An introduction to brand storytelling
An introduction to brand storytelling
In today’s media landscape, capturing someone’s attention takes more than piecing a quick blog post together and clicking ‘publish’.
By Kimberlee Meier
By Kimberlee Meier
More companies than ever are realising that content is the best way to talk to their audience and get their message across, so winning attention is becoming harder and harder. As the standard of content continues to rise, marketers who want to compete need to seriously step up their game.
Enter: brand storytelling.
In this piece, we’re going to break down:
- What is brand storytelling?
- Why is brand storytelling important?
- Brand storytelling framework: what your narrative needs
- 3 free brand storytelling templates
- Brand storytelling FAQs
We'll also look at a few examples of stories from leading brands. But for a full selection, check out our wrap of powerful brand storytelling examples.
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What is brand storytelling?
Brand storytelling refers to narrative content marketing — from blogs, guides, and landing pages to video and podcasts — produced to create an emotional connection between the brand and its audience.
The benefit of brand stories is that they humanise your business, show people what you stand for, and invite them to be part of your tribe.
You can think of your brand’s story as an embodiment of how you want your brand to be perceived. Brand storytelling comes in many shapes and sizes. Some stories will tell customers about your history; others will inspire and shine a light on what your company wants to achieve. Many brand stories will focus on people and topics that companies wish to align themselves with.
Now that you know what brand storytelling is, it’s time to take a deeper dive into why your business should care about it.
Looking for examples of stunning brand stories? Check out our roundup of the best immersive brand stories on the web.
Why is brand storytelling important?
Brand storytelling is important because it allows marketing teams to create an emotional connection with their audience — ultimately leading to better business outcomes. It is a form of content marketing made famous by marketing campaigns by brands like Apple, Disney, and Nike, and has become a central pillar of the marketing strategy of most major companies.
Brand storytelling creates better outcomes for businesses by:
- Cutting through the AI noise: The amount of AI-created content online — 'AI slop' — means readers are looking harder for brands they can trust. Smart brands are hiring brand storytellers to build content that encourages readers to trust and connect.
- Making your brand memorable:
All of the facts, figures, and testimonials on your website can’t replace a good story. If your brand is competing for attention in a crowded industry, storytelling in your brand voice could be one of the only ways to stand out. - Linking sales with company mission:
Consumers care about the values and morals of the companies they buy from. Instead of slogans on a website, customers now want the brands they buy from to demonstrate how their mission is making a difference. A compelling brand story should represent the core elements of your company's brand — including culture, values, mission, messaging, and voice.
By telling a story, your brand becomes more than just a place that sells products and services. As Start With Why author Simon Sinek puts it, “People don’t buy what you do, they buy why you do it. And what you do simply proves what you believe."
Digital story ideas brands can borrow
Digital storytelling is an umbrella term for immersive, interactive content published on the web. Pioneered by media brands like the New York Times and the BBC, digital storytelling is now used by content and digital marketing teams across every industry, from higher education to professional sports.
Increasingly, digital storytelling is being used by brands for their content marketing and brand storytelling — especially brands that are focusing on high-quality, high-impact content. The techniques of digital storytelling — including scroll-based animation, rich multimedia, and parallax scrolling — are being used by successful brands to keep the reader's attention, generate an emotional response, and encourage them to take further action.
A great example that brands can borrow of these techniques in action is this story from NBC News on highway inequality. This story mixes statistics with audio, video, and photography to create an immersive reading experience for NBC News' audience. In one section of the story, the reader is shown how demographics in a neighbourhood have shifted with highway construction. While they're reading, they can interact with each graphic by scrolling:
Digital content like this allows the reader to become immersed in the story. And the best part is that while some digital stories are built by teams of developers and web designers, others are made using no-code (or code-optional) platforms, such as Shorthand.
Pro tip: Looking to build your own immersive brand content? Get started with Shorthand's no-code platform, and create your first story free.
Brand storytelling framework: What your narrative needs
Your organisation’s values should be evident and easy to remember — even from the most fleeting encounter someone may have with your story. Let these values guide you as you work through this framework.
Values and vision
Start with what your brand stands for. Any narrative must clearly communicate this to your audience. For some brands, values might be as simple as ‘quality and affordability’; for others, they might be ‘luxury and exclusivity’. Take your values and show how they connect to bigger issues in the world — things customers care about.
Now think about where those values come from. For a ‘quality and affordability’ brand, the founder may have struggled to find solutions that were both well-made and reasonably priced, and set out to solve that problem.
This process keeps your storytelling human, and it’s no surprise that so much brand storytelling draws on origin stories. Audiences love connecting with inspirational stories like these. Looking back on a time of hard work and scrappy resilience — and then applying those traits to modern-day challenges — can be powerful.
People and community
Who are the people your brand means something to? How can you show the role they play in shaping your story and your work? This is your chance to demonstrate commitment to your customers, community, and team — and to invite others to join.
Change
How does your commitment to your values and your community make the world a better place? Tell stories that connect that impact back to your products or services, and to the tangible benefits they bring to the people who want or need them.
Voice and style
Prepare guidelines that explain how your team should talk about — and present — your brand story.
- Style: Define editorial notes for how you talk about your values and your people. For example, some brands may have a strict “Four Principles” values set that’s always capitalised, while others may be more casual. The same goes for terminology: is your community made up of customers, clients, members, or something else? And is your team described as employees, staff, or team members? The “why” behind these small but important details should come from your values.
- Voice and tone: How should your brand story sound? For some brands, it might be “fun and modern”; for others, “helpful and caring.” Use the principles in your brand story to guide these choices.
- Media: Decide how photography and media will be used consistently. Some brands (especially those with origin stories) may use archival assets; others may rely on images of their people at work, or with the wider community. Ensure you have permission to use those assets, clarify where they can be used, and include guidelines in your storytelling strategy.
For inspiration, see how these other brand storytellers are doing it in our 8 brilliant brand publishing examples and 10 great owned media examples.
Inspiration and call to action
Think about what you want people to take away from your story.
The calls to action on any particular piece of content may vary, and should be guided by your content marketing strategy and tactics. But in your broader brand storytelling framework, consider ways your narratives position your branding and products or services in ways that establish you as a trusted partner. If the right people are connecting to your story, that’s step one; now, what do you want them to take away from their interaction?
Brand recall is one, and if we look at the examples below, for Honda it might be a sense of nostalgia and desire to tap into a trend, for Manchester City, a sense of team pride and connection to history, and for Pathfinder, a feeling of empowerment to tackle global heating.
Distribution
Good brand storytelling only works if people see it. The strongest storytelling runs organisation-wide, so it shouldn’t be absent from internal or external communications.
For marketing, it should be backed by a solid content strategy. Make sure it’s informed by a sound understanding of your target audience and how they consume media. Once created, plan how it can be repurposed and distributed across other channels, too. Start with our guides: How to write a content strategy, and Introduction to owned media.
Finally, measure impact and ROI. Tracking performance helps you optimise, refine, and improve cut-through and conversions over time. Don’t miss our guide to content marketing metrics.
- Do: show real people, include your branding, use images and video
- Don’t: produce vague mission statements, use empty slogans, boast about your brand’s support for environmental, social, or community causes unless you are sure that your claims are credible and you’re squeaky clean in other areas
4 examples of stunning brand stories
Here are a few quick examples. For a full collection, check out 7 powerful examples of brand storytelling.
1. Amazon
This story has considered a customer group — sustainability-conscious shoppers — very well. It introduces them to its latest delivery processing station, and outlines the various sustainable construction and systems processes it will be testing. With interactive media, it’s an engaging scroll, and it stays on brand.
We liked it so much, we named it corporate comms story of the year for 2025.
2. Honda
Honda is one of the most recognisable automotive and motorcycle makers globally, but that wasn't always the case.
Honda has only been around since 1946, making it much newer than competitors like Ford and General Motors. But thanks to smart storytelling, Honda has managed to wrap its brand image in nostalgia and has become synonymous with motorcycle manufacturing.
Look at how the company has tied its legacy to the post-WWII industrial boom using storytelling:
Using parallax scrolling, Honda takes readers on a journey that ties its motorcycles to the rise of the Café Racer — an iconic British motorcycle. From the 1969 release of its CB750 Four, the reader is shown every upgrade to Honda’s model, right up until the bike that customers can purchase today. It's a great story, representing the values of a great brand to potential customers.
Nick Bennett is the Digital Content and Social Media Section Manager at Honda. In this case study with Shorthand, Nick points out that keeping brand awareness alive online meant delivering compelling content to the brand’s audience.
“We are never shy of stories in Honda. There are lots of interesting stories and many fascinating ways customers use our products. It’s very easy to just do what others are doing… However, doing something different allows you to stand out in a very crowded marketplace.”
3. Manchester City
Brand storytelling isn’t just for brick-and-mortar companies — it’s perfect for sports marketing, too.
To mark the 50th anniversary of its 1969 FA Cup win over Leicester City, Manchester City released a story celebrating the match's most memorable moments.
The finished product — 1969 revisited — is a great example of how sporting organisations can use brand storytelling to keep their fans engaged. Using digital features like scroll-based animations, Manchester City showcases everything from ticket stubs and match footage to quotes from some key players.
4. Pathfinder
Pathfinder is a fund for New Zealanders to help with their retirement savings, but the brand knew that making its content appealing wouldn’t be easy.
Instead of writing about retirement savings and index funds for new customers (which can make for dry content), the brand flipped the script and focused on a topic of greater urgency in people's lives: global warming.
Using parallax scrolling, graphs, and stories from real-life investors, Pathfinder positions the topic of saving for retirement as a moral one, asking readers whether they've considered using their savings to fight climate change. A mixture of expert opinions throughout gives the article authority, and a calculator at the bottom gives readers a rough idea of the extent to which their current investments are tied to elements that contribute to climate change.
It's a great example of the power of storytelling to build brand awareness.
The story also uses excellent infographics, which you can learn about in our guide to interactive infographics.
This type of storytelling is effective because it targets readers on an emotional level. It makes them think about more than just money, but also morality and ethics. By weaving hard data with emotive stories about the planet, Pathfinder challenges readers to join them on a journey towards a cleaner climate.
Show what you stand for in these brand storytelling assets
These immersive, scroll-driven templates will help you ensure your brand narratives are well-designed and consistent. And they’re free to try.
Are you ready to start telling your brand’s story?
Brand storytelling is about so much more than selling products and services.
It’s a way for brands to really show their customers who they are and why they exist. Storytelling allows companies to share their own history, highlight challenges they have overcome, and show their customers what goals they’re working towards.
Brand storytelling also humanises companies. It showcases the causes a company is championing, and how they’re paying attention to social and cultural issues that their customers may be thinking about.
A good brand story can make your company stand out among its competitors. Every brand is unique, but only you can authentically tell your story. So, what are you waiting for?
Start telling your brand story with Shorthand.
Brand Storytelling FAQs
What is brand storytelling?
Brand storytelling refers to narrative communications and content marketing produced to create an emotional connection between a brand and its audience. It’s a powerful tactic for humanising businesses and organisations, showcasing values, and encouraging involvement.
It can appear in any platform or format, from articles, to videos and audio, to social media, and in internal and external communications.
What are the different types of brand storytelling?
Brand narratives can appear in any format — online articles, videos, podcasts, social media, TV and radio advertising, events, and print.
Where should I publish my brand story?
Find out where your target audience is consuming media and prepare content for that format. Consider repurposing your brand stories to publish on other platforms, too.
How do you write a brand story?
Ensure you’re focusing on your customer (or target customer) and demonstrating your understanding of their wants and needs. From there, get creative about presenting your story and brand as being driven by these. Ensure it follows your brand style, and includes a carefully-considered call-to-action. Combine the framework above, with inspiration from our list of 10 powerful examples of brand storytelling to get started. Consider one of our free brand communications templates if you don’t want to start your design from scratch.
What are good brand storytelling examples?
Our 7 powerful examples of brand storytelling includes fantastic work from Manchester City Football Club, Honda, and Amazon.
Does brand storytelling increase sales?
Brand storytelling can increase sales if it’s properly executed and part of a strong content marketing strategy. It can capture audience engagement, boost brand recall, and foster emotional connection. Boosted sales figures won’t always be the goal and it’s important to plan, build, measure, and optimise your brand storytelling the same way you would with any other marketing activity. Start with our how to write a content strategy guide and familiarise yourself with content marketing metrics.
How long should a brand story be?
This one depends on your brand, its story, and the media channel you’re publishing it on. Videos and social media posts can be quite short, a scrollytelling article can be longer. For information about optimum content lengths gathered from analysing 54,000 Shorthand stories, read our guide to what’s working on Shorthand.
Further resources for brand storytelling
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