The key to brandstory is a focus on “brand personality”, or, “brand identity”. Instead of marketing/advertising features and benefits of your products/services, a brandstory focus creates “touchpoints” using your brand’s personality as a guide.

People connect with personalities; not objects and things. That’s why we feel “connected” to characters in books and movies. Customers make similar connections with brands, or products, that focus on brand personality.

It all centers around brand personality. Brand identity becomes the source of all creative for the brand. It also is the filter that all brand experiences must be tested by, in order to verify that the brand experience is in alignment with the brand’s personality. If it is not aligned, there is a “split personality”, and we all know that can’t be good.

The next part of a brandstory-focus of branding is identifying the personality of a brand’s target customer.

All brand experiences must be created either by applying the brand personality, or by centering on the target customer’s personality.

This is more than just “Customer Personas”. This is a deeper look into what transitions a prospect into a customer. Customer Identity looks at how the customer connects with your brand (and products/services) on a practical, and emotional level.

That means “contrast” is needed for a successful design. There needs to be something “different”.

The same is true for business success. We call it “differentiation”, but the rut most brands find themselves in is that overtime they become just like their competition. Think about the typical kind of advertising you see most local car dealerships create. They all advertise the same thing: “Come here for the best price, service, and selection!” And since car dealers often don’t think of differentiating themselves they only thing they have left to do is shout. Yes, that’s right; shout. Their ads feature explosion, rocking music beds, fake echoes (“Sunday, Sunday, Sunday!”), and hurry-up tactics (“This Monday only!”).

It’s easy to see this marketing rut that car dealers find themselves in, but the same trap lures other brands, too. When a company starts losing marketshare to a competitor they quickly want to advertise just like their competition.

But the key to business success is standing out; being different. Instead of becoming like the competition brands need to invest in becoming more of “who they are”. And that requires knowing what makes your brand personality different from the others.

They say, “If you aim at nothing you hit it every time.”

A brandstory focus is effective because in addition to focusing all brand experiences on extending the brand’s identity, or appealing to the customer’s personality, and clearly differentiating from the competition, but also because it is goal-oriented.

Brandstory doesn’t focus simply on immediate, isolated marketing experiences, but how the brand’s personality is revealed over time, through all brand touchpoints, in a cohesive, aligned manner. This level of planning and execution creates synergy and is the key to achieving a brand’s business goals.