By Rohit Varma
If a brand campaign needs to work, it needs to have a story, also a powerful one which evokes certain emotions, else it will fall flat and will not deliver the desired results.
Let’s first understand why brand campaigns are important.
We want to connect with our audience and we also want our audience to connect with us. We want them to relate to us and believe in us. At the end of the day, the audience must connect emotionally and feel that this is the perfect brand for them.
When there is no story, there is no emotion, which means you cannot establish a connection with the audience and you cannot build brand loyalty. Storytelling, by all means, is the heart and the soul of a campaign.
In today’s world when consumers have too many options, building brand loyalty is a massive challenge. And to address this challenge, brand campaigns with the right story can do wonders.
So, what’s your story?
Brand campaigns are largely upper-funnel campaigns and their objective is to build an emotional connection with the defined audience.
Let’s also break down the audience. We have the direct audience and the aspirational audience. Direct audiences are those who can afford to buy our product or service, while aspirational audiences are those who ‘aspire’ to buy them. They are our future customers.
In a brand campaign, you can play in the safe zone, which most of the brands do. But then there are some who are willing to challenge the norms. And there are others, who believe in disrupting the norm and come up with campaign narratives that have nothing to do with the product or the service.
Lifebuoy’s learn how to wash hands campaign takes the straightforward approach of educating its audience about washing their hands and plugging in the product through the messaging. It’s effective, because when you think about it, how many of us don’t actually wash our hands the way we are supposed to.
In the case of Ariel’s ‘Share The Load’ campaign, it disseminates an important message about dividing household responsibilities. The story here hits home for many of its viewers, going beyond what a detergent ad would normally do.
And then there is CRED that blew up the internet with its out-of-the-box thinking when Rahul Dravid screamed at the road and said ‘Indiranagar ka gunda hoon main’. Outrageous and on point!
Safe zone is where you work with certain presumptions and focus on emotions like humour, happiness, fear etc.
When you challenge the norms, you decide to take a bold route, because as a brand you believe in your message and you do not want to shy away from sharing it with the world. You know that some people may have problems with your message, but your belief helps you stick to it. It’s about the brand imagery that you want to create and you want your audience to remember you in a certain manner.
And when you disrupt, you surprise people and craft a unique story which people would never associate with your brand. That’s how you get them thinking about you.
The core of any brand campaign is and has always been “The Story” – which resonates with the audience for being relatable or for being whacky and witty or just simply because they are wondering what’s happening here?
Find the story, find that unique narrative which helps you stand out from the crowd and establish yourself strongly in your market. After all, that’s what we want — to be distinct and memorable!
The author is founder of narrative – a branding and communications agency