5 Brands Who Mastered Storytelling

Learn how to build a brand that sells and converts effortlessly

December 21, 2024

Read Time: 2 Minutes 13 Seconds

Hey — Thomas here.

In today’s edition:

  • 5 brands who are redefining how to sell authentically

  • Key strategies you can apply to your own content pillars

  • How to build audience trust while standing out

Building a successful brand takes more than a great product.

It’s about standing out in a crowded market, fostering trust, and staying consistent.

This week, we’re highlighting how 5 standout brands mastered:

  • Storytelling

  • Community building

  • Strategic content creation

  • Purpose-driven growth

Let’s break down what you can apply to your own brand.

1. Midday Squares (Chocolates)

Product:

Functional chocolate bars made with clean ingredients and packed with protein. Flavors include Fudge Yah, Peanut Butta, and Busta Nut.

Why it Works:

  1. Build Out Loud: They share the raw, unfiltered journey of the brand’s growth, including failures and wins.

  2. Relatable Skits and Storytelling: They use humor and emotional stories to connect with the audience. They don’t take themselves too seriously… take a look at their product names.

  3. User-Generated Content: They encourage customers to share their experiences, amplifying the brand’s reach organically.

  4. Position as the Underdog: They take a stand against Big Chocolate, emphasizing their “underdog” position.

What you can do:

  1. Document Your Journey: Regularly post updates about your brand’s challenges and successes to build an emotional connection.

  2. Create Relatable Humor: Use comedy to make your brand approachable and memorable.

  3. Encourage UGC: Engage your audience by incentivizing them to share their experiences with your product.

  4. Find the Villain: Select a large corporate entity or term and pit your brand as the exact opposite. If you’re not the first mover in a space, you’re best off being its antidote.

2. Trikko (Clothing)

Product:

High-quality, limited-edition apparel with a focus on sustainability and unique designs.

Why it Works:

  1. Founder-Led Marketing: Moad has an opinionated persona that drives the brand’s storytelling and creates an emotional connection with his audience.

  2. Mystery Marketing: Moad’s masked identity creates intrigue, while the brand’s AI voiceovers add another layer of mystery.

  3. Community Focus: Highlights customers and their stories. This builds the community fabric of his brand. Moad isn’t speaking into the void. He’s lifting up his fans.

  4. Macro Trend Integration: Incorporates culturally relevant elements like soccer-inspired designs to widen appeal.

What you can do:

  1. Develop a Unique Identity: Use unique and consistent colors, fonts, and formats to make your content instantly recognizable. You want to be different, and you can stand out with branding.

  2. Harness Mystery: Leave out important elements of your branding to create suspense and intrigue that will keep your content and brand at the top of your target audience's mind.

  3. Generate Exclusivity: Build campaigns that make your audience feel part of the brand’s journey. This element gets even stronger if you limit the number of people in this community like Moad does.

3. Umax (App)

Product

Umax is tapped into the Gen-Z looksmaxxing trend, a fast-growing subculture focused on self-improvement and personal aesthetics.

Why it works:

  1. Educational Demos: The app shows how it solves specific problems in an easy-to-understand way: specifically how to upgrade your attractiveness.

  2. User-Centric Content: Features real users’ before-and-after results to validate the apps’ value.

  3. Humor and Relatability: Incorporates memes and skits to align with Gen Z’s content preferences.

  4. Micro-Influencer Partnerships: Collaborates with niche creators who have high engagement to reach targeted audiences. If you search up Umax on TikTok, you can find these videos.

What you can do:

  1. Tap into the Audience’s Language: Umax’s product is built for virality. One look at a video is all you need to see who these apps are for.

  2. Incorporate Humor: Relatable jokes can make even technical products more engaging.

  3. Showcase User Results: Share testimonials or case studies to build trust and credibility.

  4. Share a Journey: Create the expectation of a transformation at the beginning of the video. The viewer will be interested in staying until they can see the transformation.

4. Tom Noske (Educational Product)

Product:

Cohort-based learning programs designed to help creators build personal brands and scale their content strategies. His services include group coaching, personalized feedback, and actionable frameworks.

Why it Works:

  1. Talking Head Videos: Tom creates high-quality, cinematic videos with him speaking directly to the camera, often paired with B-roll footage. It’s easy to produce on a consistent basis.

  2. Relatability: He shares personal transformation stories to build emotional connections with his audience.

  3. Edutainment: Tom combines education (content strategy, personal branding) with entertainment and inspiration to keep viewers engaged.

  4. Sustainable Content: He focuses on consistency over virality, posting regularly and repurposing content to maximize reach.

What you can do:

  1. Create Evergreen Content: Develop videos that remain relevant over time, such as “how-tos” or “ultimate guides.” You can then pin these videos so that anyone visiting your page will interact with them.

  2. Personal Transformation Storytelling: Use your own journey to inspire trust and relatability.

  3. Batch and Repurpose: Record multiple pieces of content in one session and reuse key clips to save time and boost efficiency.

5. Scott Ho (Coaching)

Product:

One-on-one coaching programs tailored to gym beginners who want to build strength and confidence. His services include workout plans, diet guides, and accountability check-ins.

Why it Works:

  1. Repeatable Format: Scott’s videos are simple, repeatable, and targeted to his target audience.

  2. Lifestyle Integration: He combines fitness content with vlogs, relationship insights, and personal reflections.

  3. Edutainment: Scott uses humor and trending music to keep fitness content approachable and shareable.

  4. Progress Documentation: He shares his own fitness journey and those of his clients to inspire and motivate and prove that his services give results.

What you can do:

  1. Focus on Beginners: Create accessible content for people just starting in your niche to capture a broader audience. In doing this, you’ll capture beginners, but also those further down their journey (we’ve observed this as well).

  2. Blend Fitness with Personality: Showcase your personal life to build a deeper connection with followers and humanize your brand.

  3. Highlight Transformations: Share stories of progress to inspire and showcase the effectiveness of your services.

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Thanks for showing up this week. We’ll see you in the next :).

Sincerely,

Thomas

P.S. We wrote in-depth case studies for each of these 5 brands where we break down how they grew their followings, made their $, and exactly how they marketed their products.