Brand storytelling: how to, and using AI (part 1)

I guess we’re all convinced of the importance of long-term storytelling, content, and the necessity to use this for building your brand. Unfortunately, in daily content practice, brands still focus on short-term content, campaigns, conversion, and performance-focused.

What’s wrong here? It can’t be a lack of knowledge. Is it fear, short-sightedness, a not-invented here, ego, or has senior management a hard time convincing the board on these long-term, not attributable investments?

Warning, this is a very long read; I give you the ammunition to fire your content guns and lock in significant budgets. And how you can use AI for this. 
  

→ Part 1. Society and content behavioral changes, first-party data, and using AI 
Some societal background information on why you need a brand storytelling platform to reach the new generations and collect first-party data along the way. This first-party data is the base of your business case.

• Our new society and a new generation
• Changes in content consumption
• First-party data
• How to use AI

→ Part 2. How to set up a brand storytelling platform, budget needed, business case, and more AI 
The ballpark budget and five necessary steps to set up a brand storytelling platform. Including some tips for stakeholder management, reporting, and locking in next year’s budget. 

Spoiler on part two 
The ballpark budget for your first year is 500k, of which 300k is for content production. 

For the distribution, my advice is to invest in a newsletter strategy to get the most out of your first-party data, don’t skip paid and rely on owned and earned, and invest in SEO; that’s your fundament. 

To be clear, pushing the content on organic social, will not move any needle. You need paid social to get any reach.  And if you have some amazing strong hero content, you can have some reach via earned, keep in mind that will be shortlived and fades out quickly. More reasons to get a solid first-party data newsletter strategy in, invest in paid social and embrace SEO. 

Read more in Part two. 

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Our new society and a new generation

Times have changed. We have changed. Digitization. Social media. COVID-19. Working from home. Climate changes. AI. Always on, never off. 

Next to this are the recent hyper-fast developments of AI. It almost feels like the more efficient and productive we get with AI, the more we can lower our other pace. The recent trend, ‘Quiet luxury,’ is hopefully the first step in this direction.

It looks like the fast-consumption pushy marketing days are becoming a thing of the past (yay!). There is increasingly more focus on sustainability, diversity, and inclusion. We're tired of overconsumption and leaning into minimalism with high-quality goods, and we’re slowing down. Nowadays, we pay more attention to how we spend our money.  Where and what we buy matters. Brands matter.

Today, a brand’s mission, vision, and values become important again. The ‘why’ a brand does what it does and how it contributes to a better society, now is a crucial factor to buy the ‘what’ of the brand. Or not.

Brands can the brand storytelling content platform to show and tell their ‘why’, and collect first-party data along the way. 

Changes in content consumption

The overload of content leads to scattered attention and content-tiredness. There is so much content out there, of which at least 60% is crap. Crappy content has the brand's interest in mind, focusing on short-term sales, jumping from campaign to campaign without an overarching storyline.

The result is a change in content consumption

• Content pull instead of a content push. The consumer decides if they want to see your content or not. One-click swipe, and your content is gone.
   
• Content abundance. Consumers don’t want more content; they want better content. Content that adds value. Remember, nobody wants to be marketed to. It’s not about the fast and very snackable; it’s about leaving an impression and being remembered.
   
• In times of content abundance, there’s a scarcity of attention. We become more and more selective about what we pay attention to and what we do not—resulting in quality over quantity.

First-party data

First-party data is the data directly collected by the brand, e.g., clicking behavior on web and app, purchase and transactional data, loyalty programme, or newsletter subscriptions. This first-party data becomes more important with all privacy concerns and tech no-trace developments. If you have the first-party data, you can contact your consumer directly and build a relationship with them.

A big prerequisite in the relationship is that you add value when you contact your consumer. You teach them something new, or you make them smile. Your primary reason for contacting them may never be to cold-sell them some new stuff. Remember, nobody wants to be marketed to.

Keep this in mind, the first-party data is the foundation of your business case and one of the main reasons to launch your brand storytelling platform.

In part two, you learn how to get a content strategy to use this first-party data. 

How to use AI

The most obvious usage of AI would be content creation. I dare to say that the real success of AI is in using it to define your strategy and editorial formula. Use AI for research, competitors' analysis, and ideation.

It’s good to know that ChatGPT is a generative AI. In short, it’s a language model with a chat-like interface that works based on probabilities. This means ChatGPT doesn’t give you genuinely new insights, strategies, or ideas. 

That said, the best part of generative AI is that it has no bias, judgments, or view of its own. Use that to your advantage. ChatGPT can help you by giving rational arguments. Together you can sharpen your thinking, broaden your mind, and come up with a different approach.

Next to that, the content that ChatGPT can create for you is quite easy to recognize. To make ChatGPT's output your own, often takes more time rewriting than creating from scratch. At least, that's my experience. 

→ Read more in ‘ChatGPT, your wingman’ and in ‘How to recognize ChatGPT copy’

Examples

Here are three brands that excel in content for storytelling. Showing their ‘why’ and daring to tap into something bigger than their ‘what,’  the product. 

Patagonia, On Running, and KLM's blog all have in common that they seldom to no posts about their products; they tell a story that weaves seamlessly into their mission, vision, and values—jobs well done. Small sidenote, it looks like KLM's blog is not updated anymore. Nevertheless, it still is a great example. 

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Next: how to set up a brand storytelling platform 

Knowing we’re in a new society with a different outlook and expectations on brands and our content behavior has changed, why not tap into this and vamp up your brand storytelling with a content platform?

These are the five steps to success

1. Business case, objectives, KPIs, and ballpark budget expectations
2. Editorial formula with content topics, reflecting your ‘why’
3. Help-hub-hero content in line with your topics
4. Media strategy: how to get the eyeballs via earned, owned, and paid distribution
5. Using that first-party data

 Read more in part two. 

Brand storytelling and a newsroom

In my humble opinion, you can combine your newsroom with a brand storytelling platform. Both are content and tell the brand's story and bring news. The first is more focused on the press, and the second is more on the consumer. Yet, these days, both are blending in. 

You want to feed the press with more brand and some product information to enable them to create a more integrated story. And you want the consumers to be the first to know about news, via the press or directly from you. 

Next to that, if your distribution and media strategy is on par, most visitors will land via a deep-link directly on a specific page. They'll don't even see the homepage and click through to other content from that specific landing page. 

Read more

In the next part, you'll learn how to set up a brand storytelling platform, budget needed, business case, and more AI/ 
The ballpark budget and five necessary steps to set up a brand storytelling platform. Including some tips for stakeholder management, reporting, and locking in next year’s budget. 

Spoiler on part two 
The ballpark budget for your first year is 500k, of which 300k is for content production. 

For the distribution, my advice is to invest in a newsletter strategy to get the most out of your first-party data, don’t skip paid and rely on owned and earned, and invest in SEO; that’s your fundament.

→ Brand storytelling: how to, and using AI (part 2); Five steps for set up, budgets needed, and the business case

Disclaimer

All information, ballpark numbers, budget indications, and insights are my own. These are not related to any of my clients. The costs for FTE, agencies, and paid media are not included in the budgets.