Week 4: Brand Story

What is a brand story and what makes a good brand story?

A brand story is a bit of a misnomer, as the use of the word story relays a concept of a narrative told to a listener. A brand story is not communicated in a direct way to the intended audience but is felt or perceived. It’s intended purpose is to invoke emotion and hopefully attachment. Google is doing this now as I type this in its Docs application. Their main goals are integration and to keep me on a Google product as long as possible. They want me to feel a sense of reliability, ease of access across their products and a shared space. I see icons for other applications integrated along the side of the screen (calendar, keep, tasks), reminding me that Google wants me to have easy access to things that may be valuable while a draft a document. A large share button sits at the top-right, reminding me to bounce this draft off of my friend before it’s published. An icon directly above that says “Saving” after every keystroke and “All changes saved in Drive” (another Google product) once I stop, letting me know that I never have to manually save. Breathe easy young writer, we won’t crash on you like the Word docs of old. These aren’t the totality of Google’s brand story, just a mere portion. A brand story is an accumulative affair. One that takes every piece of brand identity, communications, product functionality and every other facet of the enterprise to make us feel something.

In the book, The Fortune Cookie Principle (2013), Bernadette Jiwa lays out 20 “keys” to building a brand story. She has compiled them all into one easily-digestible infographic.



From her Story of Telling site found here. (Jiwa 2014).

By looking at the infographic above, it's plain to see that it is more than just corporate communication that plays into brand story. Diverse factors such as hiring decisions, executive decision making and distribution channels all play a part in telling your brand story. They key is to ensure that they are telling the same story. A brand story needs congruity built on a foundation of truth and authenticity. There is a reason that “truth” is Jiwa’s first key. If a product utilizes visuals that include earth tones and images of trees or leaves and is not 100% natural or includes a significant sustainability angle, the customer may read this as duplicitous, even there was no intention to obfuscate the product’s origins. All parts of the organization must be viewed through this lens. Each component judged on the questions of “Is this congruent with our story?” and “Is this supportive of our story?” and “Will customers read this as congruent with and supportive of our story”.

What is storytelling and how does it affect people?

A defining trait of who we are as a species. An act that predates the written word and defines every culture’s sacred texts. The reason we know of Gilgamesh, Beowulf, Ulysses and every other hero of legend. The reason we know the names Skywalker, Bond, and Stark. Storytelling compels us, teaches us, and most importantly emotionally resonates with us. Aristotle pointed out three core attributes to storytelling in his seminal tome, Poetics. Pity, fear, and the term he coined, catharsis. Focussing on the feelings of the audience rather than the act breaks or writing style. Storytelling is all about the audience. Storytelling has the power to hack our brains and fiddle its chemistry. Allowing endorphins and dopamine to run wild. To engender trust and empathy with increased levels of oxytocin. All done by the skillful hand of the storyteller. For more on storytellings sway over our internal pharmacology check out the TEDx video below.

What is the role of community management in brand building and how to engage customers?

The easiest way to understand the role of community management in brand building is to first understand who a community manager is. It can be easy to confuse a social media manager’s and a community manager’s roles, but the distinction is quite clear. The social media manager is the voice of the brand on social media platforms, while the community manager is a voice advocating for the brand. A social media manager is the brand personified and will probably not attach their name to a post on any given platform. Conversely, a community manager will work toward fostering a relationship with the customer base and will serve a more customer-focused approach. In fact, much of a community manager’s job is focussed on engaging current and prospective customers and driving growth in the community. Unlike the social media manager, this is not an advertising job. (Barnhart 2017).

Every brand seeks to serve its customer. Community management is a way to continue this beyond the point of sale. For many companies that sell their products through retail partners, this may be the only interaction they have with the customer. This offers the company the opportunity to really show its values and interact with the customer.


A good community manager should cultivate an online personality that unique to themselves while is also congruent in tone with the brand. They should seek out influencers, media personalities, and content creators to start a dialogue that can attract other interested parties. The next step is to focus on the new community members that have been gained from the previous (ongoing) step. Much of the job will entail listening and answering their questions, hearing raw feedback, and moderating posts; all while advocating for the brand. Many of these tasks will be simultaneous or recurrent, requiring a lot of spinning plates at once. Braveen Kumar over at Shopify breaks the community management job down as:



Check out the rest of his awesome article on community management here.

Analyse or design a brand story for a chosen company.

Let's look at a brand story in crisis to better understand how it works. Let’s take a look at Facebook’s latest troubles. Facebook is brand that once had a pretty simple story, it’s a place to keep up with your friends and family and people you never really wanted to talk to in high school. While this isn’t Facebook’s actual business model, it is the thing that brought its use rbase to the table. In mid-2010, after a growing concern over user data started to mount, founder Mark Zuckerberg declared in an op-ed in the Washington Post that:

“We have also heard that some people don’t understand how their personal information is used and worry that it is shared in ways they don’t want. I’d like to clear that up now.” (2010).

In 2013 an app called “thisisyourdigitallife” scrapes data off of 300,000 participants. While these people were taking a psychological quiz and one would assume that they knowingly gave up their data, they did not know that their Facebooks friend’s data was being harvested at the same time. Finally, in 2018 it comes to light that up to 87 million peoples’ data was sold to British consultancy firm Cambridge Analytica for the purposes of swaying elections. This is not the story Facebook wants to tell. To many, Facebook now feels like a deal with the devil. Facebook’s business model has always been to collect data and sell targeted ad space, its story was incongruous with that. This is why they are in trouble. It’s not that they lied (they didn’t), it’s not that they did something wrong (they hadn’t), its that they betrayed their own brand story.

How could the chosen company build the brand in social media?

Building back the Facebook brand will be tricky. There is a catch-22 for many unhappy users--you can leave, but all your friends are here. It feels like extortion for many. There is no equivalent competitor (no Google+ doesn’t count). One option would be to up the number of paid community managers to be available to check fake pages and communicate directly with the users. A paid option that drastically limits shared data may bring help some users feel more comfortable. Really at this point, they just need to present an open and honest story about how they are making it up to us while using a soft touch.




Well, that was a bummer. See ya next week!

Sources:

Barnhart. B. (2017). Social Media Manager vs. Community Manager: What’s the Difference?. [online] Sprout Social. Available at: https://sproutsocial.com/insights/social-media-vs-community-manager/ [Accessed 17 Sep. 2018].

Jiwa, B. (2013). The Fortune Cookie Principle. 1st ed. Australia: The Story or Telling Press, pp.6-7.

Jiwa, B. (2014). What Is A Brand Story?. [online] Available at: https://thestoryoftelling.com/what-is-a-brand-story/ [Accessed 17 Sep. 2018].

Kumar. B. (2017). Why Community Management Matters For Your Business (And How to Do It Right). [online] Available at: https://www.shopify.com/blog/community-management [Accessed 17 Sep. 2018].

Meredith, S. (2018). Facebook-Cambridge Analytica: A timeline of the data hijacking scandal. [online] CNBC. Available at: https://www.cnbc.com/2018/04/10/facebook-cambridge-analytica-a-timeline-of-the-data-hijacking-scandal.html [Accessed 17 Sep. 2018].

Zuckerberg, M. (2010).From Facebook, answering privacy concerns with new settings. Washington Post[online] Available at: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/05/23/AR2010052303828.html??noredirect=on [Accessed 17 Sep. 2018].