How do we define the brand storytelling process as the cornerstone of marketing communications?

Why do we call it storytelling? Brand managers must tell potential and existing customers about the buying and using experience. They must connect the various branding events—moments of truth—into a coherent, meaningful narrative of what it means to use the brand and enjoy its satisfactions. Brand managers succeed when they link brand use to a customer’s social or professional identity. Customers must put themselves in this story, envisioning themselves as an actor “wearing” the brand as a badge of belonging in a larger-than-life drama: part of the whole human family drinking Coke and singing together, for example.

Brand Storytelling Process

The figure above depicts how customers respond to the company’s storytelling process, and suggests that companies build their brands through stories that explain to the customer the buying and using experience. These stories, if created and positioned well, build communities and referrals, emphasizing the pivotal role of advocate storytelling and how they simplify a brand story, optimize the brand story for word-of-mouth retransmission, and tribalize the brand story as a badge of belonging within a community or kenship.

In the brand storytelling process, customers move from a state of ignorance regarding a brand, all the way to acting as an enthusiastic advocate for the brand, in five stages: awareness, involvement, trial, commitment, and referral. These stages mirror the five stages of the brand firm’s value creation process, emphasizing the buyer’s experience and the deepening of trust and reciprocity in the relationship the buyer forms with the brand and its producer.

During the awareness stage, the buyer encounters a relevant offering for which she may or may not currently have an in-the-moment need. She may tuck away in her mind, “If I ever encounter this, I might need Brand X.” She exits the awareness stage when the brand has piqued her interest, linking the offer to a real need or desire.

During the involvement stage, the buyer may scrutinize advertisements, talk with friends, read magazine articles, or otherwise demonstrate an increased appetite for information related to the category and the particular brands within it. The buyer exits this stage when she can accurately associate the brand positionings in the category—generally no more than seven positionings.

During the trial stage, the buyer test-drives cars, visits showrooms, or makes exploratory purchases (in the case of low-cost goods and services). She can write off a meal in a new restaurant, but she balks at spending the time and trouble necessary to uninstall a $50 software program. A buyer exits this stage when she has adopted the category—this stuff works for me—and begins to form a preference for a particular brand.

Repeated buying, using, and disposal experiences lead either to bonding with a brand in the commitment stage or moving back to the trial stage with other brands. Here the customer begins to form emotional allegiances with the brand. In terms of the customer’s brandspace, the brand becomes a go-to brand. If the brand evolves into a badge of belonging, the customer enters a community of like-minded brand users and enters the next stage.

In the referral stage, the brand becomes a currency of exchange among members of the community, and the customer becomes a brand advocate who seeks to expand this group of happy campers. I have many friends with Palm Pilots, for example, who keep trying to convince me to buy one.

Brand managers should use this brand storytelling model to prioritize their investments and explain their allocations to higher executives.