The power of the story

What is brand storytelling and why does it matter for SMEs? Gabrielle Dolan, a global expert on business storytelling and real communication, sheds some light.

Brand storytelling is not about a logo or a tagline and it’s not a timeline of your company. It’s not a slick corporate video or a TV commercial. It’s not a brochure or your purpose, vision and values stated on a page. And it is definitely not just one story.

Brand storytelling is a deliberate and sustainable approach to authentically communicate your brand, internally and externally. This is achieved through the stories you share and the stories people share about you based on your actions and behaviours. It’s about being very clear on what your brand is and using stories to reinforce it, to communicate and to amplify your brand. It’s about the stories you proactively find and share as well as the things you do that generate stories.

Why is brand storytelling important for SMEs?

In general SMEs, don’t have the massive marketing budget that many larger companies have to increase brand awareness and loyalty. Brand storytelling can help with this, without requiring millions of dollars for marketing and advertising.

One example comes from Archie Rose which is a gin distillery in Sydney, founded in 2014. When they were forced to close their bar during Covid-19 lockdowns, they made the immediate decision to switch production from spirits to hand sanitiser to meet market demands. Within three days they had sourced bottles, reconfigured their production line, created and printed labels, and produced 7500 bottles of hand sanitiser … in just three days.

This story had an instant connection and immediately received local and worldwide attention. Head of marketing for Archie Rose, Victoria Tulloch said that this exposure was not the reason they did it, but it was ‘a welcomed yet unexpected by-product’.

The positive impact this story has had on their brand has been outstanding. Victoria advised that within four months of the story spreading about their hand sanitiser, they doubled their database, and their social media platform grew by 30 percent. She also believes that their brand awareness was accelerated by at least 12 to 18 months. For any company, especially a SME, this is a major win.

If this can be the impact of just one story, imagine the cumulative effect that many stories could have?

Finding stories to share

When considering brand storytelling, there are five types of stories a company could share.

• Creation Stories explain why a product was made or why the company started. Be careful not to confuse a timeline with a story when it comes to creation stories.
• Culture stories demonstrate employees living the company values or sharing what those values mean to them personally.
• Customer stories showcase your customers or what your employees are doing for customers.
• Challenge stories reveal how the company has responded to challenges … both big and small.
• Community stories illustrate how the company or employees are doing good things to help the community.

Another example comes from Transpower NZ. In December 2017, they experienced a major outage in Northland due to vandals shooting bullets into three towers. It was not expected that they would have power restored for 48 hours. However, they managed to get power back in less than a day. They were so proud of the employees and partners involved, they made a short video of the event highlighting the efforts of the people who worked on the restoration of the power that day. This video is still shared widely, both internally and externally, to demonstrate their value of working together towards a common goal.

This story could easily be categorised as a challenge, culture or community story. But you don’t have to be overly concerned about what category the story falls into, the main point is to find a variety of stories that communicate your brand in a more engaging way and share them both internally and externally. These stories can create an instant and potentially long-lasting connection with people that makes them want to buy your products and recommend them.

Implementing brand storytelling is not easy and it’s not quick. However, done right it has the potential to make your employees and customers your greatest brand ambassadors. Stories can create long lasting brand loyalty for SMEs as well as connect and engage with a much wider audience – without investing millions on marketing and advertising.

Gabrielle Dolan is a global expert on business storytelling and real communication. Her latest book ‘Magnetic Stories: Connect with Customers and Engage Employees with Brand Storytelling’ is available now. Rate your success with Brand Storytelling using this questionnaire or find out more about Gabrielle’s services at gabrielledolan.com.