Class Leadership Report Using Brand Narratives Saumya Soni – 211340916 | Satyameet Ahuja - 211334778

A successful brand may be catering and encompassing multi-faceted features or elements in the market. However, what makes it a brand is the identity it stands for. At McDonald, for instance, meals are not the only component what attracts the consumers, it is the meal combined with quality, service, value for money, social involvement and place to have fun with family, that creates a unique experience – aptly complimented by ‘I’m loving it’. But how do you portray these multiple facets worth promoting through a single medium to multitudes of consumers to reveal/unfold the brand identity? Well, welcome to the advent of Internet followed by that of social media networking, if the brand wants to tell its story and be closely knitted to its consumers while displaying all that it has to offer and connect with, using brand narratives is the way. Essentially, the concept of Brand narratives starts with what brands are: The stories and experiences consumers associate them with.

Emergence of digital marketing propagated by Social media has clearly crafted a shift in how brands reach out to consumers or how they need to reinvent their marketing across all media while unfolding brand traits to consumers at each unique touch point. Until a decade back, what ruled was a monotonous marketing of brands – a one-way promotion and a single segment focus, assuming that a brand will successfully communicate to a large mass of consumers based on one underlying need they share in common. However, now brands are increasingly marketed through multi-dimensional and multi-segmented storytelling– what is popularly being coined as Brand Narration/Journalism! Instead of one positioning statement, now marketers conceptualize a “positioning narrative”. Why so - Evolution of markets, technology and social connection have opened the gateway to communication and subsequently enlightened consumers of the layers of needs, motivations, and concerns they have; followed by their desire to self-express. A brand needs to address all these and more to grow. In place of rigid positioning statements, customer-driven brand positioning narratives permit companies to better align their messages with smaller, more defined, perhaps more local, consumer segments and to deliver more germane and engaging communications.

i This should ideally lead to consumers viewing the brand through their own perspective, usage

requirements and needs. The brand narrative is a partnership, started by the company but ultimately steered by the consumers. Your brand narrative is what people have to say about you, and how they connect emotionally with your product or service.

ii Similar to extending

a global brand to local markets, a ‘brand narrative’ seeks to communicate a unified brand position to audiences who may be psychographically very different. Brand narratives offer the opportunity to combine three interesting trends:

iii

• The idea that brands should be telling stories • The layering of a brand’s messages across different channels and platforms, allowing each to play to their strengths • Our desire to retell, repurpose and remix stories themselves These trends if strategically leveraged across the multiple channels will allow the brands to remain vibrant & alive in the minds (and perhaps, hearts) of consumers. A good storyboard for a brand typically uses traditional media to build brand awareness; digital media to empower the message and build customer retention; and social media to create brand ambassadors and ensure vibrancy for the brand. Customer stories stand testament to the brand’s position. To illustrate, the Dove "Real Beauty" campaign shook the cosmetic world a few years back by standing up for individual self-esteem and exhorting people to question and defy the pretense of media-defined beauty.

iv They did this through strategically unfolding

the different elements/facets of the brand through Television, Youtube, and Facebook.

The “brand narrative”, however, constantly has to address following challenges in the purview of how brand is positioned:v

• Market Evolution: From a marketing perspective, we all used to be part of one large audience that shared many similar tastes and viewing experiences. That was long before Tivo or YouTube or even broadband internet connections

• Consumer Authority: When all companies open new lines of communication & more actively engage their consumers in the marketing process, every company is more receptive to change, and the entire market becomes as vibrant, volatile and capricious as its consumers

• Consumer Intelligence: Research, product savvy & personal values, empowered by information technologies, are also challenging conventional ‘positioning’ as key factors in decision-making

• Relevancy: Relevancy requires the flexibility to dress the same positioning in the clothes of each consumer group while continually keeping one’s eye on fashion trends

• Accountability: Positioning is a very subjective, qualitative concept that can be interpreted in many ways and conveyed in many forms – marketing, personal transactions, word of mouth, press, reputation, etc. Ultimately it is the cumulative set of experiences with the brand, versus other brands, that combine to form the consumer’s mind share.

• Consistency: While narratives permit a more liberal, flexible expression of the brand position a balance between the articulation of a brand, its core purpose and existing market conditions is required

i http://www.ddb.com/pdf/yellowpapers/DDB_YP_BrandNarratives_0108.pdf ii http://www.firstbestordifferent.com/blog/?p=1389 iiihttp://misterthreesixty.wordpress.com/2009/04/29/brand-narratives-whats-the-story ivhttp://www.wikibranding.net/2008/05/whats-your-brand-narrative.html v http://www.ddb.com/pdf/yellowpapers/DDB_YP_BrandNarratives_0108.pdf