Crafting your brand’s story
How can you do it right?
- SHARE ON:
Written by Romario Kosasih | Graphics by Yusak Prahadi
In today’s ever-competitive market, being relatable to your audience is essential. Doing so means your audience can picture themselves benefiting from and utilising your brand. This is why storytelling has become a vital ingredient in every marketing strategy. After all, people relate better to stories.
Realising the importance of brand storytelling, Lanturn, a corporate and financial services provider, recently held a co-branded webinar with Click2View entitled Brand Storytelling for B2B. The event was moderated by Kirsty Tsang, Lanturn’s Head of Growth and Marketing, and invited Neal Moore, a journalist and storyteller, and JD Chua, Click2View’s Content Director, for a discussion.
The emotional or informational route
“A German professor once said 95% of purchasing decisions are subconscious, meaning whatever decision we make, most of the time, is based on emotion,” said JD. He used the following UOB commercial as a good example.
“It demonstrates how banks handle valuable assets and the importance of trust, which is so sacred that it should never be broken,” JD explained. Aside from the emotional route, there is the informational option, as shown by the following Trulicity commercial:
“The video opts to be fact-based, meaning it can be information overload to a point where the audience may consider needing the product,” said JD. He added that there’s no right or wrong answer (between an emotional or informational video). That’s something only you can decide. Agencies can bridge your brand and your audience to create the right output and narrative.
The need to find great stories for your business
“I think B2B businesses do extraordinary things, but they don’t think they do because they’re not as glamorous,” said Neal. He mentioned an NGO he worked with that used to communicate through whitepapers. The problem? No one ever reads a whitepaper.
Buried in the whitepaper was a story about how the NGO saved millions of lives in India from poisoning by installing an irrigation system. Eventually, Neal advised the emotive story to take centre stage. The lesson? Find great B2B stories your company possesses to ensure thumb-stopping content that draws people in.
However, Neal reminded that most marketers nowadays rely more on Google Analytics than go onto the field to find stories and learn more about their customers. “Talk with your sales team about what your customers are experiencing and find great stories,” said Neal.
Building an authentic story
“The greatest enemy to authenticity is not one’s budget but time,” said Neal. Recently, Neal worked with a climate fund company that initially refused to be interviewed, insisting on reading a teleprompter due to time constraints and availability issues. With insistence, Neal prevailed. Interviews with the higher-ups that know the business inside and out were a way to build authenticity and credibility; reading a teleprompter doesn’t achieve the same effect.
“Don’t outsource everything to a third party; they don’t know your story. You have to be the one who shares it, not someone in a voiceover or an overproduced video, because you have the budget,” JD added, noting that the more time the agency or partner spends with your company, the more authentic the stories can be crafted.
“The brand storytelling landscape is continuously evolving; something that may have worked in the past may get you cancelled today,” said JD — see the picture below. Therefore, keeping tabs on the shifting culture and norms is crucial to creating relevant and compelling brand storytelling pieces that constantly draw people in.
Read more from Click2View:
- Click2View’s Year in Review
- The Staying Power of Content Marketing
- Content Strategies Compared
- Five Reasons Newsletters Still Work
Sign up to our newsletter for a weekly update on the latest content marketing news. Don’t forget to subscribe to our YouTube channel too!
Click2View is Southeast Asia’s premiere full-service independent B2B content marketing agency servicing clients like Microsoft, Google, Visa, Prudential, and the Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy.
