Everybody loves stories, and content marketing can use compelling stories to make people love brands.

Classic themes

Many classic stories are based on standard themes that feature basic human fears and aspirations. Stories based on these themes are powerful ways to communicate a brand message. For example:

Overcoming the monster: St George and the Dragon is an archetypal story in which a hero fights and kills a monster. The brand Nike, focused on the monster inside that encourages us to be lazy and not work out. Slaying this monster makes us powerful.

The Quest: the classic quest story involved King Arthur and the Knights of the Round Table searching for the Holy Grail. Many brands push people to seek then achieve what they once thought impossible.

Rebirth: In this theme, someone loses everything and needs to start over. Retired people lose their jobs, which are a large part of their identity. Brands that market to retired people show how to re-invent retirement as a time for new opportunities.

Rags to riches: This theme is about coming from a place of lack to a place of abundance.

Tragedy: Though it is difficult to tell a story of tragedy without it feeling too negative, tales of overcoming tragedy or triumphing after failure convey a powerful message.

Comedy: people love funny stories. Telling a story with humour is a great way to create positive feelings for a brand.

User stories

Not all stories need to contain grand themes. Often, short anecdotes about how people have benefited from a business’ products can be used to great effect. Inviting people to write about how a brand’s products or services have positively affected their lives can result in short but enthralling stories.

To hire the best storytellers for your website, contact us at Pressroom.

John Murray

John is every inch the wordsmith and loves a game of Scrabble above all else. With experience writing for newspapers, John’s time at university was spent studying Creative Writing – something which comes across in his love of the pun.