The Art of Storytelling

Storytelling has been ingrained in human nature for tens of thousands of years. Going all the way back to the first recorded cave paintings, it's a core part of how we communicate. Along those lines, companies recognize the value of investing in and developing content marketing, which is part of the complex art of brand storytelling.

The challenge is getting your content to the right people, while standing out among the countless other messages people are bombarded with daily. One way brands are increasingly cutting through the clutter is by taking a newsroom approach to storytelling. In short making sure you're message and story can change with the changing world. Change is the only constant in the 21st century and brands have to keep updating their stories else other people will share their stories which might not be accurate or might not have the facts right.

Here are a few examples:

Marvel:

As the home of Spider-Man, Captain America, and other iconic characters, Marvel has long been the comic-book world's biggest player but was always playing second fiddle with DC comics. DC always had the upper hand in terms of storytelling when it came to Cartoons and comics. Superman and Batman were way to big comic heroes for Marvel to ever surpass. And in the mid-1990s the comics market crashed, Marvel went broke, and there was no superpower strong enough to stave off bankruptcy. 

After restructuring, our hero changed its approach, focusing on movies rather than paper and ink. Today, Iron Man, Avengers, Spider-Man, and X-Men etc. are all billion-dollar franchises, and the company's master plan-to connect many of its characters in a single cinematic universe-has turned it into one of pop culture's most powerful brands.

Johnson & Johnson:

J&J is a brand every human being has used or heard of in their lifetime. It's been involved in my life since I was a toddler. I never knew J&J was also a pharma company until I heard about the Opioid Crisis in the US and the big involvement of brands like J&J, Purdue etc. 

My whole perception about the brand and its values changed. I stopped buying its products for a long time, looked for alternatives and actually found decent replacements. And then I read last year that J&J got a fine of $600 Million dollars for a crime worth over $ 7 Billion. I thought this story would blow people's mind away and we might see protest against the leniency shown by the justice system to J&J who could easily afford to pay back even more to the community. But then the opposite happened, the Stock went up from 130 to 160 levels, I saw my friends using their products again and I wondered why, is it because people don't care or has the company done something to change our minds.

One day while I was watching the Eagles play I saw this ad on my TV. After I saw this ad I was like that's one hell of a marketing campaign J&J has conducted to reshape itself in the market. Watch the add first.

If you saw the add you would have noticed the emphasis on J&J not being a baby company, its a company which does everything. It solves so many problems the human generation is facing and it hits the sweet spot in our head and makes us fall in love with it again (for me atleast). I did not even think about the role J&J played in the Opioid crisis for a single second after the ad. I was sold when I heard the line " J&J is not just a baby company, it's a take care of you for your whole life company". Its not just a made up line its a line which defines the entire company and its merges its customers with it. I am optimistic that J&J now has learnt from its past mistakes and would keep solving the problems humans are going to face in the coming decades instead of creating new problems.