Brand Story - an enduring, memorable and inspiring mythology

Most companies and brands are fairly inept when it comes to making proper introductions, and When I say making introductions, I mean how a brand is announced and introduced to it target audience. When your users visit your ’About’ page on your website, what does it tell them? Does it leave them inspired and motivated or distinctly nonplussed?

Most companies lay out their histories in very matter-of-fact prose, which does little to form any connection with or lasting impression on the target audience. All should take a healthy note of how our leading beverage brands, particularly alcoholic brands, go about their business.

The world’s biggest Whiskey brand, is also the most adept at marketing. For more than a century, Jack Daniel’s has been delivering the same message across all media, using brilliantly evocative heritage-style imagery, even though a lot of it is photographed in recent times. The ’Brand Story’ for Jack Daniel’s is along the lines that distillery founder Jasper Newton "Jack" Daniel cared not a jot for anything else in life, other than achieving the fine quality of his own Tennessee smooth sipping whiskey. He was born some time in September 1850, alas birth records perished in a fire, but luckily - advertisers are able to extend Jack Daniel’s birthday celebrations for the whole of September. In recent times, photographer Mark Tucker has produced a number of volumes of Jack Daniel’s / Lynchburg photojournals, many of which have become calendars. The sentiments of handicraft and tradition and loving care and attention are pretty much staples for all whiskey advertising nowadays, but few evoke personality and character as well as Jack Daniel’s does.

Another great example is Southern Comfort, which is associated with New Orleans, and has been able to use its native deep-south association to make best use of endorsing the ’True Blood’ TV show, which shares and reinforces many of the same visual and cultural markers. It’s not just alcohol producers though, as most people also know the brand story of Marks & Spencer (M&S) - how it started off as a penny arcade in the Leeds Market Hall and then grew and expanded and evolved into the multinational quality-focused, family-friendly retailer it now is.

All must get to the roots of their brand, and extract those necessary flavours which are likely to appeal to their target audiences. There is a particular knack to writing a great brand story, and I will try and give you all the pointers you need to accomplish your own great brand story.

Key Pointers

• Start with a date - Pretty much all great stories start at a particular point in time or in a specified era
• Introduce a place - First time, then place are key to pinpointing the context and environment of your story; there is so much to a place - a place will have its own history and mythology which you can also make use of. If any of you have travelled to Cyprus, you cannot help to have noticed how many places, rocks, trees and springs were associated with the Greek goddess of love - Aphrodite; you must find your own inspiring location to set the scene for your story
• Introduce personalities - Don’t just introduce names, give them characteristics, drive, ambition, genius and philanthropic goals
• Explain your Philosophy - Introduce meaning and added value to what you do, was there a eureka moment? An epiphany? Some kind of calling or vocation?
• Fill in the back story - Inspiration, Heritage, Pedigree, Tradition, Provenance, Culture, Adventure, Discovery, Invention, Innovation, Authenticity, Ethics, Transparency
• Connect with your Audience - You need to create empathy and emotional connectivity which appeals to and resonates with your target audience

Further Notes
There can be lots of different types of ’Brand stories’ each with a slightly different underlying narrative slant; typically though, most ’Brand Stories’ are written along one of the following lines:

• Historical Precedent
• Cultural Upheaval
• Personal Mythology
• Personal Philosophy
• Discovery
• Invention
• Innovation

An example! (Shorthand Brand History of Comrz):

"In the depth of the worst recession the world has ever known, in August of 2009, in the last stabled mews in bustling central London, two adventurous brothers founded a new kind of company, one which would fuse together and service all the best aspects of the social and commercial Internet. Markus Karlsson, lazer-sharp systems architect, and Stefan Karlsson, impassioned brand alchemist, would head up a small pool of international talent, collectively named ’Comrz’ - the Social Commerce Specialists. Comrz’s central mission was to empower business owners to take complete charge of their entire business environment online, benefitting from unique synergies and efficiencies that Comrz would deliver through its solutions platform - Affino. The elite team of Comrz operatives each has at least a decade of experience with all aspects of the Internet. Comrz operates at the leading edge of integrated web development, and its customers are best placed to take full advantage of continuously evolving new revenue streams, and unique new customer relationship building technologies and techniques."