What brands get wrong about story.
A tiny, potentially-useful rant by Jocelyn Brady.
The first rule of telling your brand story is YOU DO NOT TALK ABOUT YOUR BRAND STORY.
Your brand story is not about YOU.
At least not the story that your customers wanna hear.
They just want one that answers their #1 question:
What can you do for me?
“People aren’t interested in you. They’re interested in themselves.”
— Dale Carnegie
So who’s the hero of your brand story?
DING DING DING!
YOUR CUSTOMER.
And it’s about what they experience, EMOTIONALLY, that hooks em.
It’s not metrics.
It’s not “they experienced a 20% increase in uptime.”
It’s not boring facts.
Those aren’t WHY people believe in you, buy from you, advocate for you.
The reason why they do is HUMAN(s).
Emotional creatures that we are (no matter how much we deny it), we respond to stories that make us FEEL.
We respond to stories that show us real people with real thoughts and feelings. That show how people change and learn and overcome struggles.
As cognitive neuroscientists note, “Our brains relate best to the characters, focusing on the thoughts and feelings of the protagonist of each story.”
So.
Next time you talk about “storytelling”…
Or are on a mission to tell more stories—
Remember this:
Tell *your customer’s* story.
Tell stories about people *just like them*
Make them FEEL.
Focus on emotional shifts.
Because while results are important to business, business is still run by *people.*
And no amount of “market dynamics” and “shareholder expectations” and “YOY growth projections” is going to change the fundamental wiring of human beings.
“
Our brains relate best to the characters, focusing on the thoughts and feelings of the protagonist of each story.”
— Neuroscience News (OG and image credit to McMaster University)