Today I’m pleased to present a guest post from Marcelo Douek. He is a Director at Lukso Story & Strategy, which is a Brazilian Branding Consulting firm that specializes in discovering and creating great stories for brands. He approached me via email and asked if I would be interested in posting this interview that he did with a student from South Africa who is studying the fields of storytelling, marketing and branding. I am delighted to do so. I have made a few changes to the document he sent in terms of adverbs, etc. but otherwise left it alone. I enjoyed the way he translated some of his native tongue into English. (See the last sentence in #2 for an example. It expresses the principle beautifully.)
Thank you for sending this our way Marcelo. Stories are indeed the universal language and it’s nice to know that storytelling is enjoying the same popularity in South America as it is in North America, Europe and Australia.
1. Storytelling in branding. From a branding perspective, how would you define a story?
The concept of Story has a broad range of definitions. I believe that more important than trying to define story through the eyes of branding, is to understand the role of storytelling in the branding environment. Stories are the best way to pass information over, to engage and create emotional connections between people. If a brand intends to do any of these things with their consumers (and I think all brands should), then storytelling is a very nice way of achieving it.
2. What makes a successful story?
There are few things that successful stories have in common: first, they have a clear vision of the message they want to transmit. Second, they have a consistent fictional universe where the story happens. Third, interesting and deep characters who are able to express feelings and connect to the audience. And last, a good bunch of conflict.
3. In your opinion, why do brands need a good brand story?
I believe that stories are the most effective way to engage people. Quoting Isak Dinesen who said “To be a person is to have a story to tell” I think that all brands have stories to tell, but most of them don’t understand the mechanisms of storytelling to create brilliant stories that would enhance their performance through real emotional connections.
4. How do brands use these stories strategically, in their image, positioning, identity etc. What is the importance of storytelling for brands?
Brands can use storytelling in two ways:
a) One way is by spreading their real history, but treated in a way that is powerful and remarkable. Those stories (if well told) can inspire every sort of branding tool from positioning to design. Does your positioning reinforce any aspect of your story? Is your design coherent with the key concepts behind your story? Those are some examples of how good stories can inspire brand strategy.
b) What if your company does not have such a great history that can be translated in a compelling story? What you should do is an internal look of your values and principles and from there, create a good story (not necessarily inspired from history) that can express those principles and be interpreted through branding tools.
5. Which brand stories do you feel have worked, and not worked. And why?
I believe that Innocent Smoothies (UK) have done a great job on what I call brandstorytelling. They have their little “innocent story” on how the company started and the “spirit” (and values) of this story have been expressed in every single touch point of the brand, starting from their name going through packaging, advertising, promotions etc…
I won’t quote any bad job in particular but I can say that there are a lot of companies trying to tell little funny and useful stories in their advertising spots when in my opinion, they should be thinking storytelling in a more strategic approach, creating stories that express their values and managing them into their brand strategies.
6. How is meaning and value created through the stories of brands?
As I said before, a story (of any kind) is the most powerful way to create meaning for people. If a brand is capable of creating a story which is truly connected to its principles, the brand is going to attract consumers that agree (or believe) with those principles in an emotional way, creating huge bonding between brands and consumers.
7. What role do you feel storytelling plays in building a brand and leveraging the creation of shared symbolic meaning?
As we saw, storytelling is a very good way to present brand principles. There is a big challenge on the creation of stories, but once it’s achieved, I believe that it plays a really important role on the process of brand building. People need stories in their lives and more than that, they understand things through stories. If your brand has principles that are shared with your consumers, a good story will make these thoughts come together, uniting brand and consumers.
8. What is your opinion regarding the consumer culture of consumption? And the consumer pursuit for symbolic meaning and using brands to construct their identities?
First of all, I think this question has elements enough to develop a whole study around it. But if I could answer it in few words, I would say that the culture of consumption is between us and it’s very difficult to a person in a developed country to live out of it. By then, the most important question in my opinion is what role each brand wants to play in this system. Brands can chose from being responsible or not, being sustainable or not. I believe that the brands who have the sensibility to understand those elementary questions, absorb them into their business strategies, translate them into good stories (and here I’m talking about creation of symbolism) and that make sense to the society, are those which are most likely to succeed.
9. Which advertising medium do you think is the most effective in telling the brand story?
I think the debate of advertising mediums is kind of outdated. That said, I believe video is the best format for storytelling. Which medium works better? Really doesn’t matter. It’s obvious that television has some limitation (30 second debate) and because of that, the Internet gets more interesting. The other good thing about the internet is the possibility of interaction, which for sure, is able to increase the storytelling experience.
10. What is your opinion regarding the hyperreality created by advertising?
I believe that this is a disease of the advertising industry. As products got more and more equal, agencies tried to create alternate fake realities to sell more. It actually worked for a long time (70s, 80s and 90s) but the Internet forced companies to be transparent and in this new scenario, the hyper reality doesn’t make sense anymore.
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