brandknewmag.com
30
Content marketing is enjoying its moment in the sun. With
the expectation—and added pressure—for brands to create
more more content, now is a good time to ask a simple
question: What’s the content of your content?
Here are three types of questions that every brand should
answer to give people a clearer sense of who you are, where
you’re taking them, and why you matter. (Others, such as
author Nancy Duarte and mythologist and writer Joseph
Campbell have spoken about storytelling in similar terms.)
1. What does the world look like if you
get your way?
When Martin Luther King, Jr. spoke on the steps of the
Lincoln Memorial in 1963, he talked for 11 minutes before
he mentioned having a dream. It’s known as the “I Have a
Dream” speech, however, because of its last five minutes.
His vivid description of how the world should be was a
guidepost, a rendering of a just society that supporters could
work toward building.
Great brands paint a similar picture. Tiny Speck’s co-founder
Stewart Butterfield put it this way in a memo to his team
about Slack, a real-time messaging platform: “We need to
make [potential customers] understand what’s at the end of
the rainbow if they go with Slack…”
When you show people your blueprint for the future, you
invite them to help you create it. More of them will apply,
join, buy, give, sign up, and sign in when they understand
how that action contributes to a larger effort.
athlete.
A few years later, another great brand celebrated rebels,
misfits, and troublemakers, the ones you can glorify or vilify
but never ignore. Its story was very clear on what it would
take change the world. We had to think different.
People want to associate with brands that share their beliefs.
If you don’t tell them what yours are, you never give them the
opportunity to agree with you.
Example: Everlane’s concept of Radical Transparency
encourages customers to ask how, how much, and why.
3. What are you doing right now to make
that world a reality?
Moleskine makes notebooks, right? Yes, but that’s not the
value it creates for customers. As director of Branding and
PR Erik Fabian explains, Moleskine creates “platforms and
containers for imagination.”
In the world Moleskine is building, imagination thrives. To
get there, personal expression and organization are critical.
Its products provide the answer, so its stories celebrate what
people do with those products.
Your products and services should be proof of the progress
toward the world you’re trying to build. The stories you tell
need to demonstrate how your products and services are
helping customers get there, too.
Example: The films in Siemen’s Answers series show how its
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