Brand narrative
A brand narrative is a concise story that underpins an organisation’s marketing and communications and should be informed by the brand positioning strategy. A brand’s narrative and tone of voice work together to create a consistent and compelling brand identity.
A brand’s narrative and tone of voice work together to create a consistent and compelling brand identity.
Introduction to brand narrative
The brand narrative provides the context and meaning to an organisation, uncovering its history, personality and messaging. The tone of voice is interwoven into a brand’s narrative and can be friendly, humorous, formal, empathetic or authoritative, depending on the brand’s identity and purpose.
What is brand narrative, and why is it important?
A brand narrative can significantly impact the perception that an audience has of an organisation and can, therefore, affect user engagement, trust, credibility and loyalty.
The role of brand narrative
The overarching role of the brand’s narrative is to communicate its identity and engage with its users in a way central to its purpose and intentions.
Benefits of a well-defined brand narrative
A well-defined brand narrative provides clarity and consistency for an organisation, delivers persuasive and impactful marketing messages to the intended audience, and gives an organisation a competitive edge.
Supporting your users needs
Achieve clarity and consistency
Develop an emotional connection
Create differentiation
The 4 stages of developing a brand narrative
Stage 1: Review existing materials
A checklist is supplied to the client requesting materials, this is supplied as a PDF and a space on a Google Drive is created for the client to upload materials. If they exist, the client should supply any information or documents related to the following:
- Business goals and objectives
- Positioning
- Mission & Vision
- Values
- Personas
- Brand or writing style
Stage 2: Conduct research
It can be useful to conduct interviews with relevant members of the team and customers to understand how the company believes it is perceived and how it is actually perceived by its customers.
Stage 3: Workshop
The goal of the stakeholder workshop is to gather input from stakeholders around what they believe the key message and proof points are, and importantly what they are not. Knowing what stakeholders, and customers, expect is crucial in helping to guide the messaging framework options in the next stage.
Stage 4: Messaging framework
Using the MiC messaging framework, 2-3 options should be created and presented to the client for feedback.
What’s included
The framework will consist of the chosen and approved brand narrative. This will include the way an organisation should communicate with their users, and the kind of language that should be used from both a verbal and written standpoint, and how this should be used in both internal and external communications.
Why choose Make it Clear
At Make it Clear, we take an evidence-based approach to everything we do. Understanding your organisation, audiences, and the context in which they interact is paramount to how we work and deliver a best-in-class user experience.