The importance of Storytelling in Advertising

With the globalization generated by the arrival of the Internet and the implementation of new communication media, the public now has all the necessary tools to decide how to view content and where to consume it. This has led brands to reformulate their marketing and communication strategies, giving rise to the application of old methods, such as storytelling, to generate stories that are capable of differentiating a brand from the rest, generating a unique brand personality.

What is Storytelling?

We can understand storytelling, in a broad sense, as the art or ability to tell stories. That is, the creation and development of a context and an atmosphere through words. This resource is widely used in marketing and advertising for the strategic construction of brands, since greatly facilitates the emotional connection with users, whether in writing, out loud or through a complete story that has a plot and a protagonist.

Storytelling structure

Stories have a basic pattern that we surely all remember from our childhood times: beginning – middle – end. Starting from this base, we find different formulations that will be generated from the target audience, the medium, the objectives that we want to achieve and other factors that will help us to choose the appropriate formulation for our story.

Archetypes in storytelling

Carl Gustav Jung defined a series of personality archetypes to generate stories, based on the unconscious personality of people in a society. Brands can – and should – take advantage of this approach to define your personality in the narrative, identifying with one of the archetypes that have been defined. In the infographic below we leave you a summary of the main archetypes, although it is convenient delve into the psychology of each of them when choosing which one is best suited to represent our brand.

Types of storytelling

Although this type of communication has existed for many years, the truth is that its successful use by brands such as Coca-Cola, Starbucks or Nike has caused many other brands to become interested in learning and applying storytelling in their communication. However, it would be a mistake to do so without taking into account the objectives they want to achieve and, therefore, the type of speech they can make. Based on this, We distinguish 6 types of story:

• Who I am: transmits the hallmarks and what differentiates your brand from the competition. It is useful and widely used for communication objectives of companies such as HP or IBM, where the comparison between products and services can be made objectively.
• What am I here for: On occasions when the message leaves a certain margin of credibility, brands generate a type of storytelling that clarifies the intention or objective of the brand. For example, an NGO could use this type of storytelling to generate transparency.
• Visionary story: The future is considered according to the vision of the brand. It gives a wide variety of options for storytelling, and is widely used by pioneering companies like Apple.
• Educational story: The aim is to capture the attention of the audience so that the ability to internalize the message or learn certain aspects is faster and more intuitive.
• Values in action: It demonstrates the brand's personality and its ability to deal with setbacks. Since the qualities and price of the products are practically homogeneous, the approach of how a brand will solve the problem of consumers can generate a discourse that stands out. For example, Ikea uses the story of its founder, Ingvar Kamprad, as an example of savings and innovation for its brand story.
• “I know what you're thinking” story: It is based on the prejudices and rejection that the brand may generate in the audience, to be able to use them to their advantage. It identifies the consumer's fears and, in some way, anticipates them, exposing them in the brand discourse itself in such a way that the positive aspects are praised or the presence of negative aspects is justified.

These would be the most common types of storytelling, although, as we have mentioned, each brand can generate its own type of narrative, adding or subtracting elements from one type or combining several of them. The typology of storytelling proposed by André Matarazzo – creative director of Sid Lee Amsterdam – is also very interesting. We encourage you to take a look.

Importance of Storytelling in advertising and marketing

As we have already mentioned, the purpose of Storytelling is not to convince the audience by talking about the product and its characteristics, but rather it arises with a new approach, trying connect directly with the emotions of the audience. But we cannot just stop at telling a story that entertains them, but rather we seek to reach a discourse, an idea that drives and helps us communicate with our audience so that it feels reflected, both at the level of lifestyle and in the context in which consumption takes place, without ceasing to transmit the information that we need to convey to them.

How to create a brand story?

Storytelling consists of a continuous conversation between the brand and its audience. On the other hand, we find the history of the brand that, although it is nourished by storytelling, should never be confused with it. From the history of our brand we seek Build customer loyalty and get them to accompany us in the changes and evolution of the brand. It is the story behind the stories we tell, which provides the brand with a unique identity.

With this we will be able to transmit our values and generate a more powerful brand image in the eyes of our consumers; one that not only offers you products and information about them, but is personified through the use of emotions and reason. Additionally, this method can also be useful as a corporate exercise, since by reframing the message we want to convey, we will help better determine and clarify the unique mission of our brand.

For our strategy to be successful, we will have to generate a attractive, coherent and interesting content. Crafting a good story takes a lot of time and work that we are forced to put into it. It is one of the most complex actions that a brand can carry out, but one of the most interesting at the level of Content Marketing in the digital medium, since we avoid the advertising bombardment that we have talked about and, at the same time, attracts the client almost without having to search for it, since the valuable content that we publish will attract them autonomously and will generate commitment and loyalty.

Tips for good storytelling

However, it is not enough to just tell stories, we must ensure that our audience is able to internalize and understand what we tell, with the intention that each person, individually, generates their own personal meaning from it. In this way, we manage to tell stories that allow the brand to achieve certain objectives. Below we leave you some brief tips to make storytelling a valuable tool for our brand:

1. Set a striking starting point, in which it is clear what we want to tell and why we want to do it.
2. Style and tone: It will depend on the objectives, the brand and the audience to which the narrative is directed.
3. Text structure: As we have explained above, the usual thing is to base ourselves on the classic division into three parts: presentation – middle – ending. However, depending on the needs of the story, the components of the main parts could vary.
4. Target: The story should always be focused on the target audience that we have set in our strategy, which will make them feel more connected to the brand.
5. Generate emotions: Although we can consider it one of the basic characteristics, it is important to highlight that not all emotions are valid for all objectives. We will not use, for example, humor to raise awareness about a worrying social reality, unless the personality of the brand and the target recommend otherwise.
6. The receiver participates in the meaning: He feels identified and begins to internalize and give his own meaning to the story, based on his context and his personality.
7. Less is more: We must avoid making the story simple, although we must seek simplicity as the basis of our narrative. Generating easy-to-understand stories will help us reach a greater number of people.

What is digital Storytelling?

As we mentioned at the beginning of the article, with the arrival and expansion of the Internet, communication and content became globalized, and the audience had the ability to decide what they wanted to see and how they wanted to see it.

In this way, users have the necessary tools to avoid advertising that does not interest them, or over-information that they were not able to avoid before. Therefore, brands now need to offer something that users want to consume by their own decision or that, at least, they do not want to discard.

How to use Storytelling on social networks?

That our storytelling strategy reaches our users in a natural and positive way may seem like an impossible mission, but We must never forget social networks and their enormous power of communication. If we transfer the coherence and interest that we mentioned before to our social profile, we will give the public the opportunity not only to consume our content, but to share it with their network.

Therefore, the Social Media Manager must always aim for their publications to be full of content and interesting to consumers; and here the narration of our history comes in again, which facilitates this task. Can share the general story of the brand, as well as create small stories that arise from our brand and add value.

If we want to round out the strategy, we can ask our audience to integrate into communication, and share the stories of the people who consume the brand. This, in the eyes of a consumer, not only generates trust – because it supports the message with an outside consumer opinion – but also moves them to interact with the brand and promotes a climate of cooperation that, in turn, generates a memory.

However, it is not enough for our creative writing to achieve communication objectives. We must support our history by taking advantage of the options that social networks offer us; including images. Whether in motion or static, it is an extra that our story is supported by audiovisual content. To do this, the images must be very attractive, hardly needing text to convey emotions, and videos that are capable of Capture users' attention in the first 5 seconds, and excite them from the next 5 seconds.

Examples of good Storytelling in Advertising

Countless big brands have used this technique, after understanding that it is no longer enough to offer a product, but that in the face of very high advertising saturation it is necessary to go further to differentiate your brand from the rest. You can take a look at some of the most striking storytelling campaigns from big brands.

Learn how to do the best advertising with Storytelling

At Miami Ad School we have always been clear about it, that's why We encourage our students to tell stories through creativity, without losing sight of the technique and experience of the best professionals. We leave you the example of our former students Elena and Rodrigo, who have applied everything we have discussed so far – and much more – in their new campaign for the Red Cross with Cheil Spain, which aims to make visible the enormous effort they carry out. families of missing people in Latin America every day.

If you want to control the art of storytelling in advertising To give greater reach and quality to your campaigns, do not hesitate to contact us and we will help you create the stories you have always wanted, with the fundamental elements and with the help of the best professionals.