What the…!
I thought that might get your attention.
Before I go any further, yes it’s true!
Well sort of.
I will explain in a minute.
As you all know ‘the story is in the telling’ and when it comes to you selling your brand whether that’s your personal brand or product brand, the same is true.
Everyone loves a good story I know I do.
Research has shown that our brains become more active when we engage in a captivating story (no surprise there). The power of a good story cannot be overstated and a great brand story is no different.
Marketing tricks come and go but a powerful unique brand story grows and matures in the mind of the customer. The ‘story’ is one of the most important elements of any successful brand.
Bull**** warning
I’m not suggesting you tell lies or invent facts. No!
That strategy will surely come back to bite you in the not too distance future and quite right too.
I am saying be creative, look for the attention-grabbing headline, the seductive theme, the emotional hook and all based on the truth about your brand.
Imagine that you’re sitting in a chic Italian restaurant and the menu of the day contains two choices: the first is described simply as ‘Vegetable Pasta’ and the second is described as ‘Homemade organic Tuscan pasta tossed in a rich Devonshire butter sauce with garlic and garden herbs served with fresh, seasonal vegetables’.
Which choice would you opt for?
According to the book ‘Predictably Irrational’ people who choose the more descriptive option enjoy their meal more than people who choose the less-descriptive option, even though both options are exactly the same meal.
Warning
You can overdo it.
There was a time when if you went into a café and the barista offered you a ‘full-bodied blend of Indonesian coffees, with a smooth, deep, spicy flavour and herbal undertones’ you would have been seduced in a heartbeat.
You would take that coffee and enjoy it like you’ve enjoyed no other coffee.
You’d instantly feel you had discovered something no one else you knew had.
You begin to feel a ittle superior to all those sad uninformed friends who you would be telling as soon as you could.
You were now in the vanguard of something new and exciting, you were a trailblazer, a coffee adventurer, a taste bud explorer.
Oops! I was getting carried away there, but you get my drift.
It’s all about the story, the description, the tagline, the image.
Today; the average downtown coffee shop offers a mind-boggling list of endless, overdone, overused coffee options like ‘full-bodied blend of Indonesian coffees, with a smooth, deep, spicy flavour and herbal undertones’ blah, blah, blah.
That’s because most brands copy their competitors and in the end, no one is offering anything unique.
Back to my story
Yes, I was only 10 years old, we had stopped off on our way back from Australia to the UK by ship. It was 1968 and Mexico were hosting the Olympic games. Our ship was anchored out in Acapulco Bay.
My parents decided to make a quick trip to Mexico city a ten-hour round journey and I asked if I could stay with the ship.
To my amazement and possibly your horror they said yes.
They left me in the care of a couple of old boatmen who had been hired to get us back and forth from the ship to the harbour.
I spent the whole of that first day with them as they sped around the bay picking up supplies and delivery stuff.
To a ten-year-old boy (with a vivid imagination) left on his own with a couple of mean looking Mexicans, in a fast boat, delivering strange packages to even meaner looking desperados, ‘I was totally convinced they were smuggling guns’ and I lived to tell the story.
Finally
If you want to begin creating a brand story that really does inspire and seduce your customers then this is what you should do:
You should signup to my next ‘brand you’ masterclass
The decision is as always – yours. Make it a good one.
