If you want to make a life-long mark with your brand presence efforts, know this – emotional brand storytelling works.
So how does it actually work? This is due to the fact that the actual services or products we market every so often are – when all’s done and dusted – lifeless. Here at All Good Tales, we encourage brands to create an engaging, emotional PR campaign so as to bring life and soul to the products and thus allow the audience to associate the brand with positive and warm emotions.
PR campaigning today is more than just getting your name out there, or showcasing the amazing services you offer. It’s about strengthening your brand presence through emotional branding. Like mentioned beforehand, services or products that are marketed are hugely lifeless. They’re made of mere materials or ingredients. No matter if you eat Taytos or Keogh’s, you’re munching crisps off an aluminium foil packet. You might prefer Walker’s crisps – but when you open the packet, the same spuds made with pretty much the same ingredients are inside just like as in the Taytos or Keogh’s.
Crisps, buildings, phones. Cars, shops, computers. Apps, games, bicycles.
It’s all just soulless material, isn’t it?
Well, in principle, yes. But it would be misleading to imply that there’s nothing more to it.
Enter Emotional Brand PR Campaigning
Most brands know that their services – in normal circumstances – are time and again almost similar to those offered by their contenders. Nevertheless – and in fact for this very reason – they also know that they need to distinguish themselves in some way, form or fashion. And so it is to brand PR campaign that they turn to do so.
The great ones – and almost consistently the winning ones – employ emotional branding.
The question is, what is emotional branding?
Well, emotional branding refers to the procedures that smart businesses employ to stimulate and appeal to clients by influencing how they feel about the effectively emotionless products being marketed.
Out of the foil packet, you’ve simply got flakes of potatoes. No matter which you decide to munch, you’re going to end up with pretty much the same results – a flavour of vinegar ‘n salt or cheese ‘n onion on your taste buds.
So – why do you prefer Taytos, Walkers or Keogh’s? Because, somewhere along the line, you’ve been emotionally bound to buy one over the other. They might have been recommended by a friend (trust), you are more familiar with them (more trust) or your taste buds might have been tantalised by the campaign you saw on telly (delight). You might have been convinced that none of the alternatives would get your taste buds excited.
In any of the above examples, you will have been made to feel something about some particular flakes of spuds packaged in an aluminium foil packet. And that’s the power of emotional brand PR campaigning.
Why Storytelling is Vital to Emotional Branding
Ok, so how do we get started building an emotional PR strategy?
The answer is in two words – brand storytelling.
Brand storytelling is a powerful emotional PR technique for the simple reason that stories – almost by definition – are a dramatic means that carry the client through an emotional journey.
Since the emergence of language, storytellers have been perfecting the art of ensnaring their audiences’ undivided attention through the creation and portrayal of captivating narratives. Storytelling connects listeners to the storyteller emotionally. Good stories engage listeners emotionally. Engaged emotions create empathy with the speaker. When all’s said and done, empathy is what brands want to arouse in consumers when they conduct emotional PR campaigns.
Enter Giant Brands and Emotional Brand Stories
The more a business can connect with a client on a personal level, the more affection that client will have to the brand. From a product viewpoint, some of the giant brands in the world like Coca-Cola, Apple and Google, spark an emotional sensation when they are said aloud – mostly positive ones. The important aspect is the feeling they stimulate, so we relate our stories associated with the brands.
Not surprisingly, there has been a noticeable shift in the last several years in branding towards a more connected, warm and personal message. For example, Coca-Cola once tapped into the need to belong in their widespread ‘Share a Coke’ campaign. By marking each coke product with a different name across the whole world, it created a personal emotional connection with the brand. It also created huge publicity for Coke with consumers sharing pictures of their bottles on social media and obviously a witty meme or two.
