The 4 Pillars of a Powerful Brand Story and Why It Matters More Than Ever
Carly J. Chomer is the Founder of Emanate Communications, helping women leaders and entrepreneurs build authentic brands through storytelling, marketing strategy, and thought leadership. She guides clients in defining their voice, engaging audiences, and growing purpose-driven businesses with clarity and impact.
As entrepreneurs, we take extraordinary steps to launch our businesses, and we commonly do it from a place of passion, deep knowing, and defining experiences. The story we tell, and how we tell it, provides a compelling and authentic connection to those we’re trying to engage. And it’s a story that can’t be created or replicated by AI.
Branding is the unique identity or voice of your business. While traditional marketing encompasses the strategies and tactics used to share or promote your work, brand marketing often tells a unique and more human story.
What is a brand story?
There are functional elements of a brand, including your logo, color palette, tagline, message, and tone. Your brand story focuses on how we use these elements and other factors to create an overall experience for your business.
In other words:
What do you want people to feel?
What’s the journey you want to take people on?
How do you want your brand to be experienced at all of its various touchpoints?
What impact do you ultimately want to have?
When you’re intentional, you can create a brand story that feels cohesive and consistent. In turn, it has the potential to resonate deeply with you and those you serve, whether that’s your customers, employees, or communities.
The four pillars of a powerful brand story
An authentic brand is centered on three things: your expertise, your core values, and how others value you. It’s from this grounding that we can start to be more intentional with creating a brand experience that feels clear, cohesive, and authentic.
Your brand story is comprised of four equal elements:
Internal clarity
To start, if you don’t have internal clarity on your brand, it won’t be clear externally. And that’s true whether you’re a team of one or a corporation of 2,000.
If you’re a solopreneur, having a clear and consistent brand voice makes marketing feel easier and less salesy. If you have a large or growing organization, having a clear brand and narrative can unify your internal teams so they create a unified experience for your external audiences.
What are the values and core truths behind your work?
What are the principles and feelings behind your brand, and how do they influence how you engage with others?
Do you understand what you’re solving for and who you’re serving?
Is the narrative clear and consistent across all of your internal stakeholders?
While most large organizations have brand guidelines, a guiding narrative can be a helpful tool for aligning how your internal teams talk about the work, values, and the problems you’re solving. For solopreneurs, a brand guide, including a brand narrative, can be a grounding tool that allows you to routinely center back on what’s authentic.
External consistency
And then there’s the more obvious element: is there clarity and consistency in how you present your brand through your owned channels?
Entrepreneurs often immerse themselves in the shiniest marketing channels without first getting clear on where their audience is and where they’re comfortable. Marketing can feel like a “should,” and as a result, you may find you’re spending time on channels or activities that don’t closely align with your goals or audience. Also, if you’ve chosen TikTok as a brand channel but you’re not comfortable making videos, it likely won’t be sustainable.
The second component is whether the brand looks and feels consistent across your channels. Solopreneurs hear themselves say the same elevator pitch over and over. It can feel like we need to change it so others don’t tire of the message, but consistency in our messaging is important.
Also, is there consistency in the look and feel of your content, including:
Brand colors
Tone
Imagery
Yes, the tone and language may slightly shift based on the channel, TikTok is more casual than LinkedIn, but again, what’s the feeling and experience you want to leave people with? And are you being intentional in how you represent that across your platforms?
User experience
The third element is the experience others have in their day-to-day interactions with you and your business, and whether it reflects the experience you want them to have.
Women solopreneurs often give 110% to their work, going above and beyond with a commitment to service. That service provides an experience, and it can play a significant role in how people value the business, including building lasting trust and loyalty.
So, if you want to be intentional, what are the various touchpoints you have with customers, and is the experience they have through those interactions in line with your brand principles?
Lived values
Finally, lived values account for whether your words or espoused values line up with how you show up in the world. In other words, how do you show up for all of your stakeholders, including your staff and the larger community, in a way that’s consistent with your brand values?
More than ever, consumers look to companies that stand up for values and don’t back down or away when times are challenging. In today’s climate, we can all name a company or CEO that once espoused certain values but has gone back on them, or whose words didn’t match their actions. Alternatively, showing up in our communities or for issues we care about can tell the story of our brands in authentic and connected ways.
If you’re launching a business from a place of passion or deep knowing, you have a powerful story to tell, and it can resonate deeply. As you grow, you can be even more intentional in creating a holistic and heart-centered experience that’s truly unique and human, one that can never be manufactured by a machine.
Carly J. Chomer, Brand Communications Consultant
Carly J. Chomer is the Founder and Chief Brand Officer of Emanate Communications, a brand communication agency supporting women leaders and entrepreneurs in discovering their authentic brand voices and defining how and where they share them. Through Emanate, she leads brand development, thought leadership, and marketing strategy -- guiding clients through processes that result in greater confidence, clarity, and impact. Her earlier career laid the foundation for her expertise in mission-driven communications, creating integrated marketing and communications for federal agencies, foundations, and international nonprofits. Across every role, Carly brings a dedication to compelling, authentic, and human-centered communications.
