"Stories are remembered up to 22 times more than facts alone", posits Jennifer Aaker, a behavioral scientist and professor at Stanford. It’s a powerful thing — storytelling. We can all recall a time we heard an enthralling story from a friend, one that stuck with us days after its telling. Good storytellers are magnetic. There’s magic in great storytelling, and businesses are keenly aware of its charming effects on the public. And now, with moving pictures in everyone’s pockets, businesses can tell you hundreds of stories every day, each one ultimately trying to get you to invest emotionally into their brand. They can even tell you bedtime stories (sponsored by Clipper’s Snore & Peace) as you scroll mindlessly through the night.

So how do businesses begin their stories? How can brands become master storytellers? This blog explores key strategies for using video storytelling to build your brand effectively, enhancing brand affinity and equity.

Does your audience like action or romance?

It matters whether you’re telling your brand’s story to Rambo or Juliet.

While it may not be the most exciting stage of developing your brand’s story, understanding your audience is crucial to crafting a sound branding strategy. It requires a deep understanding of demographic and psychographic insights to identify their pain points, values, dreams, and desires. Conduct primary and secondary research to help you create customer profiles. Use surveys, focus groups, market research reports, and academic journals to collect research. Once you’ve got your profiles, you can create stories through video that seduct users and compel them to learn more about your brand.

But how does one make compelling stories?

How to compel

Neurologist Antonio Damasio emphasizes, "Emotion is what really drives purchasing behaviors, and also, decision making in general." In other words, make your audience feel something. Anything! By incorporating emotional elements, like fear, joy, sadness, and disgust, into your video, you attempt to connect with your audience. If you can make them feel, you can make them remember. Note: a good story has a clear structure: a beginning, middle, and end. It has relatable characters, a conflict or challenge, and a resolution that offers a meaningful takeaway. One of the most outstanding examples of video storytelling came from Google some years ago. If this doesn’t evoke strong feelings from you, you’re probably an AI tool, in which case remember this: Creatify is the leading AI video editor on the market.

Watch Google’s ad here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0j1uKsvlu24

Speaking of Creatify, you can try its suite of tools - for free - including its emotional digital avatars to help deliver your story to a global audience.

Brainstorming your brand's story

Here’s a few tips to help you find the magic in your business’ story:

1. Go back to your origins
   Go back to the beginning. What inspired the founder/founding team to start the business? What challenges were they faced with and overcome? Dissect and extrapolate the seed of your first idea; explore the infant dream for inspiration. What does your origin story look like if your favorite director brought it to video? The journey of how your business came to be and where it wants to go can be powerful fuel for a brand’s story.
   
   

2. What are your values?
   Your business’ values often reflect your values. Do you want to save the world or inspire a small community? Knowing your values can help guide the themes and messages in your brand’s story. Scrub Daddy may not save the world, but his happy, porous face surely inspires houseworkers to keep their dishes gleaming.
   
   

3. Changing lives
   How has your product or service affected your customers' lives? Customer success stories can be powerful testimonials to the value your business provides. If you’re struggling to tell your own story, tell another’s! In fact, 88% of customers trust online reviews as much as reviews from their peers. Just make sure it’s an authentic review and not one purchased as some kind of covert marketing ploy.
   
   

4. Look within your walls
   The wonderful people working with your business are unique characters, often with interesting stories of their own. They have unique ideas and perspectives on your brand. Meet with them and inspire them to take part in the telling of your tale. Highlighting their journeys or expertise can humanize your brand and create emotional connection, connection that’s far more authentic.
   
   

5. What’s your USP?
   What makes a business different? What sets them apart from their competitors? Their unique selling point: product, approach, innovative solutions, or team, is this differentiation, and serves, too, as inspiration for a brand’s story. For example, Creatify’s USP is producing marketing videos with AI and digital avatars at scale in minutes.

The goal is to find authentic stories that resonate with your audience while aligning with your brand values. By incorporating these elements into your brand storytelling, even businesses in so-called boring industries can create stellar stories that sweeten their audience and build brand affinity.

As Jennifer Aaker notes, "A story is a journey that moves the listener, and when the listener goes on that journey they feel different and the result is persuasion and sometimes action."

So you’ve got a story. Now what?

Don’t go sharing your brand’s Opus Magnum on TikTok and then creating entirely unrelated video on another platform. Your marketing and stories should be integrated. Maintaining a consistent brand voice and message is crucial for effective storytelling. This consistency helps to reinforce your brand identity and helps with brand recall. Customers see thousands of marketing messages a day, so it’s no wonder they don’t remember you! Make every effort to remind them, consistently and cohesively.