Insights From Our Experts

So your brand has a social conscience. Maybe you’ve championed diversity by fostering inclusive leadership and workplace culture, or maybe you’ve made a positive difference in the environment by developing a sustainable supply chain.  

Congrats: community involvement and social impact initiatives are stepping stones on your path to building brand trust, brand loyalty, and a genuine commitment to amplifying the voices and causes that matter. After all, a 2019 CSR survey conducted by Aflac tells us that 77% of consumers feel motivated to purchase from businesses who are working to make the world a better place. 

How do you nurture the narrative that your brand is socially active and aware? How do you prove yourself to your customers and keep them connected and engaged? The answer is simple: brand storytelling. When you shine a light on your dedication to social change across your marketing channels, you take a strategic approach to trustworthiness and positive brand recognition. 

In this article, we’ll share fresh insights on brand storytelling: when to do it, how to do it, and where to do it so you can continue to strengthen the relationship you have with your audience and grow your customer base. We’ll also share examples of socially responsible companies who have successfully woven narratives around their social initiatives and seen promising results. 

Be the Brand You Would Want to Buy From

Let’s talk brand content strategy. Put yourself in your customers’ shoes for a moment and consider whether your brand could be trusted to be ethical and socially responsible. With that perspective in mind, you can craft your storytelling approach using the following principles: 

Big Picture Thinking

Are your stories and social initiatives aligned with your business goals? Are you taking their performance seriously? Data and reporting can serve as evidence that your brand is taking meaningful action, and when you use the same metrics for growth and success across your business and your stories, you position your aims for change and profit as integrated, essential aspects of your organization’s present and future accomplishments. This way, your audience can trust that you’re holding yourself accountable. You can also start making your social initiatives part of your company culture for seamless, top-to-bottom social awareness that informs every move your brand makes.

Map Your Success

Plan, plan, and then plan again. This can include having a messaging framework that organizes all the strongest elements of your stories and social initiatives in one place and even a mission statement or manifesto that your customers and employees can lean on as a reminder of why your contributions matter. The key is consistency across all channels and communications. You want your voice to be distinctive, cutting through the noise of other causes to make a true impact. 

Ready, Set, Share

Speed and relevance will be essential to keeping your stories alive. What’s “hot” in culture and on social media can change rapidly, meaning you and your team should keep a constant pulse on when your cause is getting attention (e.g., when it’s the right time to press “share”). Relevance, on the other hand, is just a simple strategy for keeping your audience engaged and your stories relatable. What does your audience care about? How can they see themselves in your narrative? Emotional investment can push your social impact even further. 

Authenticity is Everything 

Don’t be shy. Be yourself! You owe it to your audience to tackle challenging topics and give your own employees the opportunity to take center stage with their stories and experiences. This will allow your brand to communicate authenticity, vulnerability, and a very real connection to the causes you care about, all while educating customers. The more “real” you seem, the more you’ll be heard and seen as a legitimate force for good and a brand worth associating with. 

…And Empathy is Everything Else

Brand storytelling can have a major ripple effect. We’ve mentioned inviting your employees to participate, but your customers can be a great resource, too. Give them the chance to be active members of your social initiatives and watch your connection with your audience deepen. Their stories will become your stories, taking brand trust to an undeniable, real-world level. 

Expert Brand Storytelling Playbooks 

Check out these socially responsible companies and their tech-savvy takes on social change and spreading the right message, the right way. 

TOMS

This footwear brand is well known for donating footwear to children in need, but why and how has their story gone global? TOMS can thank Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter for their fame. From widespread tweets about their 2009 AT&T commercial to impromptu celebrity photos with @toms in the caption, digital brand storytelling pushed the company into the limelight, giving them the perfect platform for their “One day without shoes” campaign. In an effort to raise awareness for children’s healthcare and education, TOMS prompted participants to go shoeless and share their stories on Facebook and Flickr. This put consumers in charge, driving an authentic narrative and a marketing plan that relied on real-world influence and real, changed lives to keep up its momentum. 

TOMS’s brand content strategy is clearly working. Their one-to-one giving plan resulted in seven million pairs of shoes purchased and seven million pairs of shoes donated from 2019 to 2020. 

Bombas 

Podcast ad reads and Instagram Stories have helped this sock brand donate 45 million socks over the last 11 years. But these aren’t just any ad reads. Podcast hosts interweave their stories with the podcast itself to celebrate Bombas’ mission and products in a way that feels genuine rather than forced. An already strong connection between host and audience can make all the difference between “it’s just a pair of socks” and “it’s a pair of socks you need to buy.” As more and more orders are placed, more and more socks are donated, furthering the reach of Bombas’ core social initiative. 

This brand’s approach to corporate philanthropy hinges on yet another one-to-one giving plan, and socks are just the start. As of 2024, they’ve provided more than 140 million pieces of essential clothing to those in need. 

Tell Your Brand’s Story with Liger 

Be known as a pioneer for social good. At Liger, we make corporate philanthropy a priority and emphasize the power of authentic storytelling with regular updates to our blog and our podcast, The Claw. We can help your brand find its own authentic voice and give your social initiatives the attention they deserve. Contact us today to give your brand content strategy a boost.