Often, the middle is not a good thing. The middle seat in the back of a car is usually tight and always windowless. In politics, the middle is equated with an inability to take sides on an issue. To be nowhere. Finding yourself between an elephant and a car hood…well, you get the picture.

But in storytelling, the middle is where the action is. It’s where the plot thickens and builds on itself as it rolls inevitably to the climax.

So what, you ask, do elephants, car hoods and the middle of stories have in common? Here’s what:You’ve started your company for a reason (see my last post on that). In that reason are values that define your company. In the everyday work your company does – that place between its founding and its ending – is where it gets to prove that its reason (and its values) have worth to its market. How it goes about proving that worth, i.e. showcasing its elephant, is where it builds its brand.

Take Apple. Apple started with the vision of putting a computer on everyone’s desk, making computer’s accessible and friendly – i.e. “personal” – to the masses. In the last decade, Apple has tapped into its original vision, making consumer electronics and software applications accessible to millions. Even the clean, consistent design of its products, stores, packaging, manuals, ads and the like communicate that original message, and reinforce the trust people have in its brand.

So how then does your company builds its brand and find its elephant? These three words can help:

1) Relevance. What you do and how you describe your company are matters of trust. All too often brand builders use terminology that sounds great, but has no relevance to the actual brand. If you call yourself the “world’s largest XYZ company”, it may grab people’s attention briefly. But if your company doesn’t have more stores, more profit, more consumers, etc, then it is not the world’s largest. People will quickly see that, and turn away.

2) Consistency. There have been many articles written about the importance of message consistency, but let me just say it again (for consistency’s sake). It takes a minimum of three interactions with your brand for a message to get noticed. It takes a lot more for your message to sink in, to be memorable. State your message often and consistently, and your audience will begin to absorb it.

3) Trust. It is one thing to have your audience absorb your company’s message. But it takes trust to build long-term customers. The products you build, the corporate decisions you make, the charities your company back, what your press releases state, what you share across social media channels – all of these should stem from your brand’s origins and the values that define your brand. And the more accurately and consistently you align those actions with your brand’s values, the more people will begin to trust your brand.

Now granted, it is easy to forget these things in the heat of everyday toil. So if you take away anything from this post, let it be this: your company should seek its elephant in everything it does, everyday.

In storytelling lingo, the beginning is often called the “catalyst” or the “inciting incident”. It is the big bang, the moment the protagonist loses his job, the death of the beloved king. It is the moment that brings about monumental change to which we as readers can often relate at a personal level.

In company and product parlance, the catalyst is that place where your brand first started talking shape. And, for consumers, it is often that place that explains why companies are doing what they are doing in the first place. In other words, it gives the rest of the “story” meaning and purpose.

Here are some great examples of company catalysts:

-       Google: Sergey Brin and Larry Page dropped out of graduate school at Stanford University to, in their own words, “change the world” by organizing every bit of information on the Web for free.

-       Apple: the two “Steves” decided to make their own personal computer in their garage.

-       Napster: Shawn Fanning and Sean Parker realized that people had a need to share files between computers.

Great visionaries who establish their companies and give birth to their ideas often do so in an environment that is in need of change. It is in this ever-evolving world that the seeds are sown for exciting transformation and the development of products that can change the game, whether in air travel (e.g. Virgin) or personal computers (e.g. Apple).

If you are confused about how to communicate the value of your brand, if your “story” is not as clear-cut as you’d like it to be, then dive into the heart of your very own “creation”; the how and the why that brought your company/product into existence. By closely examining your own beginnings, you will likely find invaluable information that will give the rest of your story a deeper meaning for your audience.

A great story is meant to be told

The salesperson explained enthusiastically that the t-shirt’s graphic is the logo of the brand, Topo Ranch, that was founded by folks whose ancestors were survivors of the Donner Party. And that their family did actually own land called ‘Topo Ranch’ from the 1800s until they lost it to the Great Depression. The store’s mission is to continue the legacy of their predecessors–supplying quality goods–and someday buy back the 20,000-acre ranch. And so they named their brand after the property, chose the ranch’s namesake for their logo, and gave it wings to symbolize their dream taking flight.

As a history buff and marketer, I was completely intrigued. Not only was the t-shirt soft and high quality; the graphics meant something that held value. It was an authentic story of pioneering spirit and endurance. Needless to say, I bought the t-shirt.

Turn your customers into storytellers

A compelling brand story is one of the vital components of a great brand, be it t-shirts, video games or technology. Your brand’s story gives your brand a why and a what. A reason to exist and a core essence that set it apart from your competitors. It intrigues your customer, creates an emotional and visceral connection with your product, working its way into their consciousness, to be accessed and passed on again and again. The important thing is that your customer (your free brand ambassador) knows this story—that he/she hears it from your sales staff and your website, your product packaging, your facebook page and your tweets.

Empowering all facets of your marketing to tell the story is a cost-effective way to empower your brand. It might even give it wings.

In this blog, we share our insights, experiences and case studies — those head-scratching and “eureka” moments — about how we help entertainment technology companies strengthen their brands and subsequently increase their revenue. As we arm our clients with the right tools to do the job, we spend a lot of time ruminating on brand building and the essential storytelling that goes along with it.

Same old story?

As I stated in an earlier post in August 2010, storytelling in marketing ain’t new. Marketing in its earliest form was based on the sharing a compelling stories with a potential customers. The goal was then, as is now, to create an emotional reaction in the customer, an urgent desire, which could only be fulfilled by purchasing the product or service. What’s different is that in ancient times, the audience could take part. Somewhere along the way, we as storytellers forgot how to impart stories that invited interaction.

Melting ice caps, growing demands

Having said that, we live in a brave new world. Storytelling is still important but how you tell that story is even more so. Consumer expectations are rising as rapidly as the ice caps are melting and alongside this, their attention span is shrinking. A brand has less time to convey its message concisely and compellingly. On top of that, brands are competing with a galaxy of digital noise. With the advent of social media, consumers are no longer listening to brands that preach and don’t listen.

Unify and diversify

That means your headlines and taglines, your tweets and status updates, your spokespeople and packaging and last but not least, your product or service, must offer a unified story of value. And the story must intrigue and satisfy, but only just enough so they keep coming back for more. This is especially so for the entertainment industry whose bread and butter is built on keeping their customers engaged. As the new year dawns and the entertainment industry continues to morph at incredible pace, it might do well to remember that no one wants to hear the same old story.

So what does all that mean for copywriters who have built their careers on catchy ad slogans? For the savvy copywriter who knows how to evolve, it can spell opportunity.

Consider these points:

Internet search is based on words – Web sites are ranked according to the fancy algorithms that google and other search engines employ. Those algorithms are based in large part on written content, e.g. how many times a word is used on a page; whether a word is bold or not; whether graphics and tags have descriptive text to support them; and so on.

Keywords drive awareness – In today’s 2.0 world, it’s all about relevance. Fancy graphics and classic TV spots might grab your attention (interrupt you), but well-chosen words written by smart copywriters can connect relevant messages to the right audience.

Social media is based on written conversation – Twitter and Facebook are based on written conversations. Copywriters should learn how to join those conversations for their benefit, and the benefit of their clients.

Traditional media is not dead – Even though some forms of traditional marketing are decreasing in importance, they are by no means gone. Flyers and brochures, press releases, videos, case studies, white papers, print and web ads – all of these techniques are still used across marketing departments and throughout agencies.

Companies still need messaging – I’ve saved the most important for last. Everything above is just a tactic. Crafting corporate and product messages, and ensuring that they are flowing through the right forms of media in the right way, is still critical to a company’s success.

Marketing is changing. There is no doubt about that. But with that change has come new opportunity, especially for copywriters who are willing to embrace the shifting landscape.

Not exactly.

Just because you can write does not mean you know how to write for marketing purposes, how to define corporate messaging, or how to pen copy that calls customers to action. Just because you can write does not mean you can advise companies on what to say to help them jump to the next step in their growth.

Messaging (for a client or for your own organization) is a learned skill and it requires in-depth knowledge of some very broad topics, including:

1) Branding – What are your company’s mission and vision? How are those defined in its culture, its structure, its products, its messaging, its design?

2) Positioning – How does your company position itself? Has it ever really defined its position? What are its objectives? What are its products’/services’ unique selling propositions and benefits?

3) Competitive Landscape – Who is the company up against? What are those competitors saying about themselves and their products/services? How does that differ from what you are saying?

4) Knowledge of the Customer – Which messages work in the market and which mediums do customers use to pick up on those messages? Which tone works best?

5) Marketing Communications – What are the specific rules of certain marketing communication mediums? How can you combine those mediums into an integrated messaging strategy? How do you write for specific mediums so that your words have more impact?

Hundreds of great books have been written about each one of these areas. Some of my favorites are: Crossing the Chasm, The 22 Immutable Laws of Branding, Positioning: The Battle for Your Mind, The New Rules of Marketing and PR, and The Copywriter’s Handbook. Just take a quick look at Amazon, and you quickly begin to understand how much there is to know.

So sure, everyone can write. But not everyone can effectively take corporate concepts and mold them into marketing messaging and messaging strategies that drive sales.

Here’s an example of what I mean: Executives at an early stage company want the company to have more visibility in the market. Their idea is to run ads, reach out to editors, do direct mail, re-design the web site, and other tactics – all of which can be effective tools for raising awareness and driving leads.

Problem is, the company has never really spent time defining its brand. It has no unique or compelling brand message that sets it apart from the competition, that captures a share of its customers’ minds, or that motivates the employees to do and the customers to act.

Strangely enough, this is a relatively common problem, especially among early stage companies. That is not to say that these companies are naïve or inexperienced. On the contrary, most of these companies have great products and intelligent executives; they’ve just been focused on a number of very pressing issues (like developing the product and securing revenue) and marketing has fallen on the priority list.

But there comes a point in a company’s evolution when it must start thinking strategically about how it wants to define itself. And it is then that the needs for copywriting and marketing intersect. Marketers can help companies define their position in the market, and strategize about how to reach those customers. Copywriters can help a company craft a truly differentiated message that complements the marketers strategy and that flows through all the tactics a marketer plans and implements, from ads, to PR, to web sites and beyond.

The world is changing, and our language is striving to keep pace. The advent of new technology and evolving culture is taking us into places for which we have no descriptive vernacular. To wit, words like “google”, “blogosphere”, “tweet”, “phishing”, “crowdsourcing”, “vaporware”, and “skype” didn’t exist 10 years ago. Now it’s hard to get a sentence out without using one of these neologisms.

Our language has never been very good at precision. I mean, where is the word describing the orange dust left on your fingers after eating Doritos? Or the word that explains the insatiable need to constantly check your phone for calls, text messages and emails? Shouldn’t we be devising these and recording them in some recognized Wordipedia?

It’s time to loosen our grip on what the English language should be and accept newer words for what they are: useable, descriptive content that fits comfortably beside any Dictionary 1.0 word. After all, those senescent words were once neologisms too.

1. Know your Audience. Before one word is put on a site, it is critical to understand your audience and what motivates them to act. Without that key information, you run the risk of producing rambling, ineffectual copy and organizing it in such a way that does not motivate your customers to contact you.

2. Get to the Point Quickly. Consider this – the average time a browser spends on a web page is three seconds. That’s all the time you have to deliver your key messages. Your page headers and first paragraph should answer all the main questions one would expect to have answered on that page; and those answers need to be clear as soon as the page opens.

3. Keep It Concise. Given the attention span of browsers, drop the long, complex sentences and keep your paragraphs short. This is not always easy to do, especially when the product or service is complex. But if you don’t at least try, you run the risk of losing the browser in a forest of intelligent, but ineffectual words.

4. Layout Counts. To make your copy easy to read, try using bulleted text, headers and shorter paragraphs to break up the copy. This will help browsers scan pages faster and get your point quicker.

5. Use Accessible Words. Web users want and expect things to move quickly. Straightforward, user-friendly language is far more effective than long, drawn out prose. When faced with a choice, avoid large, “intelligent-sounding” words and opt for sharper content.

6. Edit and Re-edit. When it comes to grammar and spelling, web content is like any other copy. Nothing says “amateur” like obvious misspellings and grammatical errors. Before taking a page live, proofread everything, and then have others proofread it too. The more eyes the better.

7. Drive Browsers to Do Something. B2B web content almost always has a goal. Whether that goal is to drive browsers to a contact form, a video, or a webinar, each page should contain a call to action that drives them closer to sales. That call to action could be a button on the sidebar, or a link within the content. Whatever you choose, make sure you are always thinking about the end goal.

Remember, your web site is not only your calling card; it is often the first experience potential customers have with your company, and it is becoming more and more the place where transactions are instigated. Make sure that the words convey your message quickly, concisely and uniquely, while never losing sight of the action(s) you want your customers to take.