13 Mar Humanise your brand

When it comes to social media and content marketing, the term ‘storytelling’ is used frequently, if not excessively. But what does it really mean?

We, at Akkordien are as guilty as anyone in the exploitation of this term ~ ‘Akkordien: New Media Storytelling’ being our tag-line for the past few years. There is nothing wrong with the act of storytelling. Storytelling still has a vital purpose ~ of entertaining, and building customer loyalty amongst other things ~ but the term itself, being used predominantly as a marketing tool, has lost some of it’s honesty and purpose. Just another obtuse marketing catchphrase, which is the antithesis of what we, as storytellers, are trying to achieve.

For the past fifteen years I’ve worked in various forms of advertising, design and marketing ~ the majority being B2B or Business To Business. A term I’ve never really gelled with. A ‘business’ does not read through a magazine, or watch a video and decide to buy from another ‘business’. A human does. The same applies for B2C, Business To Consumer ~ consumers (people) are tired of being ‘sold’ to by a business. People are tired of clichéd marketing terms, tired of untruthful brand promises and brand perceptions. We want to find out about the humans behind the brand, the stories of their success (and failure).

We would prefer to see what new adventure Richard Branson has been up to, rather than what new destination Virgin Airlines is now flying to. We admire the fact that Crown lager sources their barley from an independent farmer in country Victoria. We respect the small manufacturing business from Hornsby, NSW that creates 90% of their bathroom products locally and encourages diversity in their employment strategy.

To us, this is the true meaning of brand storytelling ~ to give an insight into the people who created the brand and the people who support your brand ~ to give your brand a voice, in all of its imperfectness ~ to ‘humanise’ your brand.