The purpose of this presentation is to learn about how to exploit your brand story, based on real cases.
Plan:
- Need a brand story?
- Exploit your brand story
- Why use a brand story?
- When to use a brand story?
- Writing your story
- How to invest in creating your brand
- Marlboro Story
- Gillette Story
- United Colors of Benetton Story
Brand Story...
Because people prefer brands, with a story...
How to invest in creating your brand<
"Brands are like short stories...they are understood in seconds, or never"
Need a Brand story?
Do you ever feel the need for:
- More cohesive communications?
- Better appreciation of your strategies?
- Simpler information, richer understanding?
- Closer ties between your organization, brand and customers?
If the answer is yes to any of these,Brand Story is the key......because people prefer brands, with a story"
Exploit your Brand story
Why brand communication fails?
Most brand communication strategies fail because they fail to communicate with the intended audience. It's easy to waste a lot of time, money and energy on a brand that looks great but fails to converse with your customers.
Brand story:Developing a great brand requires much more than great design - it requires a creative and pragmatic approach to thinking about how to exploit your brand story and maximize it's impact.
Why use a Brand story?
Great brands are customer focused:
They create buying preference, loyalty, and deliver an experience that turns customers into advocates.
Great brands are built by teams who share a vision:
A brand story, co-created by people who will build your brand, can:
- Improve team coherence: your team will understand what is required from the brand and live the image that it is delivering.
- Simplify decision making and increase efficiency: all decisions will taken respecting the brand story.
- Optimize market and customer impact, by delivering a clear and solid image of the brand.
- Bring consistency to your brand experience, while delivering a brand that has a consistent story
- Provide a framework for measuring success
When to use a brand story?
Create an inside brand story if:
- You are introducing a new company, product, or service brand
- You have gone through a merger, acquisition, or reorganization
- Your team is new, expanded, or has changed significantly
- Your communications are fragmented, unfocused, or lack distinction
- Customers, competition, or market circumstances have changed
- Your existing brand has lost some of its glow
Writing your story
Three steps for writing your story:
1- Exploration: start by uncovering facts, truths and legends within your company
2- Imagination: then try to apply to information, then scenarios, characters and plots, delivering the prime story idea
3- Narration: share conclusions and spread the word with chosen storytellers, inside and then outside your company
Think of your brand as the main character:
While writing you story, imagine it as a movie or play and consider thinking about the following:
- The motivation of your character
- What your character looks, sounds, or acts like
- Who your character encounters or associates with
-The setting in which your story takes place
- The plot, or what happens to the character in the story The theme, or moral, of your story
How to invest in creating your brand story
Brand definition:A brand goes beyond a company name and tagline. It is a complete personality, a set of values, a story line, along with repeated visual, auditory and behavioral elements.
When you decide to invest in creating a brand story, follow these guidelines:
1- Be distinctive:Never steal from another company's identity. Always generate a powerful contrast with competitors' images. Do something different.
2- Repeat, repeat, repeat! The more times your slogans, logo, colors, values, and most importantly your story, comebefore your intended public, the greater their effect.
3- Be persistent: Never modify or update a central element of a brand story just because you're tired of it. If it's working, it can continue working for decades.
- Marlboro has linked itself with cowboys since the 1950's
- Betty Crocker changed her hairstyle, but she's been wearing red & white since her first appearance in 1921.
4- Don't water it down: A brand story must stand for something and must be linked with something specific in the minds of your public.
5- Evolve as necessary: Brands may need to mutate when they're perceived as misrepresenting a company that has changed with time.
Marlboro Story
The brand is named after Great Marlborough Street, the location of its original London Factory.
- 1902 Marlboro was created By Phillip Morris.
- 1924 Marlboro was advertised as a woman's cigarette based on the slogan "Mild As May".
- World War II: temporarily removed from the market 3 new marks during war: Lucky Strike, Chesterfield, Camel.
- 1955: Filtered cigarettes launched when published articles that linked smoking with lung cancer.
-1960: Philip Morris invented "Marlboro Country" and distilled their manly imagery into the rugged cowboys known as the "Marlboro Men.
Gillette Story
- In the very beginning, Gillette put a close shave within reach of every man, every day, with a simple technical breakthrough called the safety razor.
- New technical breakthroughs - razors, blades, coatings, systems :Daily shave became a glorious, masculine ritual.
- Gillette technology equals joy in shaving
- Then young shavers began to reject the old ways and move on. Disposable razors challenged the old, reverential view and Bic stole market share : Gillette responded putting out its own disposable razors with twin blades
- A new young market emerged. Gillette launched blades with proper support : the daily shave became easy and comfortable.
" Good stories, like old truths, can increase their value when told anew "
United Colors of Benetton Story
Benetton's history is reflected by the company's advertisement campaigns ...
- 1972: Posters campaign by Eldorado Agency
- 1984: "All the world's colors!"simple, joyful and colorful poster and press campaign. 6 adults, and 6 kids, in a festive display of ethnic and clothing colors
- 1985: The visuals changed, from groups to couples
- 1987: Benetton. "World of Jeans" became the company's jeans slogan.
- 1988: "United Superstars of Benetton"Mixed cultures and legends : Adam and Eve, Joan of Arc and Marilyn Monroe, Leonardo de Vinci and Julius Caesar
- 1990: confrontation between black and white, with no clothes
- 1994: The campaign was very diversified : a mosaic of a thousand photographs of people and the same message : Aids