Uniform

Storytelling: The path to brand loyalty

By Tim Sharp

Increasingly customers don’t want to just listen to stories – they want to be part of them. The 21st Century audience wants two-way dialogue and involvement in their brands, which is why a great brand story can become the foundation of a company’s success. At Uniform we have identified four core strands that every business should focus on to ensure their story is understood and succeeds in a tough and progressively customer-led market; it’s all about Conversation, Ownership, Authenticity and Relevance.

Great Brand stories excite, inform and involve the customer and encourage them to start conversations, with each other and with brands themselves. With the massive growth of social networking, the power of word-of-mouth to drive sales has heightened phenomenally. Quite simply, if your story provokes a conversation, your customers inadvertently become part of your Brand and part of your sales team, sharing your message (and your values) with anyone who’ll listen, across increasingly fragmented channels of communication.

Conversations allow Brands to play a more significant part in the day-to-day lives of their customers, but they also enable customers to take some ownership of those brands. To encourage these kinds of interactions, Brands themselves need to own a unique philosophy – an approach that aligns not just with their values, but also with those of their customers and creates a point of difference between them and their competitors. It’s what makes them relevant. This philosophy forms the foundation for a one-of-a-kind tale that people will believe in, empathise with and want to pass on.

Opening a Brand up to wide conversation can prove risky, because to do so the Brand must relinquish some control, but we’ve found that if a Brand is consistently authentic there is little room for criticism. Authenticity ensures that your customers can trust you. It’s a behaviour that establishes that not only do you understand what you say, but that you also believe it and will deliver what you promise to. Creating a story is a process that gives a behavioural and aesthetic framework to brands and ensures authenticity oozes from every aspect of their business.

The beauty of Brand storytelling is that it is four-dimensional, and not merely about putting pen to paper. It’s more than just telling tales of success, it’s about giving your Brand a personality, bringing it to life through creative storytelling and design, and sharing the story to create conversation. Powerful messaging gains longevity through consistently relevant interaction with the customer. That’s why great Brand stories, like the best fairy tales, remain current and relevant long after they’re first told.

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