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How To Develop A Brand Story Communication Strategy
Written by: Jerry BaderArticle Overview: Marketing campaigns should always start with a communication concept: a conceptual premise and framework that attracts attention and engages an audience in a way that penetrates each viewer's mind, and captures the audience's collective consciousness. It is the foundation of your brand story.
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How To Develop A Brand Story Communication Strategy
Marketing
campaigns should always start with a communication concept: a conceptual
premise and framework that attracts attention and engages an audience in a way
that penetrates each viewer's mind, and captures the audience's collective
consciousness. It is the foundation of your brand story.
Developing an
appropriate communication concept is the first step in creating your own
distinctive marketing strategy: a strategy that employs the signature
audio-visual-performance vocabulary needed to create an identifiable
brand-associated campaign presentation. It is this presentation idiom that
provides the communication tools needed to make your brand unique and
memorable.
Technology
Without Understanding is Like Coffee Without A Cup
The
availability of sophisticated technology at relatively low prices has brought
about a communication revolution. Websites, blogs, and social networking sites
have given every marketing manager and entrepreneur access to communication
options that were hereto reserved only for major corporations with million
dollar budgets.
Unfortunately
the ability to use easy-to-learn software applications and high tech digital
hardware, combined with access to an exponentially increasing Internet
audience, doesn't mean the average businessperson has the necessary skills or
understanding needed to communicate effectively within those available Internet
channels.
Mommy,
I Can Do It Myself!
Like the
toddler who claims absolute self-sufficiency only to need mommy to come to the
rescue, so too the do-it-yourself Web-media narcissist ultimately requires
expert marketing communication help, if he or she wants to survive
business-growing pains.
Having an
e-commerce catalogue and lots of search engine optimized traffic doesn't make
your website an automated online bank machine that takes search engine traffic
in one end and spits out money from the other. Having a blog doesn't
automatically make someone interesting or articulate, nor does owning a video
camera make an entrepreneur a creative director or media star.
Marketing
campaigns are about brands, not products or services, and they are definitely
not about features. They are not about the owners, managers, or corporate
directors who run things. No, they are about the story, the brand story, told
in a compelling fashion so that it resonates and impacts the audience in some
meaningful manner.
What we have
in the Web is a communication venue open to any and all comers, most of whom
lack the prerequisite understanding of how to communicate a branded message.
The
Language of Branded Presentation
In the 'Fast
Company' article 'When Great Design Becomes Its Own Language' Joe Duffy talks
about"visual
and verbal linguistics."
"The brands that have been designed in
the best possible ways have their own proprietary language that tells their
story, sets them apart from all the brands they compete with, and connects them
in a very meaningful way to their audience."
- Joe Duffy,
graphic designer and AIGA Fellow
In order to
achieve this kind of sophisticated communication you must understand the
language of presentation. In a TED Conference speech, "The 4 Ways Sound
Affects Us" given by sound expert Julian Treasure, he outlines how sound
affects people physiologically, psychologically, cognitively, and behaviorally.
The same can be said for visuals and performance, the communication elements
that collectively with sound creates the language of brand presentation.
As Julian Treasure
points out in his speech, "inappropriate retail soundscapes can reduce
sales by 28%". If it's true in-store, it's also true on the Web. Add to
that inappropriate dialogue, visuals and performance techniques, and you have a
branding, marketing, and sales disaster on your hands.
Core
Concept Development
Management
consultants will advise managers to create a Mission Statement in order to
serve as a strategic guideline and tactical decision reference; but if that
statement is filled with pointless platitudes and carefully constructed
euphemisms, it is managerially useless and publicly inane.
The answer to
the problem is to start with the one thing that makes you special. Marketing
strategy, the high concept behind your business, and tactical implementation,
the various advertising and promotional initiatives you choose to pursue, need
to be based on that element of your business that makes you different.
The problem
is most companies are not different; they sell the same things, in the same
way, as dozens if not thousands of other companies. It is the job of companies
like ours to help businesses develop a distinctive mark of differentiation, and
come up with effective ways to implement it. In most cases the solution is
found not in the product, service, or operational procedures, but in the way
the emotional and psychological value proposition is presented.
Brand
Story Sustainability
What we are
developing here is a five-point plan for creating a sustainable brand for years
to come; a methodology that creates a unique brand image rather than an
also-ran product, or me-to service that becomes outdated with your competitor's
next upgrade or price cut.
So far we
have four of the five elements: an Emotional and Psychological
Value Proposition; a Mark
of Differentiation; a
Communication Concept,
and a Presentation Language. The fifth element is your Concept Arc. The Concept Arc is how your campaign
leads your audience to where you want them to be, and believe what you want
them to believe?
Put another
way, you have access to website traffic, an audience that is searching for
something, it is the job of your brand story to reach deep into that audience's
psychological makeup, and give them a jolt of desire for what you offer. Your
brand story scenario and characters vicariously represent this audience, and as
your onscreen brand representatives move through the plotted arc from
skepticism and mistrust to acceptance and desire, so too will your audience.
Your brand
story can be built on any number of scenarios, including a quest, adventure, pursuit, rescue,
escape, revenge, riddle, rivalry, underdog status, temptation, transformation,
maturation, love, forbidden fruit, self-sacrifice, discovery, achievement, and
conflict, (based on research scientist, Dr. Melvyn P Heyes discussion of plot
at screenwritingscience.com).
A
Web Audience Must…
Linda Cowgill
in her book "The Art of Plotting: Add Emotion, Suspense, and Depth to Your
Screenplay" states, "They [the audience] must be able to understand
it [the presentation] with eyes and ears as they watch the scene unfold. …
drama requires more than the sum of a number of incidents." In the same way branding requires more
than the sum of features.
If you haven't
already figured it out, the best way to implement such a brand strategy is with
an ongoing Web-video campaign, but if you still have doubts consider that a Web
audience must relate to your brand in a way that conjures life experience,
values, attitudes, and preconceptions. That audience must identify with the
characters and relate to their problems, concerns, issues, and/or needs. That
audience must be affected and subconsciously influenced by the performance, as
well as visual elements, sound design, and mnemonics. That audience must relate
to and interpret the verbal and nonverbal messages on both a conscious and
subconscious level. And an audience must be able to remember and recall the
brand personality established so that it becomes a life style choice rather
than a mere commodity purchase.
What it all
comes down to is connecting with customers on a human level. Maybe you have
substantial website traffic, or maybe you don't, but whatever the number of
visitors, what is important is that nobody who visits your website should leave
without understanding what you do, and remembering why they should care.
Article Tags: businessperson, collective consciousness, communication concept, communication options, communication revolution, communication tools, digital hardware, dollar budgets, exponentially, internet audience, internet channels, marketing campaigns, marketing manager, marketing strategy, necessary skills, social networking sites, sophisticated technology, span style, style font, visual performance
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About the Author: Jerry Bader RSS for Jerry's articles - Visit Jerry's website Jerry Bader is Senior Partner at MRPwebmedia, a website design firm that specializes in Web-audio and Web-video. Visit http://www.mrpwebmedia.com/ads, http://www.sonicpersonality.com, and http://www.136words.com. Contact at info@mrpwebmedia.com or telephone (905) 764-1246. About MRPwebmedia People ask, "What do you do?" You could say we inform, enlighten, innovate, and create; you could also say we deliver our clients' marketing messages in memorable ways using video, audio, webmedia campaigns and websites; all created in-house from concept to implementation, from graphic and motion design to Web-design, from script writing to video-production to post-production, from music composition to signature sound design. What do we do? We motivate action by speaking to your audience's real needs. We tell your story so your brand, your message, embeds in the minds of your clients. We are corporate storytellers. Click here to visit Jerry's website The Behavioral Targeting Promise Land Which Website Visitors Are Potential Clients Viral Marketing Lets See How it Works What Makes Your Business So Special How Far Can You Push A Talking Head |
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