Brand Story

1    What is a brand story and what makes a good brand story?

1. Speak truthfully.

Honesty and transparency are important in brand storytelling. Yes, you're crafting "stories," but they need to be rooted in the reality of your brand, products, and industry. In other words, even brand stories must adhere to the three primary steps of brand-building: consistency, persistence, and restraint. If your brand stories are inconsistent, they'll confuse consumers who will turn away from the brand in search of another that meets their expectations for it in every interaction. Be creative but don't stray too far from your brand promise. Confusion is the number one brand killer.

2. Infuse personalities into stories.

Brand stories are not marketing materials. They are not ads, and they are not sales pitches. Brand stories should be told with the brand persona and the writer's personality at center stage. Boring stories won't attract and retain readers, but stories brimming with personality can.

3. Create characters your audience will root for.

Brand storytelling requires that you create characters your audience will like and cheer for. That doesn't mean you're required to create fictional characters or brand mascots to tell your stories. While characters like Allstate's Mayhem can be very effective in presenting brand messages and stories in a variety of ways, you don't need to create a fictional mascot to tell brand stories. For example, create buyer personas and tell stories from their perspectives. Tell stories from your employees' points of view or from a third-person point of view. The important thing is to create characters that enable your audience to become emotionally connected to them to such an extent that the audience wants to follow their character arcs 

examples of Mascots:

Michelin Man. The iconic brand cartoon spokesman of the popular tire company was named Bibendum but it has been widely known as the Michelin Man! Being presented to the world in the distant 1894 at the Lyon Exhibition by the Michelin brothers, the idea behind this plump brand mascot design was to represent a person made of tires. Little did the creators know that this charming fictional guy would become a largely popular and recognizable figure which has significantly contributed to the vast success of its brand.

Perhaps the first thought that pops in most people’s minds when they hear a great brand mascot: Mickey Mouse! Although these days a lot of cartoon characters are easily associated with Walt Disney Company, this friendly, lively mouse has been the official cartoon representative of the giant company ever since its creation, thus making it one of the oldest mascots which are extremely popular worldwide and loved by people of all ages.

https://graphicmama.com/blog/21-famous-brand-mascot-designs-time/

https://www.forbes.com/sites/work-in-progress/2013/02/05/5-secrets-to-using-storytelling-for-brand-marketing-success/#636e3c0b7d81

2    What is storytelling and how does it affect people?

Brand storytelling is the most effective way to connect with your audience. It involves them many types of stories you tell your audience. It’s what helps you appeal to the emotions of your customers and prospects.

According to internet marketing expert Neil Patel, there are several key components of brand storytelling.These include:

• The reason your company came to be.
• What motivates you and your team to come to work each day.
• Giving your audience an inside look at your company.

High Brew Coffee

You don’t have to be on High Brew Coffee’s website for very long before you know their story. Founder David Smith got the idea for selling cold brew coffee when he went on a six-month long rafting trip through the Caribbean with his family.

High Brew Coffee is a great example of why you should think of your company as a superhero. Think about it. Every great superhero needs an awesome origin story, right?

Your brand is no different. Your audience needs to know where you came from.

I know what you’re thinking. You’re thinking that your origin story isn’t interesting enough to share, aren’t you?

I disagree.

Yes, I understand that not all of us can say our business idea came to us while rowing through the Caribbean. But it’s not about that.

It’s about telling your story in a way that enables your audience to connect with you. See, here’s the thing, your story is interesting because it’s uniquely yours. Nobody else will have the exact same story as yours. This is what makes you stand out from the other companies.

Take a lesson from High Brew Coffee. Let your audience know where you came from.

Blue Apron

An integral part of your brand’s story is your purpose. It’s your reason for being. And this purpose has to transcend your products or services. This is the part of your story that people will connect with the most because people love to understand the reasons behind everything.

This is something Blue Apron does remarkably well.

Blue Apron is a service that delivers gourmet ingredients for meals that their customers can make at home. It’s a pretty simple process. You sign up and they deliver a certain number of meals to your home each week.

Blue Apron provides the ingredients and the recipes. You cook the food.

Here is Blue Apron’s mission statement:

“Our mission is to make incredible home cooking accessible to everyone.”

Enough said, right? It’s a purpose that any of us could agree with. Unless, of course, you hate incredible home cooking.

Communicating the purpose behind your brand will make your story that much more intriguing to your audience.

https://www.huffingtonpost.com/jeff-charles/4-fantastic-examples-of-b_b_9852356.html

3    What is the role of community management in brand building and how to engage customers?

Social media marketing is just like any other type of marketing; your ultimate goal is to drive more people to make a purchase with your company, usually doing so by increasing the visibility or reputation of your brand. In social media marketing, the difference is the medium: these strategies are implemented on Facebook, Twitter, or some other social profile.

Community management, on the other hand, may not have anything to do with marketing. It is the process of creating or altering an existing community in an effort to make the community stronger. In a modern context, this usually means attracting new people to a community, reaching out to older or inactive community participants to bring them back into the fold, or giving more opportunities for current community participants to engage with one another.

The main point of overlap is that actively managing a community on social media generally leads to a larger, more engaged audience. The larger and more engaged your audience is, the better chances you’ll have to convert your existing followers through your marketing efforts. It’s an almost symbiotic relationship, but if you want to perfect either approach, you’ll need to distinguish the two in your mind.

For example, consider making a discussion post that asks your followers’ opinions on a given product. You might have an ulterior motive to gain feedback from this, but consider its primary purpose: to get your followers engaged in a discussion. This doesn’t directly market your products or services, nor does it inherently make anyone more likely to purchase this product. Instead, it’s an action taken to improve the health of the community, which can eventually and indirectly increase the likelihood of your social media marketing efforts succeeding.

• Customer retention. Managing a community is highly valuable for retaining an existing audience, who has already purchased your products or is liable for repeated brand interactions.
• Customer attraction. Social media marketing by itself doesn’t do much to attract an audience. Only through community management can you start cultivating new audience members.
• Increased brand reputation. Community management focuses on building the reputation of your brand, rather than simply increasing sales, giving you a better long-term position.

https://www.forbes.com/sites/jaysondemers/2015/02/12/why-community-management-is-different-from-social-media-marketing/2/#32c0fc6953d9

4    Analyse or design a brand story for a chosen company.

Our story began in 1987 when Robert Paulig, an innovative Finnish coffee expert, came home from one of many exotic trips and founded the first, small micro coffee roastery in Helsinki. His family had already been in the coffee business for six generations, needless to say that the art of roasting coffee was in his blood.Building the first roastery was only the beginning of one of the most inspirational entrepreneurial stories in Finland, leading to the brand “Robert’s Coffee”, now voted the Most Appreciated Coffee Shop Brand in Finland, two executive years in a row.The first Robert’s Coffee was opened in 1992 in Helsinki, marking the very beginning of today’s vibrant coffee shop culture.Today there are over one hundred Robert’s Coffee shops. This Finnish brand has gone global with venues in Finland, Sweden, Estonia, Turkey and Japan with ambitious plans to expand into other countries year on year. The brand is entirely run by the founder’s two children, Henrika and Carl-Gustav Paulig, alongside 20 (and counting) experienced coffee shop franchisees and 400+ baristas, who turn an inspirational vision into reality.

MR Bean. character 

5    How could the chosen company build the brand in social media?