Understanding how your brand emotionally resonates with consumers is a powerful tool, which will allow you to position your message most appropriately and personalise your brand story in order to reach the right audience, at the right time.
Everyone loves a good story. When done well, storytelling can take people on an emotional journey that creates a strong bond with your brand. Historically, storytelling has played an important role in everyday life; passed on through word of mouth, stories have the emotionally charged ability to drive people to action. Stories have the power to relate to different people in different ways, through various touch points that inspire an individualised connection. Therefore, by implementing a strong branded story within your marketing campaigns, you can bring your brand to life, with a tale that consumers can relate to on an individual level.
Engaging consumers with great content
Experiential marketing is a fantastic tool for producing great content. By adding real value to your campaign, you can engage your audience personally by telling your brand’s story with a great experience, which can always be amplified with social media efforts to reach a wider audience. Additionally, communicating with consumers on a face to face basis allows brands the unique opportunity to reach your target audience directly. This highlights the importance of being armed with a strong campaign story to enable emotional two-way interactions, that are consistent with your overall brand identity.
Coca Cola exemplifies this concept perfectly. With engaging and creative experiential campaigns, Coca Cola consistently maintains the brand’s umbrella values of refreshing the world and inspiring moments of optimism. Recently, a Coca Cola ‘Happiness Truck’ surprised unsuspecting consumers in a variety of locations, including Rio de Janeiro, Kenya and Mongolia to name a few. With the combined experiential tactics of live event sampling, prize giving and an element of gaming, Coca Cola focused upon the story strapline ‘Where will happiness strike next’, taking the Coca Cola truck to places they’ve never been before, and inspiring consumers with a memorable, moving and engaging international campaign.
A similarly engaging brand is Disney, who focus on magical storyline concepts in order to inspire both children and adults with memorable and moving experiences. From the personification of favourite Disney characters, to various initiatives to inspire the memorability factor of the Disney experience, the brand tells consistent stories of family values and pleasure with a sprinkling of magic.
Finally, one of the best examples of adding value to people’s life through storytelling is Tropicana’s ‘Brighter Mornings for Brighter Days’ experiential campaign. This brilliant promotion provided residents of Inuvik, a remote town in the Canadian Arctic, with an artificial sun for one month of their winter – a season that ordinarily brings no sun whatsoever due to its extreme northern location. With this campaign, Tropicana created a real brand experience by following the basic principles of engagement strategies: do something remarkable, add value to the audience and finally entertain people.
The goal with brand storytelling is to transition the consumer from awareness towards trial and advocacy. Conceptual planning, combined with storytelling and live consumer experiences are excellent mechanisms to move consumers through the ranks and change their perception of your brand. It is vital to carry your unique story throughout all marketing touch points, which will allow your brand identity to shine through, and inspire personal and emotional connections with each and every one of your customers. Experiential marketing can provide the perfect platform to personally deliver your story, with unique live experiences so awe-inspiring that consumers will not be able to resist realying to friends and family through word of mouth communications, thus extending the reach and effectiveness of your stories and marketing messages.
Hotcow is a multi-award winning brand engagement agency specialising in experiential marketing. Our mission is simple: to help brands understand the power of “experience-based marketing” and offer expertise in how to develop, plan and execute campaigns in the right way to get the right results. For more information or a free consultation contact us.