A brand strategy is made up of lots of different pieces: mission, vision, values, voice and tone, creative direction but one of the most important parts is the brand story. Your story isn’t about the product or the culture—although both are related—it’s about what you believe in.

I’ve talked about POV a few times in the newsletter and I still think that’s the #1 thing you need for your brand. It’s the one line version of how you see the world and why you exist and everyone should know it. Your brand story is the long form version of that POV. But there’s one key difference: your POV can be subjective but your brand story has to be objective. Which means, it’s time to do some homework.

I never realized Del was reading up on brand

What is a brand story?

We already covered that your brand story is an objective expansion of your POV but don’t get it confused for an origin story or something about the founders. Yes, the founders started the company for a reason and yes that’s important, but this isn’t their biography. A brand story tells the story of what you believe in. You’re not listing product features, offices, engineering philosophy or any of that (unless that’s what your company is about then idk what to tell you), it’s about creating an emotional connection with your audience so that they care about your brand beyond the offering because that offering can be copied, the brand can’t.

What’s this about homework?

Because this is objective, you can’t just wing it. You’re not making this stuff up. It’s gotta reflect something real. And the funny thing about your story is that it’s not necessarily easier to write from the start or when you’re established. They’re both pretty hard actually.

If you’re defining your brand story from the very beginning, you may not have enough figured out yet and as a result you may not have PMF or even customers both of which help you verbalize certain aspects of your story better. It’s fine, just be open to tweaks down the road.

If you’re doing it once you’re established, you may actually have too many opinions and pieces of data to comb through but I’d rather be in this position so this is what I’m gonna focus on today.

So what do you need to do? Start reading and watching and asking questions.

Get some facts

If your company has been at this for a long enough time you likely have a bunch of colleagues, customers, and even former customers that have been around. Set up time with them (3-4 of each should be more than enough) and get their thoughts on the company. The goal is to use this time to understand the perception of the brand across different players. I prioritize customer words here but it’s important to get the full picture. If you need some guidance, here’s how I approach user interviews.

Beyond interviews, you’ll probably have customer testimonials and case studies, founder and exec interviews and podcasts, probably some trade write-ups, and then don’t forget your website. You don’t need to uncover every little thing but it is too try and be thorough because ultimately your job is going to be to distill this into something usable.

What are we looking for in the material?

There are a few key things that I’m actively on the hunt for:

Overlapping Values, Ideas, and Beliefs

What are the things that come up multiple times across multiple interviews, articles, or pieces of content? You’re looking for themes here because those will be super helpful. If you can get stories or anecdotes behind those themes that becomes even more valuable. Don’t get married to these ideas though because they tend to be boring. “They’re so friendly” or “They’re reliable.” Cool cool cool…

Unique Thoughts and Disparate Ideas

The unique thoughts and disparate ideas are where we start finding out what’s special about your brand. The themes will likely support these thoughts and even if they don’t, I’ve always been curious about what more discerning eyes may have seen. If you encounter some of these early enough in the process, you can ask questions about them in the ongoing conversations.

Connection Points

I started on this a bit in the previous section but where do the themes connect? What are the fun stories that prove that this is what you believe? If there are multiple brands and sub-brands, how do they live within a single brand story? The job is to find the overlapping ideas across the board. It’s also to highlight that POV (didn’t forget about that little guy, did ya?). Check out this snippet from Webstacks brand story (this is 1 paragraph). They were early adopters and promoters of composable architecture in web development so it had a very prominent piece of their story.

It’s important to reiterate your POV in your brand story.

There are tons of frameworks out there (before/after, the 3-part story, the 5-part story, even Simon Sinek has one) and they all require different story beats but these are the main three I look for.

In some cases there might be a location or symbol that plays an important part within a brand and you should see how those influence the story. HubSpot and Boston are a good example in that I don’t believe that company could’ve formed anywhere else so it’s critical to the story.

Won’t this take forever?

It sure as hell used to! In the past I’d be taking detailed notes during interviews before rewatching each one 2-3x. I’d read and re-read articles and watch all the videos. It literally took weeks just to review everything. With AI we get to do things a bit differently now.

For the past few months I’ve been using Cove.ai (not sponsored) to do this and it’s been so much easier. I load in links, transcripts, and even whole videos for it to comb through for me. It’ll create cards to organize the different pieces of content and it can get pretty wild.

This is super blurry because I had to zoom out so far

From there I prompt it to pull exactly what I need from the materials and organize it thoughtfully. This is the prompt I use:

First thing to call out, I’m not asking for ideas or for it to write anything for me. I want Cove to pull the data that would take me hours and days and weeks to do. I call out specifics I want to see based on what I’ve picked up by that point and think is compelling. I’ll also come up with my own list of ideas before generating anything so that I’m not swayed.

Next is the context section. This is a big missed opportunity for a lot of us. AI doesn’t know what you’re doing, it guesses based on what it’s told, so tell it exactly what you’re doing so you can get the most out of it. The majority of the above is pretty self explanatory but that third sentence is a doozy

[ANY ADDITIONAL CONTEXT ABOUT LANGUAGES, SYMBOLS, LOCATION, CONSIDERATIONS, ETC.]

This is where you add specific nuance and detail. For example, “HubSpot is a Boston based brand that has grown internationally. Boston doesn’t need to be a core part of the story but it should play a role. Additionally, the symbol for the company is a sprocket which illustrates connectivity. Keep this in mind as you look at the different pieces of information.”

In setting this context, you’re no longer asking the AI to read your mind but to address what you’re specifically looking for. Then we get into the prompt where we ask for what we need. Something that took weeks, just took 20 minutes when factoring in some additional tweaks and adjustments to the outputs. It’s changed the game.

Time to write

This is the fun part. Now that the data is organized you need to connect the dots to tell a good story. I don’t like using AI for this part but you do you. Once I’ve got a first draft written I’ll share it with the client or stakeholders for review. Take that feedback and use it to refine not just your v2 but the materials as well. Go back to Cove and if something is missing or leaning too heavy in a certain direction, you can see about different angles for the themes or unique viewpoints that might inform the next version.

In the past you’d have to re-review materials if something was missing, now it’s a prompt away. And by the way, you don’t need to just return consolidated AI responses, you can just have it return pieces of the transcript related to whatever you’re looking for that way you have the original words right in front of you.

The last note here on using AI as your partner for brand stories is that you can have it interview you too. Have it ask you questions about what you’ve learned, what you think is compelling, and what think needs to be in the story. Maybe it can find something you forgot about or didn’t realize was in there.

In any case, this is where you get to take all of that time you got back and explore the story more deeply, look for new angles, and sell through your vision.

Brand stories are one of the more underrated parts of a brand strategy in my opinion. They don’t just help people understand the why but they also help shape everything from your voice and tone to your visual identity and all of the work that comes out of that (design system, Canva, CMS, DAM, etc.).

It’s nice to do on your own but it’s better to have some objectivity in writing it because if you’re working on the brand day in and day out you may just be too close to it. If it’s rebrand or refresh season at work, we’re here to help.