Sharing Your Brand's Values Through Storytelling

Sharing a set of values with customers is one of a brand's most important sources of emotional connection with its customers. I have written before about brands that do this well.

There are a variety of ways to communicate those values, but one powerful way is through brand storytelling, especially if the story is about the founder's vision or legacy. Often, this is found in the "Our Story" section of the "About Us" section on websites.

Here are some good examples of that:

• Patagonia
• Newman's Own
• Burt's Bees
• IKEA
• Zappos
• The Body Shop
• Ben & Jerry's
• Minnetonka
• Warby Parker
• John Deere
• Trader Joe's

I hope these examples help you think through how you might tell an emotionally compelling story about your brand highlighting its origins and its values. 

Identifying Riding Lawn Mower Brands by Color

I live in a town in which the minimum acreage per residential parcel is 3 acres. However, many of my neighbors have 30 acres or more. People live in this exurban location because they like its rural character. Many people fancy themselves as gentlemen farmers and some have horses and chickens and even llamas and bison. 

While some people use lawn services, most like to tend to their own grounds using lots of equipment, chief among them being the riding mower. The interesting thing about riding mowers (and other more expensive farm equipment) is the strong use of color to identify the brand. Having said that, many of the brands use the color red and to a somewhat lesser extent orange. Only John Deere features a green and yellow combination. And Cub Cadet, which historically featured yellow and white, now features only yellow. Both of these brands are quite distinctive and can be identified from a distance when someone is mowing his or her field or grounds. Ryobi, a recent entry in this category, is also distinctive given its chartreuse and black color combination. It also has a distinctive shape. While Snapper has a common color, its shape is closer to Ryobi's, which is unique and identifiable. 

Here are images of ten more popular riding mower brands. Notice which brands stand out due to color. Also notice how big the brand name appears on the vehicle and whether there is a logo hood ornament and how distinctive it is. Finally, identify other distinctive visual features such as vehicle shape, seat shape or tire treatment. 

Brands and Baseball Caps

Brands are often used as self-expression vehicles. And baseball caps are a simple way to do this.

People use baseball caps to communicate their interests and affiliations. They use them to demonstrate their support or pride. Baseball caps can project a certain image or social status. People use them to connect with other like minded individuals. Baseball caps can also communicate personal accomplishments and personal passions.

I thought it would be fun to present you with a variety of baseball caps. Think through the type of individual who would wear each cap. What are his passions? What is he trying to communicate? Why did he buy a cap with this brand on it? What is his likely social and economic status? Will it identify him as a certain type of person? Will the baseball cap attract certain people and turn others off? What are each brand's associations? Are you familiar with some of these brands and not others? Does that say something about you? Are some of these brands insider brands? Think about how much a brand can say about a person who uses that brand as a badge.

Robust Brand Identity

A brand's identity system helps people recognize the brand. It helps people encode the brand in their memories and quickly extract it from their memories. The system incorporates a number of identification triggers. These almost always include visual components but can also include other sensory components such as Cinnebon's cinnamon scent and Harley-Davidson's engine sound. Several hotels are exploring distinctive aromatherapy scents. The visual components can include a shape or icon such as Nike's swoosh, McDonald's arches or the Olympic rings. Often packaging shapes are a part of the system such as Coca-Cola's distinctive bottle shape or Absolut vodka's unique bottle shape. Colors are usually a part of the system such as John Deere's green, UPS's brown or Southwest Airline's vibrant color palette of blue, red, gold and orange.

Consider personal brands. I am known by my name. Sometimes people associate me with my Brand Aid book. Many people know that I earned an MBA at Harvard. People who interact with me in person know that I usually wear a bow tie with a jacket.  People that know me well expect me to arrive in a Toyota Prius as I have owned three of them since 2000. And friends know that I am a passionate sailor. Each of these are "brand" associations that may also serve as triggers for people to think of me. My brother associates me with scary clowns, but that is another matter entirely.

The more distinctive elements that you can build into your brand identity's system the better. They may include names, shapes, colors, patterns, type fonts, visual styles, sounds, scents, textures, flavors, spokespeople, jingles and feelings. You can also associate your brand with occasions, events, situations, product uses, lifestyles or particular types of people.

The system should be rich but not overly complicated and flexible enough to be effective in every media, use or application. And here is the most important part - you must use the elements consistently over time once you have decided what they are. This is key to memory encoding and decoding.