How to create a strong digital brand (3): Story & Identity

First and foremost, you and your team need to know what you want. Then you can identify who you want to be and communicate that to others.

• The basics: What does your company do, what are your services, advantages, and areas of expertise?
• Your values: What do you stand for? What is important to you? What is important to your counterparts? What is important to your environment? This also includes where there may be or could be conflicts in values and goals. And how these can be resolved.
• The “meaning”: Why should you still be around in 5 years? At this point, at the latest, the ice must be very thick and stable. What are you better at than others? And what contribution will you be able to make to this world by then at the latest?

Your identity – who are you?

Together, this forms the basis of your identity. Add to this your history and development, what your original impulse was, how you have developed to get to where you are today, what brought you together and keeps you together, and what drives you.

Very important and right at the outset: tell the truth!

We're not rewriting Grimm's fairy tales here. Instead, we develop a story as a metaphor for your company's important messages.

“Credibility” is not an accurate enough category, as this can also be a measure of the quality of a lie. What you need is evidence that will always stand up to critical scrutiny by your counterparts. This will enable you to gain their “trust.” And very importantly, your drive, motivation, and intention must be genuine.

And now let's get started.

Once we have searched for and found the name of your project and company, we also examine its connotations, associations, and images (as you have already read). These are our important starting points. We have already translated this into a visual form with your logo and the symbol of your new company. We then transform all of this into a viable story and formulate it.

What is the setting with images and experiences? Ideally, you should tie in with the visual space of your sign and logo. A useful tool to help you visualize this is your website: How do you structure it with images, names, and content that are based on or derived from the world of your name and logo?

• What is your mission, your task? Your quest? What do you need to find, achieve, and solve? In film language, this would be referred to as a “McGuffin,” an object that drives your plot forward.
• What obstacles await you, what difficulties do you have to overcome?
• What skills do you use to do this, what roles have you assigned among yourselves?

Now transfer all of this into your setting: What or who are you there? What does your environment look like, what are your tasks?

You now have all the elements in front of you: the setting, the heroes, the obstacles, the task and its solution, and why it is so important. Now you have to tell the story: as simply, clearly, and concisely as possible. Make it as exciting, dramatic, and emotionally charged as you can. From writing a film, comic, book, or show: start with an earthquake and then ramp it up! This will immediately captivate your audience, readers, or listeners. Here's an example of how we told our first movie, with a dramatic scene at the beginning.

You define everything. And with that, your entire world is established, with all its building blocks and plot elements. You will need these in the future, because each part will always tell the story of the whole.