Your brand, whether you know it or not, is made up of stories – your stories, your employees’ stories and the stories others tell about you. Your stories are a key component of your company’s messaging. In addition, you won’t stand out from the crowd by telling the same story as everyone else.
Your goal in this section is to think differently about the stories you tell about your company. A good story is authentic; it’s creative, intimate and emotional. It inspires action and takes the audience on a journey with the brand. Your story’s main character (your business) has a personality. What’s it like? Write down some of these qualities and create a personality profile to refer to and remember.
Keep in mind that your purpose as a company will be one of the qualities of this persona. Make the main character of your story someone that your customers can relate to and identify with – a character with similar values, goals and aspirations. As your customers identify positively with your stories, storytelling becomes authentic “storyselling.”
Your brand voice is a combination of the tone of your communications, the particular words you choose and the style of writing and sentence structure that express the information you communicate. Your brand voice should be distinctive and recognizable and, most importantly, an integral part of your overall brand identity.
Make your brand persona, stories and voice the starting point for all your communications, both internal and external. In this way, your messaging will be honest, authentic, open and consistent.