The #1 Brand Storytelling Fundamental: Know Your Audience
In the ever-evolving landscape of brand communications, one principle remains constant: audience understanding is the foundation of all effective storytelling.
The Audience Understanding Imperative
Let me share a truth I've observed in my decades of storytelling: The difference between stories that transform and those that never make an impact lies in the depth of audience understanding behind the narratives.
So many organizations approach storytelling backwards—they start with what they want to say rather than what their audience needs to hear. They craft messages in boardrooms, isolated from the very people they hope to reach. The result? Brand narratives that feel disconnected, generic, and ultimately ineffective.
During my career of telling stories for small business, corporations, and even nonprofits, I've found that many brands typically fall into one of three audience understanding categories:
Surface-Level Understanding: Only collecting basic demographic data and perhaps some purchasing patterns. Their storytelling feels generic because it is.
Functional Understanding: These organizations have mapped customer journeys and identified significant pain points. Their storytelling addresses practical needs but misses deeper emotional connections.
Transformational Understanding: These rare brands have invested in uncovering the underlying motivations, aspirations, and desires of their audience. Their storytelling doesn't just communicate—it resonates on a human level.
The uncomfortable reality is that most brands operate in category one while believing they're in category two or three. This kind of misalignment depletes their marketing budgets with ineffective marketing and countless missed opportunities for meaningful customer connection.
Beyond Traditional Audience Research
Traditional audience research often focuses exclusively on the customer's relationship with your product category. Using this narrow lens misses crucial context about your audience's broader goals—the true foundation for compelling storytelling.
When I work with clients to deepen their audience understanding, we focus on five dimensions that most brands overlook:
Customer Identity
How does your audience define themselves? What stories do they tell about who they are? Your brand story needs to be aligned with—or thoughtfully challenge—these self-perceptions.
Social Currency
What do conversations in your audience's social circles focus on? How does your brand relate to the knowledge, experiences, or possessions of your customers and their friends? Effective brand storytelling provides social currency for your customer. You want to make them feel good about doing business with your brand.
Value Hierarchies
When forced to choose, what does your audience prioritize? Security or adventure? Belonging or standing out? Understanding your customer’s felt needs reveals what your story should emphasize and what it can downplay.
Aspiration Gaps
What distance exists between your audience's current state and their desired future outcomes? The most powerful brand stories position your product or service as a bridge across this gap.
Cultural Contexts
What larger cultural narratives shape your audience's worldview? What are their deepest concerns and how does your product or service meet them in that place of need? I often ask clients, “In relation to your product or service, what keeps your customers up at night? What do they worry about and how do you offer solutions that help them overcome that need?” Your brand story exists inside these broader narratives.
Translating Audience Understanding Into Compelling Stories
Deep audience understanding doesn't automatically generate great stories. Review again the five dimensions we just discussed and incorporate them into your stories. The translation from that insight to your narrative requires both science and art:
Let’s Start With The Science
Begin by mapping your insights into narrative elements:
Audience challenges should become the tension points in your story. Every great story has some type of conflict. Your customers’ pain points should be a key part of the stories you tell.
Audience values become themes. Remember what they care about and how your brand fits into their deeper narrative.
Audience aspirations become resolution elements. How do you help them resolve their pain points? Where does your product or service fit into that equation?
Audience language becomes your vocabulary. Use terms and phrases your audience uses.
Now The Art
Craft narratives that:
Create "recognition moments" where audiences see themselves inside your story. Where do they see your product or service fitting into their lives?
Position your brand as a guide rather than the hero. I can’t emphasize this enough. Your customer needs to see you as a trusted ally on their quest to find a resolution to their pain points. This builds a strong connection between you and your customers.
Every great story has stakes–success or failure. Clearly define how your solution is key to solving their problem. Make them feel like they can’t pass up what you have to offer. This is not about price or features–it’s about a true connection between you and your customers.
The brands that consistently tell the most compelling stories—Nike, Airbnb, Patagonia—have mastered both the science of audience understanding and the art of translating those insights into compelling brand narratives.
The Unseen ROI of Audience-Centered Storytelling
The most significant returns on audience-centered storytelling often go unmeasured. Beyond conversion metrics and engagement analytics, these narratives create:
Building Trust: As you deepen your relationship with your customers, they begin to trust you as their guide in overcoming their problem.
Decision Simplification: Mental shortcuts that make your brand the automatic choice when needs arise. Make it easy for your customers to keep coming back to you.
Relationship Resilience: Connections that withstand competitive offers and price considerations. When they trust you to bring solutions to their problems, your customers are more interested in the value you bring, than finding a cheaper substitute.
Identity Integration: Incorporation of your brand into how audiences define themselves—the ultimate competitive moat.
Identity Integration is something that is extremely rare with any brand. I will say, however, that I personally have a very small number of brands that I will stick with, even though they’re more expensive than the competition. These brands almost feel like a part of my family. It would take a significant change in both my thinking and their actions to pull me away from them.
Where Most Brands Go Wrong
Even organizations committed to audience understanding typically make three critical mistakes:
Static Understanding: Treating audience insights as a one-time research project rather than a continuous discovery process in a changing world. Their needs and desires will change over time–just like yours do. Never stop asking for feedback from your best customers.
Isolating Customer Insight: Keeping audience understanding confined to marketing departments rather than making it accessible to everyone who shapes the customer experience. I have seen this happen countless times. Your employees–every single one of them– need to understand the connection between your brand and your customers.
Fearing Change: Gathering breakthrough insights but lacking the courage to create stories that break category conventions based on these insights. I have worked with companies so tied to their idea of what they do and who they are that they’ve lost site of how their customer views them.
Don’t be afraid to make subtle changes to your messaging when you get new insights from your customers. I’m not suggesting that you make major course corrections after a couple of bad Yelp reviews. Just be aware that the needs and desire of your audience can change, and you can make adjustments to your narrative to meet those changes.
The path forward requires addressing all three challenges—ongoing insight gathering, sharing audience understanding throughout your organization, and developing the creative courage to act on what you learn.
The Path Forward
If your brand storytelling isn't delivering the results you need, the root cause almost certainly lies in a lack of audience understanding. The solution isn't over the top creative execution but deeper audience insight. There are more than a few examples of brand missteps over the past few years that could have been avoided by focusing on their true audience, rather than an imagined one.
Whether you're a startup defining your initial narrative or an established brand refreshing your story for changing times, begin by honestly assessing your current level of audience understanding.
Always ask yourself:
Could you describe your audience's needs and desires with the same depth and nuance you use to describe your own product features?
Do you understand not just what they buy, but why they buy it?
Can you define your audience’s aspirations just as clearly as you know their demographic profile?
If these questions reveal a few gaps, make it priority to fill them before crafting another campaign, piece of content, or even an email. The investment in deeper audience understanding will transform not just your storytelling effectiveness but your entire approach to building relationships with your customers.
I often tell my clients, “When you invest in telling stories, you’re actually investing in connections with your customers.” Make sure that investment is well spent by knowing and understanding the needs and desires of the people you want to reach.
In future posts, I’ll show ways that any business can tell compelling stories that resonate with your audience. You don’t need a marketing department or high priced agency to make this happen. Keep coming back for more insights that will help you become a better storyteller along with practical tips that can help build your brand.
This post is part of our ongoing series on Brand Storytelling Fundamentals. Subscribe to receive future insights on crafting narratives that resonate and drive business results.
At Media Mountain Group, we help organizations transform their brand storytelling through deeper audience understanding. Reach out to discuss how our proven methodology can strengthen your narrative approach. Our story framework is guided by six-time Emmy Award-winning producer Steve Childress, whose global storytelling experience across 20+ countries brings unparalleled insight to your brand narrative development.