How to Use Brand Storytelling and Custom Merchandise to Become a Meaningful Brand

Being a “meaningful brand” is neither a buzz word or a fading trend — it’s a real deal metric of success in today’s supersaturated marketplace. It’s what helps distinguish your brand from the others and what lasting customer relationships are built on. 

To be a meaningful brand, according to the Yale Center for Business and the Environment, is to cultivate a connection between human quality of life and well-being with brands at a business level. 

Being meaningful matters. A recent study from the Havas Media Group, the marketing and communication masterminds behind brands like CocaCola and McDonald’s, found that people wouldn’t mind if 77 percent of the world’s brands were no longer. 

So how do you ensure your brand falls within the meaningful 23 percent?

Tell a compelling brand story

If your brand has a killer story, it humanizes it and shows the bigger picture of why your brand matters. With a compelling and consistently told story, your target audience can connect with your brand on an emotional level. It builds trust, authenticity, and relatability with your brand.

Brands that do this well tell their story from the mountaintops — they share it on their website with concise messaging, in their blog with related articles that support the story in some way, they shout out it into the social ethers until they’re blue in the face, and they thread it throughout their custom merchandise line.

Three tips to start crafting your brand narrative

1. Brand identity and purpose: Think about who the brand is, its values, purpose, why it matters, and how it’s different from others.
2. Who are you telling the story to? When creating your brand narrative, keep your target audience in mind — those people who you want to do business with — get to know them and make them the main characters in your overall brand story.
3. Keep it real: This part is important and sometimes requires a brand to show their soft side, but is critical because it humanizes the brand and ups the relatable factor. Chances are your target audience feels the same way you do about the problem you’re looking to solve and will be relieved by the authenticity and truth in your story. 

Whatever your industry or business size, Anthem Branding will work with you to hear your challenges, listen to your business objectives, and work tirelessly to craft a unique solution. Connect with one of our brand experts to see what we can create together in order to bring your brand to the next level.