Brand Made Stories: When Complexity Becomes a Simple, Great Story

Hi all,

Hope you’ve been well.

Welcome to Brand Made Stories (formerly known as Friday Thing/k) – a brand storytelling canvas where I’d like to share smart, creative, inspiring, engaging, cool, and innovative brand stories that take my marketing breath away once a week.

A lot of what I share in my weekly posts are well-produced stories.

Often, these are branded films made by well-known directors (usually award winning), with strong writers (top creative agencies), impressive casts (movie/TV stars, sports talent, amazing kids), and great soundtracks. Essentially, all of the ingredients that come together to make you cry, laugh, and emotionally engage.

When you have budgets like these brands have, it’s a no-brainer that Hollywood-style stories would be created…

But stories are stories, no matter how elaborate or big the budget. To paraphrase the philosophical principle, Occam’s razor, “A simple story is usually better.”

That’s why, this week, the common thread with all of the stories below is simplicity. The products or services are complex, but the opportunities to tell a simple story, are taken. These are brands that have developed mesmerizing stories out of the mundane. Stories that you can’t stop watching, again and again.

Suga, a Melbourne candy shop specializing in rock candies has baked dedicated “lolliologists” into their selling process so shoppers can see how pools of sugary lava turn into mountains of hard rock candy. What a sweet story:

Onto the next…

Ever ask yourself how tennis balls are made? Like myself, most of you probably haven’t, but a short film highlights the manufacturing process of Wilson’s tennis balls for the US Open. It’s an amazingly complex manufacture, requiring 24 different stages to make the final product. And that’s exactly the content they used to tell this enjoyable story:

I’m willing to bet this third story today has crossed your mind at some point or another as generation after generation, people have wondered how the cranes that build high-rise buildings get built themselves.

Looking at those gigantic machines, you ask yourself: Why do I never see them being built? Does it happen at night? Is there a bigger crane that builds cranes? If there is such a mega crane, who built it? Pretty much the biblical chicken and egg question.

Thankfully, San Marco Cranes, an Italian company that sells cranes around the world, decided to solve this puzzle once and for all with their Tower Crane Assembly with Climber Demo, turning mystery into a story:

The last story for today was brought to my attention by my wife. An argument between the two of us emerged recently about mounting the TV onto the wall.

Personally, I don’t know why it can’t stay on the table!

For reference to how I should go about installation, she sent me a video that one of her friends, Shalom, posted on Facebook. The guy lives in L.A. and has a business for TV installations. In the video, he shows how to mount a Tv in 35 seconds. While it proved to me that there is no way I can do it, Shalom did create a simple, yet powerful piece of content marketing.

Like all of the examples above, the video has everything we talk about when it comes to brands: it educates, adds value, inspires, and engages. The fact that it was shot on a mobile phone and uploaded without any ‘Pixar-like’ editing or effects just adds to its credibility, increasing audience trust.

So complicated, so simple. Such brilliant stories. Wondering how you can start creating content like this? I recommend the FAQ section of your site for mining some great stories around your own product or service.