The Brand
Story
At CRU, we believe authentic brands don’t follow. They lead. At the heart of these brands is a Brand Story that ties everything together.
Because it forms the foundation for your brand: taking all the concrete facts of your brand (your company’s product & strategy) and translating it into something that everybody can connect with on an emotional level.
-> Find your story
Your Brand deserves to have its story told.
Every Brand has a story to tell—it’s just a matter of finding it. We think of the Brand Story as a way to connect everything that makes your brand unique: the strategy and vision for your company, the product and promise you make to your customers, and the way that you conduct business.
An extraordinary Brand Story will bring all of these different aspects of your brand into alignment: creating a simple to understand message that everybody (internally and externally) can connect with.
With a proper Brand Story you can go further than you ever had: your brand stops chasing attention and starts attracting the right people by itself. Sales conversations shift from convincing to connecting. Hiring becomes easier because talent wants to be part of your mission. Think of a Brand Story as a north star that you can continually point towards, keeping you on track.
The way to your authentic Brand Story.
Download & Brand Strategy First
Finding your Brand Story always begins by taking a close look at every aspect of your company. First, we take time to interview people from across your company: everybody from the CEO to the Intern, and then (in the best case) some of your clients too. We take all this information, compile it, and get a full 360 degree view of what your brand looks like from the inside, out. We identify your greatest strengths, areas of tension, and opportunities that maybe you wouldn’t normally see.
We review all of these findings in an intensive workshop, where we get all the stakeholders of the project together and discuss. The goal of the workshop is to collectively agree upon (or, align on) which direction we want to head in creatively.
Creative Translations of your Strategy
From there, the CRU Storyteller who has been working with you begins to craft Creative Routes that your Brand Story could head off into. These Creative Routes focus on different aspects of your Brand Strategy. These Creative Routes are rough sketches of how to frame the narrative of your brand. They help convey all of the important messages you want to tell about your brand in a new way.
A side note: If you are also doing Visual Brand Design with us, then a Designer will also begin working in tandem with the Storyteller to craft a Creative Route with visual inspiration as well.
Forward to Clarity: The Brand Story
Together we’ll decide which of these Creative Routes captures your strategy in the most accurate way and (most importantly) feels true to you and your team. Picking this Creative Route is one of the most important aspects of the branding process as it is a clear decision: to head in one direction, and not the others. Creative Routes are already useful tools in themselves, and can help you understand your strategy in a way that feels focused. But to really maximize the effectiveness of this Creative Route and make the whole world instantly understand your company in its entirety, we expand on the ideas further and create your Brand Story.
A carefully crafted Brand Story is what sets extraordinary brands and companies apart from the rest. Because every brand has a story (whether they dedicate any time or energy to it) but only the most extraordinary have a Brand Story. An effective one, helps serve as a guiding light for a company: helping everybody quickly understand what your company is setting out to do—whether that be to potential customers, investors, prospective employees, and your entire company itself. It honors the hard work that you’ve already put into building your company and its culture, and sets the stage for you to grow into what you want to become.
We know that we have done our job when you read your Brand Story for the first time and feel like you’ve seen your company clearly for the first time. It should make you feel excited to get to work the next day, and inspire the same feeling for your employees too. It should make your customers connect with you on a deeper level and feel like they made the right choice in choosing you over the competition.
To bring it home, we always pair a Brand Story with a new Claim that will effectively sum up this rejuvenated sense of your brand in as few words as possible. Aside from your name and logo, your Claim can be one of the most powerful brand assets out there, helping to transport the feeling, mission, strategy, and unique offer of your brand in just a few words.
The Rollout: Key-Messages & Cheat Sheets
From there, we can continue helping you tell your new Brand Story in a number of different ways. Together we can craft Key Messages that serve as a single source of truth for how to communicate your offer to various target groups. Whether that means creating different messaging for customers depending on their place in the sales funnel (educating, nurturing, etc), or speaking to investors, or potential new hires. Each group needs an entirely different set of messages that we can help you tailor according to your new Brand Story.
Key Messages are useful in helping all your brand communications keep a consistent message no matter who you’re speaking to, only strengthening the narrative about your company defined by your Brand Story.
And finally, we also craft the brand tonality Cheat Sheet that helps your team (or creative agencies that work for you) craft copy and communications in the correct tonality for your brand. These are useful tools that make your Brand Story even more usable. It gives ownership and agency to everybody at your company to use the Brand Story to amplify their messaging.
Armed with all of those different Brand Story elements you and your team will be able to communicate about your brand and execute your strategy in an entirely different way. From writing emails, to crafting pitch decks, or even just writing a LinkedIn post, you’ll be able to tell the world about your brand and company in a new and compelling way.
A great Brand Story can change everything about your company
We know this because we have seen it happen many times, and it’s one of our favorite projects to undertake with clients. It requires a lot of trust and understanding, but the positive effects are immediate to see. It helps established companies see things in an entirely new light and feel reinvigorated, and it helps light the path to success for new companies.
Creative Routes
Capture the essence of what your brand is trying to accomplish. Not a full Brand Story but help reframe the narrative of your Brand Strategy and offering. Helpful for companies that are just starting out or need to move quickly. Pairs nicely with Brand Design.
Value Propositions
Crafting different versions of your Brand Story to appeal to the different target groups that you want to reach: from investors, to new clients, to customers. These are custom tailored to appeal to their needs, pain points and communication styles.
Brand Story
The guiding light that is an emotional translation of your company’s overall strategy. A useful tool for helping tell the world about your company in the most compelling way possible. It synthesizes every perspective of your brand form the inside out, helping everybody understand what you are setting out to do.
Key Messages
Communicating your Brand Story to the outside world requires carefully crafted messages and statements that can be used in sales, marketing, and more—all consistent to both the tonality and narrative established by the Brand Story.
Tonality
A brand tonality guide that helps your team craft compelling copy that sounds unique and true to your brand. Can even be handed to creative agencies to make campaigns more effective.
FAQ
Do I really need a Brand Story?
Well, your brand has a story whether or not you decide to dedicate time to it. At CRU we believe it forms the base for your entire brand and communication platform. By crafting a Brand Story with us, you can make sure the best aspects of your company are always in the spotlight. A great Brand Story an essential part of an effective strategy.
At CRU we base every creative decision that we make (whether it be in Design or Story) in strategy. Your Strategy to be specific. We don’t just write nice words and make pretty pictures for the sake of it. We want your brand to help you achieve your business goals. By creating a Brand Story (or at the very least a Creative Route) we are able to translate your strategy into something that everybody can connect with. This then informs the design decisions we make, which then make them more impactful.
Why not just stop after working on our Strategy?
We love helping your work on strategy and identify how most effectively to get your product or services in front of the people it would benefit most. But a Strategy is just a destination we want to get to: a Brand Story is the map on how to get there. Our goal is to have every brand we work with do at least a small bit of story work—it’s that important.
Can’t I just write my own Brand Story?
You could! And we encourage you to try because it is a great way to see your company in a new light. What we offer at CRU is a clear and tested methodology for creating a usable story that maximizes business impact. We also have a valuable perspective: from the outside. Our process involves interviewing you and your team, and even your clients. We take all of these perspectives into account when crafting your Brand Story. (And we believe our storytellers are just really really good.)
Do I need to take all deliverables?
If you don’t have the time or resources to do a full Brand Story, we can also offer things a la carte. For example for those who just want to gain some insights into their brand and reframe the story of their company we can offer the Creative Routes which are like a small snapshot of a story that already help you communicate about your brand in an entirely new way.
How long does a Brand Story take?
It depends on the project and how much time you can dedicate to it. In general these projects can range from 2 weeks (if you can work intensely over a shorter period of time) up to 4-5 weeks with a full Brand Story, Key Messages and Tonality Guidelines.
You have a glimpse about us and how we like to work and consult. In the end every business and situation is different. So tell us about yours.
