Every day institutions and individuals use storytelling to sell brands and products.

Through storytelling, this communication occurs in a much more effective way than with the mere listing of attributes.

Remember, a good story is one your audience can identify with, elicits emotions from and creates a bond with.

In Part 2, Workana shows you three original ways to tell a powerful story.

Three original ways to tell a story

Below are three compelling stories of established brands, masterfully displaying the tactics listed above.

1. Lego: Building as a family

Undoubtedly your childhood was populated with games using these famous little bricks. But what is perhaps not so well known is the story behind this brand, whose name came about by chance thanks to the genius of a man who sought to overcome many misfortunes.

Lego was a brilliant idea and the rescue raft of the Danish carpenter Ole Kirk Christiansen (1891-1958). In the Great Depression of the 1930s, he went bankrupt and soon after lost his wife. To support his four children, even while grieving, he was able to carve out a story of growth and improvement.

This fantastic film invites you to enter into the exciting adventure of this carpenter who rebuilt his life by dint of creativity and persistence, to bring his family out into the open.

The same creativity and perseverance that you can develop as adults and children when you play at building castles, ships, boats, cities and even robots with Lego kits.

2. Airbnb: Enabling the trust of staying with friends

Joe Gebbia founded Airbnb after welcoming a man he had met on the street, a complete “stranger” into his home.

On a TEDTalk in Vancouver, he says this experience made him realise that far from “stranger equals danger”, strangers are friends to be discovered.

Two years later, a design conference in San Francisco was the occasion for the unscripted launch of Airbnb.

Gebbia was broke and unemployed. He and his best friend, Brian Chesky, turned his apartment into the first accommodation for designers who were going to participate in those four days of the conference.

Soon the first “Airbnb bed and breakfast” was born: for a few dollars, they provided a mattress to sleep on, a work table with a good wi-fi connection and breakfast every morning.

The two friends sought funding to scale up the project, but in the eyes of the investors, it all seemed a bit crazy. Opening the intimacy of one’s home to strangers and staying with strangers were very risky challenges.

Gebbia and Chesky focused on their design skills to create a website to counter the prejudice that a stranger is synonymous with danger.

They found that user reviews were the heart of the matter: with excellent reviews, they could build a reputation. And with it, gain the confidence necessary to overcome the human tendency to flee from the different, from the unknown.

Airbnb introduced a new social trend – travelling could now be more than just visiting tourist sites. The brand offered a different, more vibrant experience – the knowledge of different cultures through human encounter, sharing the intimacy of home.

3. Dove: The unique beauty in every woman

Over time, Dove has positioned itself as a cosmetic brand that affirms the unique charm of every woman. The following Dove video is an excellent example of Storytelling. It relates a kind of experiment in three moments:

• Gil Zamora, a portrait artist from the FBI, draws several women, blindly following the description they give for their most prominent facial features.

• Then, based on other people’s testimonies, the artist makes a second portrait.

• Finally, each woman confronts the two portraits: the first one, based on the look on herself; the second one, drawn from the impressions of fleeting witnesses, shows that they are much more beautiful than they think.

Conclusion

Brand success lies in the ability to build a presence within people’s minds and in their lives. In this sense, storytelling can help establish the first connection to forge a bond with your consumers and potential customers.

A well-told story allows you to lay the foundations for a relationship that will last into the future. It will make your brand grow, based on those very values that you stand for and that your audience shares or longs to live.

May this be the beginning of many success stories for your brand!

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