What is brand storytelling? Two answers

What is brand storytelling? Two answers

Written by

Tony Hallett
 

29/09/2016

You’d expect us to know the answer to that, given our tagline is ‘We tell your stories’. And we do know the answer – it’s just that the question is open to interpretation.

Storybook

Photo credit: The Story via photopin (license)

ClickZ took a stab at explaining brand storytelling through several useful examples including stalwarts such as Dove and GoPro but also those that I’d associate more with the term such as Facebook and Jack Daniels.
Why the distinctions? To some, brand storytelling is about a brand. So hearing about the quirks and history of the Jack from Jack Daniels (Did he ever exist? Is that important?) is an example of about.

Alternatively, some consider brand storytelling to mean brands telling stories about anything that’s entertaining or useful to those consuming that content, strengthening the relationship with those customers or prospects. It’s brands as storytellers – where the stories can be almost anything.

I must say, at Collective Content we lean towards the second definition. But it’s also fine if you mean brand storytelling to be content about your organisation. If that’s the case, we’d say only that the bar is set even higher. Getting this right is hard.

To come back to that Jack Daniels example, that brand’s content – online, on posters, on TV and so on – is high quality, varied, often seasonal and employing humour. But it’s still not to everyone’s taste, much like its flagship product.

Working from a broader palette gives you more options and means you’re not always talking about yourself. We’d encourage that – and you might well say we would say that.


Follow us on Twitter – @ColContent
Need a corporate blog but don’t have the time or editorial expertise? Try Speech-to-blog, a corporate blogging service from Collective Content.

More Content

Tech Quarterly

Our quarterly summary of top research, market stats, new developments and predictions in five key technology topics of importance to our readers and clients: artificial intelligence, automation, CIOs, Internet of Things and virtual reality/augmented reality/extended reality (VR/AR/XR).

If a major analyst report, survey or forecast has been published on any of these topics in the preceding three months, you’ll find out about it in Tech Quarterly.

Top
Collective Content
Overview

Cookies are small files that can contain information about you, your preferences, or your device. We use cookies on our website to make it work as expected and to gather certain types of information. Collective Content respects your right to privacy – you can choose not to allow some types of cookies

You can read our full cookie policy here: Cookie Policy

Our full privacy policy here: Privacy Policy

And our sites terms & conditions here: Terms & Conditions