The Key to Raising Your Brand Storytelling Game

Most marketers would surely agree that a powerful brand story matters. The Break believes that creativity is an essential component of compelling brand storytelling, but it might help to know what we mean by “creativity” to truly appreciate the causal effect.

Creativity: The Intangible X-Factor

AI’s algorithmic genie defines creativity, rather dully, as the characteristic of a person to generate new ideas, alternatives, solutions, and possibilities in a unique and different way. It goes on to suggest, somewhat tediously, that creativity is the ability to conceive something unpredictable, original, and unique.

A thoroughly underwhelming definition, in other words. Breakers prefer to think of creativity in more colorful, more evocative ways. For example, with baseball’s regular season drawing to a close, we’ve recently been thinking about creativity in terms that fans of the national pastime would appreciate.

Ready for the pitch?

Creativity is like stuff.

So, what is stuff? Knowledgeable hardball fans know that stuff relates to the quality of a pitcher’s pitches. It may have to do with, in no particular order, control, command, velocity. It might be the mustard on a fastball, the spin rate on a curveball, the break angle of a slider. It might have to do with the way the ball comes out of the pitcher’s hand, that same pitcher’s raw athletic ability, or maybe even his baseball acumen.

It’s an intangible that every pitcher wants, but not every pitcher has.

Creativity can be a similarly expansive and many-faceted concept to define. Is it strictly to do with originality, novelty or probing the depths of our imaginations? Is it the willingness to think differently, to veer fearlessly down the road less traveled?

Broadcast, print, digital, out-of-home – no matter the media, “creative product”, as it’s sometimes, sadly called, is becoming increasingly safe, predictable, and metrics driven. But this blog isn’t about metrics-bashing. There’s no pining for yesteryear in this space. Metrics are fair play and today’s creatives would do well not to bobble any valuable data points hit their way. And there is value in those personas and customer segmentations – they provide useful context about a particular marketing/communications challenge; they can even point the way to the solution. Data furnishes the fodder, but here’s the thing: creativity still provides the jolt.

Data Informs, Creativity Transforms

It’s the jolt that causes heads to turn, eyebrows to arch, pulses to quicken, and most importantly messages to stick. It might be a provocatively phrased headline, it might be a powerfully arresting visual; the juxtaposition between the two might just be a force of nature. A music edit that sings. An illustration (possibly even AI-assisted!) that’s shared over and over. A transit ad that stops traffic.

Another reason to go for the jolt – the relative ubiquity of data these days. Every organization has a stat or stat-studded spreadsheet to buttress their various marketing claims and unique selling props, but it’s precisely because data is everywhere that it increasingly runs the risk of being little more than white noise. What’s the primary function of white noise? Putting people to sleep.

Can you recall the last campaign you saw that stuck in your head, that you couldn’t get out of your head? Therein lies the point, the problem, and the opportunity.

The Break: Your Ace Creative Partner

Creativity is striking out – but it hasn’t whiffed yet. So, if you’re telling a brand story, or refreshing your brand story, pull the data by all means. After you’ve wrapped your brain around it, consider passing off those insights to a creative team like The Break. We’ll process, iterate, obsess, and then pitch those same findings back to you in ways that you never saw coming, in ways that may throw you off balance, and that may even blow you (and your customers) away.

Creativity is like stuff and The Break believes stuff still plays – even in our increasingly data-driven marketing world.