, ultimately strengthening brand loyalty and market position.

Chapters

• 00:00 - 00:30: Introduction to Storytelling in Branding In this chapter, the discussion focuses on the significant role storytelling plays in marketing and brand strategy. It begins by emphasizing the two essential components of memorable experiences: strong emotions and stories. The chapter encourages the audience to reflect on their own memories to understand this concept before relating it to marketing strategies.
• 00:30 - 01:30: Memory and Emotion in Storytelling The chapter discusses the link between memory, emotion, and storytelling. Memories are tied to emotional reactions, rather than mundane, everyday tasks. Emotional events are more easily recalled because memory functions by associating strong emotions with stories. This ties into the concept that storytelling is a natural activity for humans and helps explain why it comes naturally, while lecture delivery might be more challenging. The idea that stories are like the operating system of the human mind is emphasized, illustrating how deeply storytelling is embedded in human nature.
• 01:30 - 02:00: Children and Storytelling The chapter discusses the natural creativity and storytelling ability that children possess, highlighting how adults often lose this skill as they grow older. It uses examples like fabricating stories about unfinished homework or romantic interests to illustrate how children are naturally inclined to create narratives. The narrative reflects on the transition to adulthood, where storytelling becomes rigid, focused on facts, and often devoid of the enthusiasm children have. This change is seen as detrimental, especially in contexts like social media interaction, where engaging storytelling could be beneficial.
• 02:00 - 03:00: Storytelling vs. Facts in Marketing The chapter titled 'Storytelling vs. Facts in Marketing' discusses the importance of storytelling over merely presenting facts and bullet points in marketing. It argues that while facts and information are necessary, they are often forgettable if not tied to an emotional experience or story. The text suggests that stories have a lasting impact, illustrated by the enduring memory of childhood fables like Aesop's tales such as 'The Tortoise and the Hare' or 'The Boy Who Cried Wolf'. These stories are memorable because they evoke emotions and create a narrative connection, which facts alone cannot achieve. The chapter hints at the ensuing discussion on strategies and tactics in marketing that harness the power of storytelling.
• 03:00 - 04:00: Storytelling in Education The chapter 'Storytelling in Education' explores the significant impact storytelling can have on learning and memory retention. It highlights how traditional teaching methods often fail to create lasting memories, whereas teachers who incorporate storytelling into their lessons make subjects like history or science more memorable and engaging. The narrative approach provides a frame through which students can view the world, leading to better retention of information. As an educator discussing your own services or creations, adopting storytelling can enrich the educational experience.
• 04:00 - 05:00: Storytelling as a Branding Tool The chapter discusses the importance of storytelling in branding, emphasizing that storytelling is crucial for a product to stand out in a crowded market. Michael Margolus's quote is highlighted: 'A product without a story is a commodity; a product with a story is a brand.' The chapter argues that storytelling is not just a fluffy concept but one that has tangible financial metrics to measure its impact. It also hints at the idea that branding relates to the goodwill a product or service generates.
• 05:00 - 06:00: Hero’s Journey in Storytelling The chapter delves into the concept of brand equity in relation to storytelling, using the analogy of bottled water pricing to illustrate how strong brand equity allows products to command higher prices over cheaper alternatives. It explains how a $5 bottle of water represents significant brand equity compared to a $1 bottle, which merely covers production costs and yields a modest profit. The desire to transcend the perception of being a commodity, which implies being easily replaceable and often sold at low prices, is emphasized as crucial in storytelling.
• 06:00 - 07:00: Character, Want, and Obstacle in Stories The chapter explains how storytelling can be integrated into current activities by using Joseph Campbell's concept of the Hero's Journey, which influences most modern narratives, including stories like Star Wars.
• 07:00 - 08:00: Conflict in Storytelling The chapter discusses the concept of conflict in storytelling, focusing on the hero's journey. Initially, the hero is reluctant to venture out into the unknown, creating necessary tension. Meeting a mentor, the hero gains the courage to leave the Ordinary World and enter a new realm. The narrative skips over some dull events, focusing instead on key milestones like relapse and resurrection. During their journey, heroes often realize a vital lesson, achieving not what they initially sought, but what they truly needed, thus experiencing success and transformation. Ultimately, they return with newfound wisdom.
• 08:00 - 09:00: Storytelling in Marketing and Branding The chapter discusses the importance of storytelling in marketing and branding, showcasing how engaging narratives can connect with audiences. It also highlights the relationship between Joseph Campbell and George Lucas, emphasizing Campbell's mentorship and its impact on Lucas's work. This connection serves as a testament to how enduring storytelling can influence multiple generations, resonating across various audiences over time.
• 09:00 - 10:00: Designing Customer Avatars The chapter focuses on 'Designing Customer Avatars' by emphasizing the importance of structured storytelling, like the hero's journey, in branding. It warns against the pitfalls of ignoring proven storytelling frameworks, which can lead to creating content that feels experimental and forgettable. The chapter aims to simplify this concept by boiling it down to three essential words relevant to branding, highlighting the importance of character and desire.
• 10:00 - 11:00: Innovative Marketing Strategies The chapter titled "Innovative Marketing Strategies" emphasizes the importance of creating well-developed characters in storytelling, particularly in marketing narratives. It suggests that a character should be very specific and detailed to avoid being generic and lacking depth. The character must have clear desires or wants, as this creates tension and interest. Without a want, the character is at peace and lacks motivation, making the story dull and aimless. This analogy is used to underline the need for engaging and relatable content in marketing to capture and maintain the audience's attention.
• 11:00 - 12:30: Conclusion and Call to Action In this chapter titled 'Conclusion and Call to Action,' the focus is on the fundamental storytelling structure that revolves around a character's desire and the obstacles they face. The classic narrative example given is a poor boy wanting to date a rich girl, with the obstacle being societal and class differences. This theme has been represented in various stories and films such as 'Maid in Manhattan' starring Jennifer Lopez, 'Sleepless in Seattle,' and 'You've Got Mail,' all of which share a similar story arc. The chapter emphasizes the importance of having a clear character desire and a significant obstacle for engaging storytelling.

How to Use Stories to Elevate Your Brand Transcription

• 00:00 - 00:30 okay in this episode I'm going to talk about the role storytelling has in marketing and in branding or brand strategy I'm going to ask you this question which is to think back on a memory in your life and almost always there are two things two core components that always exist when it comes to memory number one is a strong emotion and number two is a story let's examine this before we tie this into marketing and brand strategy I think you'll figure it out before we get there what about emotion okay so if you were to reflect back on what you did last week and try to recall what it is that you've done
• 00:30 - 01:00 are the only things you remember are the things that cause an emotional reaction from you the things like driving on the road or the things where you're kind of in a vegetative state you're not going to be able to recall it's because this is how your memory works it's like there's a strong emotion and emotion frames a story and you're able to retell that story this is why storytelling is so easy and giving lectures is so difficult because storytelling is the n most natural thing it's how the human mind works Eric meets it's stories of the operating system of the human mind and as children so good at telling
• 01:00 - 01:30 stories and somehow we lose that art when we grow older you'll make up stories you'll make up stories about how the dog ate your homework you make up stories about how that girl was really into you when she really wasn't and something happens to us I think when we get older we start to follow very specific rules about what facts are and we don't tend to get as excited to tell people like how our day went we just tell them the highlights the bullet points and we we lose that art and that's to our detriment cuz now here you are on social media saying oh my Social account is dead no one's engaged engaging with me how come well guess
• 01:30 - 02:00 what you're all facts and bullet points at this point no one cares cuz it Doesn't Remind them of anything and yes we're hungry to learn the facts and the bullet points but then a day we'll forget it because I felt nothing and there's no story for me let's test this one more time before we get into strategies and tactics which is do you remember some of the fables that you you were read to as a child like aso's fables the story of The Tortoise and the hair or the boy who cried wolf how is it that we can remember these stories decades later after having heard it and
• 02:00 - 02:30 that they've survived multiple generations of storytellers isn't that pretty wild but if I ask you what did you learn in algebra and who's your teacher and what did they look like you probably can't remember a single thing and that's the way it is because teachers have yet to incorporate storytelling into how they teach so the ones that I remember fondly created a story a narrative around history or science and they they gave me a frame to look at the world and so I can remember those things and I carry them with me today so now you are the educator you just happen to be talking about the things that you make the services that
• 02:30 - 03:00 you provide if you want to stand out from all the noise you have to become a master Storyteller it's not as hard as you think and I'll tell you how to do it in a second what Michael margolus said was a product without a story is a commodity a product with a story is a brand so now we it's not just something that we it's like this fluffy intangible idea it's like it has Financial metrics that can be used to measure this and I want to talk about this okay I think when a product or service has Goodwill we call that brand or branding the amount of money that you're willing to
• 03:00 - 03:30 pay over a cheaper alternative is the amount of brand Equity that we have two bottles of water one sells for a dollar one sells for $5 the one that sells for $5 has $4 of equity cuz you're willing to pay that much more you're able to command a premium over a cheaper alternative and the one that sells for a dollar it's just worth a dollar because that's literally how much it costs to bring that water to you package it sell it to you with a small profit margin and most of us do not want to think of what we do as a commodity and a commodity is something that is easily replaced and usually is sold at the lowest price so
• 03:30 - 04:00 how do you incorporate storytelling what you do now you can follow Joseph Campbell's story The her with a thousand faes and it's a little bit complicated but I want to tell you where this comes from where most modern stories come from the hero's journey it goes something like this the hero lives in the Ordinary World is approached by a Herald who has a call to Adventure and then there's the refusal the call where the hero doesn't want to go on adventure and if you're thinking does this sound like a lot like Star Wars yes it's Star Wars okay and
• 04:00 - 04:30 there's a little fun fact later I'll tell you about that so initially the hero refuses because there has to be some tension behind this and then the hero meets a mentor and the mentor helps the hero to cross the threshold to leave the Ordinary World and go into the new world then a bunch of things happen there and I'll skip over all the boring Parts but there's usually a relapse and a resurrection they fall back on that Journey Only to realize the true lesson and instead of getting what they want they get what they need and they're successful at and having transformed they bring this lesson back to their
• 04:30 - 05:00 tribe their community and they share that lesson with them that's a lot to remember and unpack but before we do that I'll tell you the fun fact about George Lucas so you know you're like wait a minute Joseph Campbell George Lucas what's their relationship you know the funny thing is Joseph Campbell mentored George Lucas and he said he's one of his best students isn't that incredible one of the most enduring pieces of fiction in the modern era in cinema and has lived Beyond multiple generations of geeky fathers and children I think have survived because
• 05:00 - 05:30 George was such a great student he understood the hero's journey and when you try to tell a story without the structure of what we've already learned that works it usually becomes very forgettable it it winds up becoming experimental art experimental film or literature it becomes more poetry than than something that we can grab on to okay let's make this a lot simpler cuz I just want to condense this down we'll boil down the idea so that you can walk away being able to remember it you just need to remember three words and I'll tell you where this is relevant to you in branding okay there's character want
• 05:30 - 06:00 and obstacle you need these three things there's a character a very specific kind of person the more specific the better cuz when we look at movies that have cardboard characters they're very empty it's just surfacey things and they feel very generic there's no personality there there's that that we're we're looking for a soul inside that character and we don't see it cuz it's poorly designed the character has to have a want a desire cuz if they have no want they're totally at peace with themselves there's nothing left for them to acquire or to do so there's no tension so they
• 06:00 - 06:30 have a want and we have to invent an obstacle something that gets in the way of their want so the classic version is poor boy wants to date rich girl that's classic right and what does the character want well he wants that girl to love him what's the obstacle the obstacles well you're poor you come from the wrong side of the train tracks you can flip the genders too like Maid in Manhattan with Jennifer Lopez she's a Maid in Manhattan Who falls in love with Ray fines Sleepless in Seattle or you got mail it's a same story arc over and
• 06:30 - 07:00 over again you got mail is about two entrepreneurs Two Bookstore owners one from a very small Bookshop around the corner quite literally of it's what it's called in the movie and one who owns like a Barnes & Noble chain and they want to love each other but they can't because they're on diametrically opposing sides of this whole bookstore idea one's about Commerce one's about community and so we have character we have a want and we have an obstacle Robert mcke the king of story who wrote the book book story says no conflict no
• 07:00 - 07:30 story and so what we do as storytellers is we find where the conflict exists and we generate that like in a world of fiction we can generate that boy loves girl they can't get together why because uh girls parents hate boy okay boy loves girl can't get girl why because girls gay or boys gay you know it's a lot of weird things so we can we can explore the obstacles and that's where the invention comes in when you learn the Frameworks now you're sitting there thinking Chris what's this goty to do with branding and marketing and I'm
• 07:30 - 08:00 going to tell you right now you exist to help transform the lives of your customers in one way or the other let's say you're like my Buddy Rich he helps influencers authors experts thought leaders be able to tell their story across the podcasting format so that's how he's going to help them transform their lives he needs to understand who am I speaking to if he said people that's too broad that goes back into this kind of generic profile so the more tightly he can design his ideal client Avatar the better he can understand what
• 08:00 - 08:30 their wants needs hopes and fears are who who they aspire to be when they grow up right so he's going to zero in on people who are entrepreneurial who are thought leaders authors people who care about sharing their ideas because that now will lead him to a want cuz not everybody wants to do a podcast only specific type of people want to do a podcast want to do it professionally and care enough to pay for it so he's zeroing in on this audience this core core demographic so they want to be able to create content so what's the oppos that they have well the obstacle is well
• 08:30 - 09:00 they're valuable their time is valuable and they don't understand the technical components they don't want to deal with editing they don't want to deal with publishing they're not sure what's happening with algorithms or what they what the best practices are for the industry so that's their obstacle so when Rich creates an offer when he does marketing when he does storytelling it would behoove him to speak to the obstacles standing in their way there's something I learned from Reading Phil Jones book exactly what to say and he has a book of magical phrases that unlock this subconscious and he says use
• 09:00 - 09:30 this phrase there are two types of people and what you want to do is design one type of person and the other type the second type is the type of person you ideally want to work with you're saying well what if they identify as the first type well you won't have them as a client and the good news is they don't want you as a as a as a partner either so it works out beautifully so in a situation like this rich rich could say something like in my experience potential client there are two types of people the people who dream and Aspire about being influential but are so worried about other creating their
• 09:30 - 10:00 content for them that they have to have absolute control over it that they don't wind up getting stuff done or the second type which is the person who knows what they're talking about knows how to deliver that to camera or to microphone but doesn't want to deal with anything because they trust other people to do that for them because they have better things to do with their lives which type of person are you so you see how we design those two scenarios and they're like well I'm definitely type A you're like fantastic good luck friend you're not for me allow me to refer someone else to you and so he needs to understand the character what their wants are and their wants their needs and desires can have multiple layers
• 10:00 - 10:30 something emotional something Financial something business related something that's much bigger than this cuz for some people the reason why they do something is just to be a firm that one of the parents who never gave them any credit that they can prove them wrong and that's a motivation that you have to surface in your content and your communication such that they feel seen and heard when you can use language that they use themselves they know you know them so well and they're going to start to trust you to handle their content so that's what we're talking about when we
• 10:30 - 11:00 say learn how to tell a story and how you can use this in brand and marketing I'll give you one more example when I teach brand strategy which is us trying to design the ideal customer Journey such that strangers become friends and Friends become customers we really have to think about who this character is we create these things called user profiles or customer avatars for basically the same thing we're almost like in Central Casting to say if we had the ideal client who would they be is is a man is it a woman are they married are they
• 11:00 - 11:30 single are they old are they young are they educated are they self-taught where do they live what is your job to how much income so we really designed these character profiles and we're we're really casting a very narrow net here cuz as soon as we can see them in our mind as soon as we can feel like I know someone just like that we can then make some assumptions about what they want when we can understand that then we can figure out products and services that will deliver the kind of transformation they're looking for in the way that they want it a give you an example sometimes
• 11:30 - 12:00 our clients will come to us and say well we want to work with really high-powered real estate brokers because we're a commercial developer and we want you to build a website for us well before we accept that as truth we'll ask the clients how many such powerful Brokers exist in the world that would be considering one of your spaces and they said probably no more than 12 so does it make sense for us to build a website that's going to cost you tens of thousands of dollars to reach 12 people they well what alternative is there
• 12:00 - 12:30 Chris so well why don't we explore that now we can open up the frame and say instead of zeroing it on what the website's going to look and sound like we can open the frame and say well how do we reach 12 high- powerered people to get them to come to visit the building or to consider the property for the next project it's a whole different conversation so in this instance what we wind up doing was saying wouldn't it be better if instead of us building a website we built you a web app not a not a real app but something that could be used on an iPad where they can flip through pages and look at things in in a
• 12:30 - 13:00 dynamic way wouldn't it be better if we messengered each Prospect each broker one of these iPads you can even give it to them if you wanted to because it'll cost you less money than to build a website and you hand deliver that to them and say we'd like to invite you to a sneak peek at this new property how exclusive would that make them feel like this is topnotch development and so if you can think like this you can come up with more Innovative marketing and branding Concepts that could transform your client's business or your own business if you're listening or watching this please take a screenshot and tag me
• 13:00 - 13:30 on Instagram use the hash storytelling [Music]