Tag Archive for: captivation motivations

How to Inspire Advocates and Influencers in Your Marketing

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Key Takeaways

  • Know when to use lures vs. rewards in influencer marketing: Lures create reciprocity and are most effective with advocates, while rewards create expectations and are better suited for influencers. Misusing them can weaken engagement and long-term loyalty.
  • Experiences drive stronger engagement than discounts: Today’s consumers value time, access, and meaningful experiences over material incentives. Brands that align offers with what audiences truly value build deeper trust and stronger relationships.
  • Overemphasizing monetary value reduces impact: When incentives feel transactional, they lose emotional resonance. Focus instead on community, recognition, and exclusivity to maintain goodwill and authentic engagement.

Marketing to influencers and advocates has become a cornerstone of modern brand strategy, fueled by social media. But anyone who has built a consumer campaign knows it’s not as simple as it looks.

Done well, it builds momentum, credibility, and reach. Done wrong, it can quietly erode trust and undermine long-term brand equity.

The reason is simple: advocates and influencers are motivated by very different drivers.

In my previous post on Captivation Motivations, I touched on the psychology behind what drives fast decisions—the split-second choices to click, follow, share, or buy. But two of the most powerful drivers deserve a deeper look: lures and rewards.

If you’re running campaigns, launching promotions, or building influencer relationships, understanding this distinction will directly impact your results.

The Psychology Behind Lures and Rewards

Think about the last time someone picked up the tab for lunch. You probably responded with, “I’ve got the next one,” without thinking twice.

That instinct is not accidental. It’s hardwired.

Humans are wired for reciprocity. When someone gives us something of value—time, attention, or access—we feel compelled to give something back.

This is the foundation of a lure.

Try this in your next campaign: ask users to engage after they receive something (even something small, like access or entry), rather than before. You’ll typically see higher conversion and longer engagement.

Why? Because lures trigger reciprocity.

One classic example: nonprofits that send unsolicited mailing labels consistently increase donation rates—often doubling them. The value of the gift is minimal, but the psychological impact is significant.

This same principle sits at the core of effective content marketing.

Why You Should Be Careful “Rewarding” Advocates

Here’s where many brands get it wrong.

Lures and rewards are not interchangeable.

Lures are given freely, without expectation. They build goodwill and trigger reciprocity.

Rewards, on the other hand, are conditional: “Do this, get that.”

Rewards don’t build reciprocity—they build expectation.

They can be effective, especially for expanding reach or activating new audiences. But they operate differently. Rewards create behavior patterns, not emotional connection.

And here’s the risk: if you start rewarding people who are already advocating for your brand, you can actually decrease their motivation.

When intrinsic motivation becomes transactional, engagement drops.

This is where brands need to be disciplined. Use rewards to incentivize new behavior. Use lures to nurture existing relationships.

And don’t confuse the two.

Someone participating for a reward is not necessarily an advocate.

Time and Experience: The Real Drivers of Value

If your goal is to build stronger engagement and long-term loyalty, you need to look beyond discounts, coupons, and giveaways.

People inherently value time and experiences more than material items.

That insight comes from how our brain is wired. The majority of our decision-making happens in the “older” part of the brain—the part that prioritizes meaning, connection, and experience.

This is why experiential marketing consistently outperforms transactional incentives.

But there’s a catch: you have to truly understand your audience.

What you think your customer values may not align with what they actually value.

For some audiences, it’s access. For others, it’s recognition, community, or mastery.

In fact, the same psychological triggers we discussed in information-seeking behavior—including dopamine-driven curiosity and skill-building—can also function as powerful rewards.

The key is alignment. When your offer matches what your audience truly values, engagement follows.

Why Monetary Framing Undermines Engagement

Here’s where brands unintentionally weaken their own strategy.

Overemphasizing the monetary value of an offer reduces its perceived value.

When you attach a price tag to an experience, people start evaluating it transactionally instead of emotionally.

Think of it this way: if you host an incredible dinner but spend the entire evening talking about how much everything cost, the experience becomes about money—not connection.

The same applies to marketing.

When lures or rewards feel overly transactional, they lose their ability to generate goodwill and reciprocity.

This is part of the power of consumer PR—it builds trust and goodwill without forcing a transactional exchange, especially with journalists, influencers, and advocates.

The most effective strategies focus on value that feels personal, meaningful, and experience-driven—not financial.

The Bottom Line for Influencer and Advocate Marketing

If there’s one takeaway, it’s this:

Use rewards for influencers. Use lures for advocates.

Influencers operate within a value exchange model. Advocates operate from belief and alignment.

Understanding that difference—and building your strategy accordingly—is what separates campaigns that perform from those that fall flat.

Have you seen a campaign where rewards or lures backfired? Those are often the most instructive examples. Share them with me—I’m always interested in how these strategies play out in the real world.

About the Captivation Motivations

The Captivation Motivations are rooted in the oldest, most developed part of the brain—the part responsible for instinctive decision-making.

While I didn’t create these motivations, I’ve been studying and applying them since 2008—testing how they influence behavior across PR, marketing, and brand strategy.

These are not trends. They are fundamental human drivers. While the triggers may evolve in a modern, digital world, the underlying motivations remain the same—and they continue to shape how people engage, decide, and act.

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Brand Trust: Why Disappointing Social Metrics May Be A Good Thing

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Key Takeaways

  • Brand Trust Definition and Measurement: Brand trust refers to the confidence consumers have in a brand, often assessed through metrics like net promoter scores or financial indicators. However, trust is more nuanced and can be influenced by subtle cues that affect emotional responses.
  • Emotional Responses vs. Trust-Building: While viral content often elicits strong emotional reactions (like anger or fear), these may not contribute positively to brand trust. Instead, low-emotion messaging that consistently reinforces trust over time can be more effective, as genuine trust develops gradually.
  • Consistency and Authenticity are Key: Building brand trust requires a consistent brand message and authentic customer experiences. Trust is easily shattered, so brands must ensure their actions align with their communicated values to maintain long-term loyalty and customer satisfaction.

What exactly IS brand trust and how do we measure it?

Brand trust is measured in many ways, sometimes we use a metric like a net promoter score. Sometimes the value of a brand is incorporated into EBITA, and we infer higher brand-value equals trust.

But really, what IS brand trust?  In a global environment where, according to the 2018 Edelman Trust Barometer, trust in institutions and media is at an all-time low, it’s more important than ever for brands of all sizes to keep ahead of the trust curve.

Neuroscientists have been researching the effects of our brains on trust with interesting results.  Neuroscientists have been researching the effects of our brains on trust with interesting results. In the book Brand Seduction-How Neuroscience Can Help Marketers Build Memorable Brands, Daryl Weber reveals how the unconscious mind is constantly picking up cues from our environment, including cues from brands, most of us don’t even realize our brain is doing this monitoring on our behalf. What this means though, is that every single subtle brand cue sends a message.

So how should we interpret trust in everyday execution and metrics analysis?

THE BRAIN ON FEAR

Think about the last time something you saw on social media enraged you. Chance are, just reliving that moment has your blood pressure spiking.  “Flight or fight” response, makes our brain neurons fire like mad. This, in turn, creates an emotional response. In contrast, our brain on trust is relaxed, open, I compare this state to homeostasis in the body. It’s the place our brain WANTS to be, but it’s also the place where triggers are not as emotional.

What this means is that emotional responses may NOT be positive for a brand trust. Take, for example, Facebook reactions. Content that triggers the most “viral” response is often content that creates anger, fear or other negative sentiments. But social media platforms (and their algorithms) aren’t yet evolved enough to understand that highly emotional reactions may not mean a piece of content is valuable for trust.The most viral content may do nothing to enhance trust. This does not mean that good never goes viral, but it DOES mean that computers don’t yet really grasp the difference,  even if humans (subconsciously) do.  But, humans are imperfect, and we’re often not even aware of our own reactions to messages.

This is to say, that in trust building, messages or ads that are viewed, but without huge emotional responses may actually be better for building trust. If you track reactions or sentiment on social, it might be disappointing at times to see that trust messages or messages built with trust intentions don’t get a lot of “lift.” But I would argue, that is exactly what you want from trust messaging.

LOW RESPONSE BUT MORE OF IT?

Imagine you’re making a special chocolate cake.
You create the first layer and ad the frosting.
It’s a good cake. It will taste good.
But it isn’t very impactful. So you add another layer. And another.
And before you know it, you have this impactful cake with layers of goodness inside. And when you finally EAT the cake, you enjoy it, even more, knowing there are multiple layers of goodness.  Trust is like that. The first layer of trust is good. It’s acceptable. But multiple layers of trust are better. Multiple layers of trust take time. The emotional response to trust is not “at the moment,” trust building is a front-loaded proposition. The payoff comes at the end. The payoff comes when the brand’s experience matches the anticipated trust. The brain remembers THAT satisfaction. Perhaps more subtly than an outraged response. But the brain DOES remember it at buying time. When you ate your beautiful chocolate cake, you enjoyed it. The next time you make a cake you’re more likely to make a chocolate cake over say, vanilla. This is how brand trust works.

The thing is, you need to reinforce that positive experience and positive response over and over. The subtle cues build up over time. But they can be replaced by constantly good experiences of vanilla cake too – because, you know, vanilla is equally yummy. Consistency is the key.

Have you ever known a brand one way than seen an ad that completely shifts the message? It’s jarring. Just today I was watching a conversation about a brand whose messaging, packing, product and ads were all luxury-level classy. Then they ran an ad showing a woman in panties with a pretty vulgar statement written on the panties. WOW! It got the attention of everyone, but overwhelmingly, their current customers were outraged, they thought they “knew” the brand, in some cases, people actually expressed betrayal.  These customers related to what they thought the brand was, a luxury-level classy product.  The brand’s trust has been shattered in the eyes of some. This particular ad may get high virality, but will the sentiment be overwhelmingly positive? And even it works, with what I call “a sugar spike” of sales, will those new customers be as loyal as the old ones? Will the old ones stick around?

Consistency is key. In branding trust, slow and steady wins the race. Look for consistently growing results, not “sugar spikes.” Sugar spikes mean you’re appealing to a specific audience over a short period of time, but not building any loyalty. That’s an even more expensive proposition than branding.

 

HOW DOES THE BRAIN BUILD TRUST?

We’re conditioned to trust our tribes.  Our brains attribute trust to brands who our tribe use. That’s why influencer marketing and customer reviews are so powerful. The person doesn’t even have to comment about using the product, they simply have to be seen using it.

One of the more brilliant examples of this is Jennifer Aniston’s water. This campaign works for two reasons: I KNOW Jennifer Aniston’s face already AND it’s consistent.  If you read any of the “celebrity” publications at all, you have seen Jennifer Aniston leaving the gym, getting out of her car or shopping with a bottle of water in her hand. SmartWater (and it’s parent company Coca-Cola) tapped into the inherent trust that Jennifer Aniston brings and then they gave her enough water to last a lifetime. Yes, Jennifer Aniston also appears in ads for this water, but the most memorable (to me, at least) are the pictures of her going throughout her daily life using the water. Every single time I open a magazine and there is a picture of Jennifer Aniston going about her daily life, she has SmartWater. This has been going on since 2015. Every single time I’m at the airport, I grab SmartWater, and I’m not even a particularly huge fan of hers, but somewhere in my brain I say “if it’s good enough for Jennifer Aniston, it’s good enough for me.” It’s not a conscious thought – it’s the brain operating and choosing based on those many layers. My hand just reaches for SmartWater, I don’t even really think about it. That’s what I mean by trust being a front-loaded proposition.

Zappos is another great example of brand trust. When Tony Hsieh started Zappos, he didn’t double down on ads, he doubled down on customer service. When the company was acquired by Amazon for $1.2 billion, 75% of its customers were returning customers.

 

BRAND ACTIONS OUTWEIGH ALL OTHER MESSAGES

If your water brand hires Jennifer Aniston and does all the same things as SmartWater did, but if it’s revealed that the water isn’t what it says it is, none of this will matter. Experience trumps all in trust. Worse, trust takes a long time to build, but it’s easily shattered. If you’re going to invest in trust, you must invest in an authentic way.

Above when I mentioned the jarring change of tone from classy to trashy, this also indicates that the brand isn’t clear on who it is and creates questions about the brand. “What other brand values are negotiable?” asks the brain. If this brand has built up trust with its existing customers, those customers now (even if subconsciously) question that trust.

An example of brand trust that does work is Red Bull. They’ve built their entire brand around adrenaline-fueled messaging. They went so far as to sponsor Felix Baumgartner when he jumped from space in 2012.  While this kind of stunt is absolutely designed to attract your attention, it’s also building brand trust – Red Bull’s customers know exactly what Red Bull stands for and they love it. Brand trust doesn’t have to be boring. 

IS BRAND TRUST WORTH THE INVESTMENT?

I suppose that depends on whether you’re in it for the long haul or not. Brand trust makes it easier for your customer to buy, creates triggers at the exact buying moment and that’s huge. But what else? Brand trust actually adds value to your company, makes it easier to attract talent and decreases costs because the product is easier for salespeople to sell. In the long run, brand trust saves money by also retaining customers.

In the end, brand trust is accessible to businesses of all sizes, but it takes commitment and consistency and yes, authenticity. You don’t need to be the biggest player on the block, just the most trusted.

In a world where trust in organizations is diminishing, building trust can be your most valuable asset – and because suspicion is so high for known brands, smaller niche brands who really do what they say and are consistent about it, have lots of room to develop that trust.

So what can you expect when you invest in brand trust? You might not see “sugar spikes,” and huge social media shares, instead you should see brand value reflected by consistent sales, repeat customers and even a stronger valuation that you’d have without it.

If you’re ready to invest in your brand, we are here to help you develop and execute your vision with aggressive elegance, contact us today.

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5 Emotions For Your Marketing & When To Use Them

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Key Takeaways

  • Utilize Fear for Urgency: Fear, particularly “Fear of Missing Out” (FOMO) and “Fear of Isolation,” can create a strong sense of urgency and deeper connections. Use fear in your marketing when you have actionable solutions, want to drive leads, and can simplify the purchasing process.
  • Leverage Happiness for Sharing and Loyalty: Happiness fosters sharing and builds trust. Employ happiness in your campaigns when you want others to share your message and commit to creating a positive brand image. It’s particularly effective for viral content.
  • Create Anticipation to Build Loyalty: Anticipation keeps customers engaged and can lead to repeat business. Use it by offering stimuli that lead to enjoyable outcomes, maintaining consistency in your branding, and exploring gamification strategies to heighten engagement.

Imagine your advertising and marketing becoming 2X more effective overnight. Using emotions in marketing and branding is the key to more effective campaigns

According to Roger Dooley, emotional ads work TWICE as well as rational ads. So it’s important your campaign incorporates emotion from the start. You can deploy these emotions through copy and creative in all formats, analog and digital.

Before you create your next campaign, check in with these powerful emotions in marketing and branding.  Be sure you’ve considered your strategy, both long and short term before deciding which emotion works best in your marketing.

Fear
Fear comes in many forms, and it creates a sense of urgency.

Fear also heightens any other emotion created alongside it and it drives us to make deeper connections with those we share the fear with-this is why scary movies create deepen relationships. 

There are several different kinds of fear, but two common types include:
“Fear Of Missing Out” (FOMO): This particular fear tends to work well on younger people in social media. This works particularly well for items with time sensitivity.
“Fear of Isolation”: closely connected to FOMO, fear of isolation, used in connection with health products, deodorant for example: “use this so you don’t smell, because when you smell, you become a social pariah.”

When to Use Fear in Emotional Marketing/Branding:

  • To drive leads
  • You have a specific and actionable solution
  • You have an easy, no stress way to buy

Happiness/Joy
What happens when we feel happy? You might be surprised.

It’s a fine line because if we’re too happy, we might not be motivated to purchase. But happiness DOES make us want to share. It seems good news travels fast. According to a study by Fractl these are the Top 5 emotions which drive viral content:

  • Amusement
  • Interest
  • Surprise
  • Happiness
  • Delight

When to Use Happiness in

in Emotional Marketing/Branding:

  • You want others to share your message
  • You want to build trust and loyalty
  • You can commit to happy content as a brand

Inclusion

One of our oldest motivations is the need to be part of a tribe, included in a group. For our earliest ancestors, it was a requirement for survival, today, that need is still a powerful motivator and when we have it, we feel safe which leads to loyalty.

When to Use Inclusion in

in Emotional Marketing/Branding

  • To attract or retain customers
  • When you can also utilize the fear of missing out
  • When you have the processes and platforms to create and sustain community

Anticipation

We’re hardwired to anticipate outcomes. We’re not always right, but we are always anticipating. You can use anticipation in a couple of different ways, to attract and retain customers.

Attracting customers with anticipation typically comes with a stimuli and an outcome. The faster the outcome, the more likely we are to repeat the stimuli. Once we’re hooked on the stimuli, the outcome frequency can become variable (you might have learned about Pavlov’s dog, this is the same theory). Gamification uses anticipation brilliantly.

Keeping customers with anticipation requires a product commitment (free sample with every order) or an anticipation experience connected to the product (why subscription boxes are so popular). You can create variables in the anticipation (products, frequency) that will actually heighten the anticipation.

Something else about anticipation: it DECREASES when we’re stressed and change can be stressful. This is why consistency in branding is so very important and why big changes for big brands are big-time risks. Can you think of a brand whose big change created major negative upheaval for them?

When to Use Anticipation in

in Emotional Marketing/Branding:

  • You have the willingness to keep the anticipation fresh
  • You want to build loyalty and repeat buyers
  • Your brand is elevated and/or lifestyle oriented

Expertise/Leadership

Making your customer feel like they’re the smartest/sexiest/most influential is a great way to get people’s attention. People love to be the most “something” of their friends and people will work to achieve this effect.

This marketing emotion is closely connected with our need for mastery and our innate value of time. Because of these two addition motivations, the harder you make it the more committed they will become to the process. It’s all about our emotional triggers again, we’re hardwired to commit more time to something we’ve already committed time to – this is the same theory behind the test drive and keeping you at the dealership during a car purchase.

Again, games do this quite well. Successful fitness trainers do this quite well.

When to Use Expertise and Leadership in your Marketing/Branding

  • When you have a unique process people can move through and see improvement
  • As a relationship builder, such as influencer marketing or tips and tricks your customers can use

Good luck and I look forward to hearing how you’re using emotion in your marketing and branding.

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The Secret To Captivating Content Strategy

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Did you know that we’re all ruled by a super-powerful hormone? It’s true. This hormone dominates decision-making, especially split-second choices like the ones digital users are making every day. Decisions like “click,” “like,” “retweet,” and more importantly, “buy” and “subscribe” are all significantly affected by this hormone. Savvy marketing strategists have been triggering this hormone for years, some knowingly, some stumbling upon it.

You’ve undoubtedly heard of this hormone. You’ve heard about it in the context of drugs, sex, and even food. But what does this hormone do for marketers? I’ll get to that in a minute.

First, a little more about this hormone: dopamine. See? I told you you’ve heard of it. Dopamine is best known as the “pleasure hormone.” It’s the hormone that creates the surge of euphoria that we feel after a particularly satisfying (insert pleasure here).

But the surge of satisfaction is not actually the most powerful tool in a communicator’s arsenal.

The most powerful tool for the content communicator is anticipation.

And it turns out that dopamine is actually more aptly described as the “wanting and seeking” hormone. Ah. Now you get it, right? It turns out that the “wanting and seeking” trigger is MORE powerful than satisfaction. This means we’re hard-wired to keep looking, keep seeking until we satisfy our wanting and seeking—and then we’re hard-wired to do it all again.

Think for just a moment about the advantage to your content and overall marketing strategy if you can trigger this motivation. Images can trigger our wanting and seeking. Ever seen a really great close-up shot of your favorite food and searched for how to have it delivered at lunch that very day?

Images of just about anything we want can trigger our “wanting and seeking” hormone. This means you really need to think about the images you’re using in marketing and advertising, because images are incredibly key to the top of the funnel.

While we see food and sex all the time in marketing, it might be that those images aren’t appropriate for your brand. Good news for you. Because there’s more.

Guess what else fuels our anticipation?

Just guess. This is super important because not all businesses and campaigns are suitable for triggering food, sex, and drug urges. Curiosity.

The brain experiences dopamine rushes when we’re curious for more information. Think about the last Google search you did. Ever been sucked down the rabbit hole of Google and found yourself coming out of the other side 45 minutes later? That’s your insatiable, hormone-driven seeking and wanting trigger.

Our quest for information is basically never-ending. We’re hard-wired that way, and from an evolutionary standpoint, this is a splendid thing. Now WHAT information triggers this is the key.

This is where we circle back around to audience identification and personalization. We’re inundated with information, so we have to be very clear on our audience so we understand WHAT kind of information or curiosity triggers them.

Motivational triggers work on all people, but what activates them is where your marketing research and strategy comes in.

Another thing that triggers our wanting and seeking hormone is unexpected prompts that are auditory or visual. You know what does this exceptionally well? Your phone.

It beeps, vibrates, or a message pops up—and you almost always stop what you are doing to look at it, don’t you? If you don’t, it takes an active and conscious effort on your part.

This is why my most hated and dreaded marketing tactic, pop-up messaging, is so powerful. I personally drop right out of a page when I get a pop-up because I feel like it’s insensitive to the reader, but the truth is, it works on the vast majority of people because the surprise triggers the wanting and seeking.

Novelty and unpredictability also trigger our seeking behavior. This is why “New and Improved” works.

The Counter Intuitive Path

You’ve probably heard over and over again to simplify. The message is too long. The funnel is too long. Overall, this is good advice.

However, once you really understand the “seeking and wanting” hormone, your path can actually be quite long—so long as it keeps triggering curiosity and gives information in small bits and pieces, even if it withholds the full solution until the end.

Ever seen an ugly landing page that was all text that you ended up reading despite yourself? Really awesome copywriters understand how to use this tactic to move you through the process.

Interestingly enough, the more time you spend on something, the more committed you are. So long copy and long funnels have a purpose—and in the right situation, with the right audience, they work.

In A Nutshell:

Here it is in a nutshell: trigger the wanting and seeking hormone. Make your audience curious. Lead them down a path that satisfies in bits and pieces.

Experiment with what triggers curiosity in your audience and test the strength of that curiosity with funnel length. Triggering the “wanting and seeking” hormone is the very premise behind free information in content marketing and the internet in general.

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Why Your Storytelling Isn’t Working

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Key Takeaways

  • Focus on Customer-Centric Stories: Effective brand storytelling must prioritize the customer. People respond to stories that reflect their identities or aspirations.
  • Understand the Power of Motivation: Successful storytelling taps into deep-rooted human motivations that resonate with emotional needs.
  • Evaluate Storytelling Impact: Brands should assess how stories align with customer self-perception and the emotions they evoke.

Do you know why people respond (or don’t respond) to your brand storytelling?

The answer doesn’t lie in your typeface, your graphic design, or even your social networks.

The answer lies in your strategy and your customer.

Let me put it another way: do you know what motivations your customers respond to most powerfully?

Many years ago, I launched a marketing incubator designed to help marketers connect the dots between personality types and motivations.

What I learned was that few marketers understood how to trigger basic motivations. Even those who did didn’t fully understand why they worked.

These weren’t lazy marketers. They were strong professionals committed to improving.

Why These Motivations Matter

Before I go on, let me explain something: I did not make up these motivations. I am not even the first to write about them.

These motivations are ancient and hard-wired into the human experience. They live in what I call “the other 90%” of our brain.

These are not trend-based tactics. They are rooted in the oldest parts of human decision-making.

While modern triggers have changed, the motivations themselves have not. They remain active and powerful.

Over the next weeks, I’m going to write a series about the seven Captivation Motivations all marketers should know.

This applies not just to marketers, but also to product teams, developers, and anyone trying to trigger an immediate and memorable reaction.

Why Storytelling Works

The first Captivation Motivation I’m going to cover is one that is both over-discussed and misunderstood: storytelling.

It’s important to understand why storytelling works—and more importantly, what kinds of stories actually drive action.

If you take nothing else away from this blog post, understand this:

People buy for two reasons: it either reinforces how they see themselves or how they want to be seen. (Tweet This)

Every purchase we make is part of our personal story.

What Stories Do We Respond To?

  • Stories about us
  • Stories that make us feel smarter, better, or part of something
  • Stories that reinforce how we see ourselves or want to be seen

This happens because the largest part of our brain is focused on ourselves.

This is why brand stories must be carefully crafted.

As communicators, we want to tell the brand story. But the reader wants to read a story about themselves.

This disconnect is significant.

Examples of Effective Brand Storytelling

We see strong examples of storytelling all the time—simple, elegant, and captivating.

Coca-Cola

One of my favorite examples is Coca-Cola.

They built their brand storytelling years ago with “I’d like to teach the world to sing…”—a campaign so ingrained in culture it became the closing moment of Mad Men.

Today, Coca-Cola continues to tell its story through its consumers. Think about bottles wrapped in names and identities like “VIP,” “Latino,” or “Super Star.” Each reinforces how people see themselves—or how they want to be seen.

Consumers can even create personalized bottles.

This drove massive user-generated content. People shared photos of themselves with products that reflected their identity.

Coca-Cola doesn’t focus on what goes into the bottle or internal operations. The story is always about the consumer. There is connection, not disconnect. You are Coca-Cola, and Coca-Cola is you.

The brand’s value—roughly 45% of the company’s total value—comes from understanding the consumer, not the other way around. 

Apple

Apple is another strong example, even if the brand has shifted over time.

From the beginning, Apple was clear about its positioning. It didn’t make computers—it designed products to enhance people’s lives. The emphasis was on design, simplicity, and integration. Without these traits, Apple would be just another hardware company.

Instead, those traits were customer-focused. They reflected how users wanted to see themselves.

Apple created strong brand advocates who feel that owning Apple products is part of their identity.

That is the pinnacle of brand storytelling.

How to Apply This to Your Brand

When you integrate brand storytelling into your communications strategy, ask yourself:

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