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In the age of fast-paced marketing, where today’s tactics are already yesterday’s news by the time you’ve implemented them, there is still one truth that remains; brand storytelling is the most compelling way for you to build your distillery’s brand and connect with your audience.
There is a reason the most successful companies continue to put huge sums of money behind branding and storytelling. In fact, the most successful brands won’t even mention how their product works or anything remotely technical in their marketing. They use brand storytelling and emotion to try and connect you, the consumer, to their brand.
Some of the most iconic commercials of the last two decades have come from tech giant Apple. Back in 2004 Apple released a commercial for their revolutionary iPod with blacked out, dancing figures superimposed over monocolor backgrounds. (see here) Each dancer wore Apple’s original headphones attached to the iPods in their hands, both highlighted in simple white, as they danced across screen. The story is clear – simple, beautiful, functional technology that delivers the freedom and joy of music on the go, right at your fingertips.
A more modern example is Airbnb’s 2022 campaigns. Each commercial (see examples Baecation and Amazing Pools) tells the story of a different vacation through the lens of photos taken by the families staying at one of their locations. Instead of focusing on the various features or pricing of their product, Airbnb decided to focus on the stories of those who use their product and how they provide unique accommodation experiences as diverse as the people who stay with them. This is a powerful choice, because we are inherently emotional beings whose purchasing decisions are largely driven by feeling, whether we want to believe it or not. The result is a commercial that successfully connects the audience to the experience of using their product through storytelling alone.
Both of these brands manage to communicate who they are and how they impact the lives of their customers with simple stories that showcase their products in their customers lives. Brand storytelling will always be the most effective way to connect with your customers and build your brand, and the reasons are simple. You help your customers imagine your product in their lives by showing it in the lives of others, and you connect that with an emotion that resonates.
It doesn’t take an expensive commercial either – be intentional about the story you tell in your tasting room, on your bottles, on your social media channels, and anywhere else your customer interacts with your brand. Once you’ve done that, your customers will be emotionally hooked – in many cases they’ve already subconsciously purchased your product in their minds by imagining themselves in the story you tell them.
