5 ways to tell a more convincing brand story

Your brand's competitive set has expanded, exponentially. Every particle of entertainment, everything out there that's useful or interesting or mildly diverting competes for consumers' attention. So you'd better have something to tell and to keep telling, to keep them interested. That means a living, breathing, evolving story, not a repeated proclamation of your USP, or unique selling proposition.

Here are some ways to tell a more convincing brand story:


1. Tell your own story better than your critics can

You can't have full control over your brand's image, but you can have a strong personality and a compelling story. The more impressive your account of yourself, the less convincing is the bad stuff written about you.

Microsoft is in the business of world changing, yet its story, as told largely by third parties and competitors, has gone from despotic to dreary. Apple's Get A Mac campaign casts the PC, aka Microsoft, as a desperately undynamic, bumbling, old-school suit.

Now marketer and cartoonist Hugh McLeod, author of gapingvoid.com (cartoons on the back of business cards) is engaged in the Blue Monster Project to help Microsoft tell its own story better. The character has been adopted as a mascot by some employees.

Blue Monster

Microsoft has help from other quarters. Director Laurie McGuinness has created a series of spoof Mac ads from the PC's perspective. A mashup that's well worth a look - instead of defensively putting down the Mac, the films playfully pick up on the traits of each system and its users.


2. Create drama in the right places

Your brand communication needs to entertain consumers or provide something useful, otherwise it will be screened out. So create some drama. If you're a Nike or Mini, that's pretty easy. Not so, if you're a toothpaste, or one of many indispensable yet invisible work-a-day FMCG products. Sometimes, the trick is to accept that your most interesting story may not have your brand playing the lead role.

Realising that people are (usually) more interesting than flame grilled slabs of meat, Burger King has been creating Burger King, The Movie, about flatmates living above a BK restaurant. The brand is clearly central, but incidental in that the interest is generated by the relationships and friction between the flatmates.

For me it evokes fond memories of 160d Finchley Road, when Rhyd and I lived with 'satan', opposite a kebab shop and next door to Domino's. They weren't my leanest times, but 'although I'm happier now I always long somehow, back to 199*'. And with those memories, come the curious craving for a burger 'n' chips, even a donner will do, before going home and forgetting to shut the door and then spending the night terrified having just spent the evening discussing in detail how you'd defend yourself if attacked by the ghoul in Scream. But that's just me.

No doubt some punters will baulk at the audacity of BK's putting its name to a movie and boycott it on principle. But audacious it is, and one to watch (if not actually view). Ultimately, success or failure will depend on the quality of writing and the characters - and, of course, the buzz it generates. And will it sell burgers - who but the subservient chicken knows?


3. Get some fans

That's fans not consumers. South African winemaker Stormhoek engages bloggers to spread the word, leveraging groups on Facebook, YouTube and Flickr. It provides the wine for 'geek dinners' when the freaks and geeks (the bloggers) invite their friends for dinner and then write about Stormhoek's wonderful hospitality, which makes the wine taste that much better.

Stormhoek wine blogging guide


4. Make your story directional but openended

Allow fans to build on your story. Digital culture is mashup culture. People alter content, they comment on it, augment it, satirise it, to express themselves through it. That's how culture becomes popular. The Get A Mac ads are a case in point.

So, give people an outlet to customise, to comment and have some fun with your brand. If you don't they will anyway. Check out Flickr images by the Decapitator, recently active in London. Pimm's is quite apt, while Moet & Chandon may well be less pleased with the Texas Chainsaw Massacre take on champagne chic.






The Decapitator at work


5. Make it exciting - but accessible

People must be able to imagine themselves in the roles you cast for them. For example, Kellogg's Nutri Grain promises that boys will grow into iron men, therefore the iron man must be someone a boy could hope to become, not an inaccessible, godlike figure.

Online, it's all in a day's work to adopt different identities. Just check out some of the Facebook applications, like 'Which Hero are you?' Answer a few questions and discover which character from the TV series you are. Answer differently and try on some other superpowers for size.


Heroes Facebook application