A recurring question I receive is "What IS Branded Storytelling?" Is it just a commercial but more cinematic? Does it mean I don't talk about my brand directly?
Branded storytelling is all about making a connection to your potential customer. It's usually a long game, you don't make one video, tell one story and magically you've connected to an entirely new audience. One story might get that initial interest, but a body of stories can form an emotional connection to your brand and your product. Multiple storylines can attract multiple demographics.
Can you create an emotional connection with a rubber tire? With good branded storytelling you can. Watch the video, you'll understand.
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Full Transcript. Apologies for any typos.
0:00 Today's social and digital media world has opened up branded storytelling. And if you're not sure what branded storytelling is, well, it's you telling your story unfiltered, directly to your audience. So say you make tires. All right, so a tire commercial is "Hey, look at my tire, my tire's really good. got awesome tread. This company has terrible tread by my tire." That's a commercial. There's absolutely no connection. You're just selling me telling me to buy it because I'm telling you to buy it.
0:33 Now, in the case of tires, let's just talk about that. So you've got your gearheads and you've got your you know, your your car buffs and they are going to buy the tire based on the specification that they absolutely, positively must-have for their car. No amount of advertising is going to sway them. But for the millions upon millions out there that know that a tire is rubber, and maybe most them know that there's some steel belts inside, they have no connection to any brand whatsoever. All they know is "I need tires, I'm probably gonna buy the cheapest one. That's all I care about, just give me four tires, I don't care." Those are the people that you could reach through branded storytelling. And branded storytelling means you're making a connection with the person that may have absolutely nothing to do with your product. At least it doesn't seem to have anything to do with your product.
1:29 So let's talk about those tires. So tires are rubber with some steel belts, usually, and there's a whole bunch of performance tires is off-road tires, etc, there's all the different kind of tires. But what do they actually do? Well, one they're the only part of the car that actually touches the road. And to well, they take you on journeys. Now journeys are a very powerful thing. And that can connect you to a viewer and you can connect to multiple types of viewers and let's say fan bases. You can take a journey to go visit your grandmother. You can take a journey to reunite families, you can go camping, you can go kayaking, mountain biking. You can drive cross country and just see what's out there. I don't even know where I'm going. I'm just gonna go take a drive and explore. Well, there's some wonderful stories that can be brought together.
2:27 You can either do real-life stories, or you can do you know, a fictional story. But there's very powerful imagery, and very powerful storytelling that can be told around journeys, bringing people together, bringing communities together, and it just so happens that your tire is on all the vehicles. Hmm. Start that cadence, and it's not create one story and be "Oh, wow, look at that." It's a series of stories. You know, every week you've got another story coming out on social or wherever that "You know, this week Oh, here's the fire company that was able to save a family from burning building because, you know, they got there and it just so happens that eight of our tires were on that truck." Grandma comes to America for the first time and we picked her up at the airport and brought her to see her whole family just so happens that the tire was on the car. I'm going to go travel cross country with my buddies. And we're just going to go explore have no map we're just going to drive. Well just think about that. All along the way. You've got places to stop, you got places to eat, and see and visit and people to meet. Well, there's a whole travelogue, I, my goodness, you could create 30 to 40 episodes around something like that. It just so happens that your tires are part of the journey.
3:43 (Video clip) So we came out for breakfast this morning in Bay City, Michigan. And we ended up driving right into a car show we had no idea...
3:49 But you're making a connection between Americana let's say and your tire. Well now when I need to go buy tires. There's a connection to your brand and you've never even sold me. You've just shown me things that I like, you've made a connection, that maybe I don't even realize, and I go to the tire store. And they say, okay, we can put... . What about that brand? You know, what's that name? Oh, yeah, that name. I really like what they're doing. I like what they're saying. Now you've made a sale without actually selling. That's brand is storytelling. Connect your brand, to people without selling at all.
4:30 And hey, by the way, you can connect multiple brands together. What brands can you work with? So tires, what do tires go on? cars, they go on trucks, they go on ambulances, they go on buses, they go on fire trucks. So you always have these cross promotional opportunities. Now where you can advertise, you can do a branded story with a tire and a car manufacturer. You can do a branded story with a tire and say an outdoors company because you're going to drive And then you're going to go mountain biking, you're going to go kayaking and go camping. And we're not even promoting the tires. You just kind of show them from time to time maybe talk about them from time to time. But it's this journey it's this connection of people, your tires are bringing people together. They're taking them on a journey taking them places, they've never been to, meeting people they've never seen or maybe saving lives. That's branded storytelling.