The usual way brand storytelling gets explained doesn’t sit right with me. It’s often treated as something added at the end, a coat of paint over a product that was already finished, as if the story were decoration. That version feels thin, and honestly a little unfair to the people who built the thing, because a brand carries so much long before anyone writes a tagline.

What is brand storytelling?

Brand storytelling is the practice of gathering a brand’s beginnings, its beliefs and the people it’s made for into a story someone can feel and remember. It lives in a caption, a carousel, a reel, a line on a pack, a page on a website, and in the quieter choices about what to say and what to leave unsaid.

It’s different from advertising, which asks for attention. A story asks for company. People may scroll past a claim, but they tend to stay with a character, a place or a feeling they recognise as their own.

Why brand storytelling matters

Features are easy to forget and easy to copy. A story is harder to copy because it comes from where a brand actually began, so it gives a brand a steady voice. When you know where something started and who it’s for, each new post or poster or page becomes easier to write, because you aren’t beginning from a blank screen every time.

It also does something quieter. It lets a person see themselves in the brand, and that is usually what makes them come back.

The parts of a brand story

I think of four threads.

• The origin: why this exists at all.
• The person: held in mind as one real face, not a crowd.
• The change: what shifts in that person’s day, or in how they see themselves.
• The feeling: what’s left behind once the product is put down.

None of these needs grand language. The small, true details usually carry the most weight.

A real caselet: the Amul girl

Amul is a good place to see brand storytelling done patiently. The campaign was conceived in 1966 by Sylvester daCunha and his art director Eustace Fernandez, who wanted something that would appeal to mothers and children, Amul’s main audience. Their idea centred on a little girl in a polka-dotted red dress with blue hair. The line “Utterly Butterly” is credited to Sylvester’s wife, Nisha daCunha, so even the voice of the brand began at home. amul girl india rahul dacunha +2

The medium was part of the story too. Print and television were very expensive then, so the campaign was designed for the more affordable outdoor hoardings. In the 1960s and 70s those hoardings were hand-painted. The girl was never an ornament on the butter. She became a character who commented on what was happening around her, and the first topical ad, in March 1966, marked the first derby match in Mumbai. Over time she poked fun at the high and mighty in India, and people began to read the hoardings as a small daily news ritual. amul girl golden jubilee +3

What I find instructive is how little she changed. It’s probably the only ad campaign in the country that kept the same theme and style for almost 50 years. The campaign holds the Guinness World Record for the longest-running advertising campaign, and daCunha handed the topical ads to his son Rahul in 1993. Where the agency once made one topical a month, they now make five a week. amul girl golden jubilee +2

What the case shows, in my reading:

• One character, one voice. The Amul girl is a person, not a logo, which is why people can talk about her as if she were someone they know.
• A story told in the world’s own language. She speaks about cricket, cinema and politics, the things people are already talking about, so the brand is part of everyday India.
• Patience. The story was never replaced. It was added to, week after week.

That is brand storytelling when it works: the product is butter, but what people remember is the girl who comments on their day.

My own example: मिट्टी

I learned this from the other direction, with MITTI, a luxury fragrance concept I designed.

I began with one wish, to make a heritage piece, something a person would want to keep at home. Somewhere in the middle I noticed it was missing something. The design was beautiful but quiet in the wrong way, with no backstory and no market research behind it. I hadn’t asked who would keep it, or why. I had treated looking good as the finish line.

So I went back and asked what a heirloom really holds, and the answer was mostly a story. I started again from a memory almost everyone here carries, the smell of first rain on dry earth, and the bottles stopped being objects. They became small letters from home:

• मिट्टी-मेघ, the scent of the first shower.
• पवित्र-माटी, sacred soil.
• मृग-छाया, a Holi morning, the essence of colours.

Each is a different memory held in a different bottle, all inside one arch of red silk that I thought of as the window you stand at when you miss someone. The Amul girl taught me the same thing from the other side: a story isn’t added to a product at the end. It’s the reason the product exists.

How to begin your own brand storytelling

Write the answers to a few plain questions first, without polishing them.

1. Where did this begin for you?
2. Who do you picture holding it?
3. What do you hope they feel when they put it down?
4. What do they already talk about, that your brand could belong to?

Then notice which answer you keep returning to. That’s usually the thread to follow.

If you’d like company in this

If you’re building something rooted in a memory and aren’t sure how to tell it, I’d be glad to help. You can find the details on my Work With Me page.