Brand storytelling example – How Dollar Shave Club Grew Their Brand

What took dollar shave club from nothing to a billion dollar Unilever acquisition in just five years. Keep watching to find out.

There are not many brands that can boast a $1 billion acquisition in just five years. Or 12,000 products, subscription signups along with 20 million YouTube views in just 48 hours. But this is what Dollar Shave Club achieved in 2011 to 2016. So how did they do it? Well, before we get into that, let’s look at how it all started.

So the idea for Dollar Shave Club originated in 2010 at a Christmas party and a conversation between future CEO. Michael Dubin, who was a improv comedian and marketer. And one of his father’s friends who’d recently acquired 250,000 razors and was unsure how he could get rid of them. It was from this challenge that Dubin came with the idea of removing the hassle and expense from buying razorblades.

And instead. Produced a subscription model where the razorblades were shipped directly to your door when you needed them on a monthly basis. And this is where that infamous launch video comes in. So with Dubin background in improv comedy, and as a marketer, he put together a launch video that hit all the right notes.

So how can you use brand storytelling to build your brand? Will firstly create something unique? We have more opportunity now than ever before to reach bigger audiences through mediums like social media. And while this is great for business, the only issue is that there’s more content being produced by more people.

So the competition is quite fierce and on a daily basis, there is a lot of content being produced. So you need to stand out from all of that noise. To create something as memorable. And impactful has Dollar Shave Club. Did you need to create something unique, fresh that’s in your brand voice, but something that cuts through that noise be unique and celebrate what makes you individual as a brand

embrace the narrative. So narrative transportation is what happens when we watch films or read a story that we get engrossed in. And we identify with certain characters and we ended up feeling. As though we are those characters. So we see it from their point of view and sometimes we can actually experience and the emotions they are on screen.

Just by watching them go through a journey or go through a story. It also has the effect of making us forget time. So actually you lose track of time when you are engrossed in the story or watching a film. And it also makes us put our lives on hold. So we forget about our lives because we are experiencing something through a different medium.

So, if you can use storytelling to take your audience on a journey like dollar shave club did with their launch video, you increase memorability, you increase word of mouth referrals, and you create a real connection with your audience.

Comment below with a yes, if you’re a fan of Dollar Shave Club and if not, what’s your favorite example of brand storytelling.

Let me know in the comments below.

create conflict and identify the villain. So Dollar Shave Club has a villain in their story and they identify that as the traditional shaving industry. So how that has been for a long time and also its figurehead in Gillette, they use this to position themselves away from the rest of the industry, positioning that as the villain of their story and they focus their marketing on the misgivings of that industry and use messaging to explain what their position is.

Now. This gives them a cause they’ll fighting on behalf of us, the consumer against that industry, which sets it up like an underdog story. And it makes us as the consumer want to get behind them and root for them in the pursuit of their ultimate goal, which is overthrowing that industry and bringing out this new model.

So what is the villain of your brand that you can rally against for the sake of your audience?

Utilize world building the most successful stories, films, games and marketing campaigns spend time developing the world that the characters and the story exist in. I had a conversation recently with Gavin Mcmahon of Fassforward and he explained this idea of world building to me. And it absolutely blew my mind. The idea that most businesses, when it comes to marketing or branding or anything to do with business do not do the world building aspect of the story they’re trying to create.

So they focus on, on the story, which is the central theme of the whole idea. But they don’t build the world that that story lives in, in that successful Dollar Shave Club launch video, they built a world that that story existed in. You had the backdrop of an underdog’s warehouse and office, a small organization going up against the big dogs.

You also had an employee that was one employee that was working with the owner. They built a whole world for this story to exist in. And because of that, it makes the story more believable and draws you in.

World building and storytelling can help to take people on narrative transportation quicker because it develops the scene that the story that lives in and it gives it more meaning and more context.

How can you build a world that your brand lives in? What are the stakes, who is the villain and how can you elaborate on the problem your audience has?

Now, you have an idea of how to use storytelling for your brand. You need to make sure you’ve effectively defined your brand. You have an idea of the strategy you’re going to use to grow it. And that the brand itself is as good as it could be. So, if you’re interested, there’s a link in the description below to a free discovery call. We can go through all of that with you and help you to take your brand to the next level and unlock your brand’s full potential.

If you’ve enjoyed this video and you’d like to see more, please subscribe using the button below this video and hit the bell notification videos come out weekly and they’re designed to help you unlock your brand’s potential.

So you can stand out from the competition and create impact. Have a great week, catch up soon and keep those brands unified.