Video Transcript: In the series on personal branding, building a personal brand, what a personal brand means, and of course the effective way of going about stacking up your personal brand. Today’s topic is story building and storytelling. Read the previous post in this series here.
What is Brand Story Building?
Every personal brand needs a story, just like a brand, just like a commercial brand, just like a business brand that needs brand storytelling. Personal brands also need stories. And if you look at any one of the famous kind of personal brands out there, the thing that you would notice is that the power of that personal brand really comes from the way they tell their story.
When you’re talking about brands, whether they’re personal or business brands, and with reference to the story, it’s likely different when it comes to personal brands as opposed to business brands, right? For business brands, the origin story is not that critical and a lot depends on the messaging framework.
Two types of storytelling
Just to step back a little bit, there are two types of storytelling in branding. You’ve got the origin story and then you have the brand story. The origin story is all about how the brand came into existence and how sort of it was launched and what was the reason for its existence and so on and so forth. And the same goes for our personal brand, right? And the origin story would be how you started.
Then you have the brand story. It may have elements of the origin story, but primarily it is focused on telling a story that aligns with the target audience. Their pain points, their world view, their kind of values, their beliefs, and so on and so forth.
So it’s story building that you tell that aligns with your target audience and that is called the brand story.
What about for business brands?
Now for brands or business brands, the brand story is critical. The origin story not so much. You could use the Pareto principle – 80 20 rule. So 80% for a business brand is or should be focused on the brand story. 20% should be given to the origin story in terms of a personal brand that kind of reverses.
For the personal brand, 80% should be the origin story and 20% should be the kind of brand story. However, as time progresses and as you become a kind of a strong personal brand – a personal brand that has a brand recall and people start recognizing your personal brand and you’re having the kind of impact that you want it to have.
What is storytelling?
I keep saying origin story, the brand story, and story building. Now, this is a word that’s being thrown around like no man’s business and I’m doing it myself. But the word is there, right? I mean, that’s the only word we have to communicate what we want to say.
People since millennia, since the Dawn of civilization, or even before that, actually, since the beginning of humankind communicated through stories. And if you look at the mythologies, if you look at any of the big books and religion, everything is based on storytelling.
In fact, the Bible is called the greatest story ever told, right? And not just in Christian mythology or Christian theology. If you look at other religions, the Holy books, for example, into Hinduism, you’ve got the Puranas. The Puranas are ancient texts. And examples are the Ramayana, the Mahabharata, the Gita. Or if you look at Islam and you go into Koran, all these books, right? All of these Holy texts have stories that communicate fundamental principles of life, the good and bad evil, so on and so forth.
Then after that, you have, of course, story building as a means of entertainment. People were telling stories to entertain each other.
Any good story has five kinds of elements.
The first is the characters. Every story has characters. If you look at mythology, if you look at movies right now, movies are nothing but storytelling, right? They have great characters. You have the main hero – a hero is someone who is central to a story, is someone who is on an adventure, right? Then you have the supporting characters. Then you have good characters and you have evil characters. Then you have the big villain, so on and so forth.
These characters are in a setting. So the second element of any great story is a setting. You’ve got the main character in a particular setting. And you’ve got those characters playing different parts in that setting and that forms the essence of story building.
Then you have the plot. The plot is the journey of these characters. Maybe from one point to another. It could be a physical journey, a literal journey, or it could be a metaphorical journey. And usually, it is a physical journey. So the characters are moving through a journey and that becomes the plot of the story. And in that plot you have conflict. That is the fourth element. Conflict. Without conflict, there is no emotion, right?
Conflict is what moves the story forward. There is no interest in any great film or in any great story without conflict. Without conflict, you lose interest in that story. There has to be a conflict that comes into their lives.
The fundamentals of a personal brand are your purpose along with your values and your core values and your vision mission. Even in your personal branding without conflict, there’s no purpose, right? So that makes no sense if there is no conflict to resolve. Right? And that is the fifth element of a story resolution. So you have conflict and that needs to be resolved.
The conflict is about whatever this passion is. That is why people should care about you. That is why they should come to you. And then of course finally you have the resolution, how you are solving the problem.
So just remember that when we’re talking about storytelling, this is nothing but your personal branding.
