Craig Wise

How Emotion, Relatability, and Conflict Help Your Brand Stand Out

What Is Story?

Before diving into how storytelling fuels marketing, it might help to define ‘story’ first. While I love novels, essays, and poems, the term ‘story’ encompasses much more. Story is any media that recounts events for an audience. So, any telling of an occurrence, delivered in any format, qualifies as a story. This broad definition lends itself to many interpretations.

When asked why he loved country music, Ray Charles said “it was the stories.” Books and movies qualify. Some say The Bible is the greatest story ever told. Additionally, stories include 30-second ad spots, Tik Tok videos, Instagram posts, and podcasts. Visual arts, like painting and sculpture, certainly qualify.   

Some stories, long and short, have endured for centuries. Icelandic Sagas have carried the weight of a culture for 900 years. While the “The Golden Rule” proverb preceded the Vikings by thousands of years. Our records, of course, can’t measure when either of these stories were first told around tribal campfires on the Eurasian Steppe. But what makes a saga, proverb, or tale stick around for so long?

Making Stories that Stick

Authors, filmmakers, playwrights, and bards have long attempted to define what makes a good story. Professional development seminars and nationally renowned creative writing programs explore these subjects in great detail. Personally, I often recommend books like Story by Robert McKee or The Hero with a Thousand Faces by Joseph Campbell to develop some understanding. Most experts agree on traditional story elements like plot, character, setting, voice, and so on. 

But when my goal is hooking audience attention so I can lead them to a particular viewpoint, the following three elements are critical.

1. Evokes Strong Emotions

A good story makes the audience feel something. 

Human beings have been telling stories for more than 45,000 years. Over those millennia, our brains have adapted to release an angel cocktail of reward response chemicals based on the emotions evoked. We want to laugh. We want to cry. Sometimes we even want to be excited or scared. Maybe we only want entertainment, but storytelling heals hurt and provides sustenance. Facing a loss or heartache, we often reach for poetry or music to help us connect to the experience of others. We need stories and the emotions they invoke to make sense of our lives.  

2. Offers Relatable Themes and Characters

A good story reflects and interprets the audience’s lived experience. 

Why do schools still teach the Iliad? Why is Hamlet still performed four centuries after it first appeared in the Globe Theater? These stories have been retold for generations because they contain relatable truths about our human condition. We all understand the thrill of adventure and homecoming. We all know the pain of loss or thwarted ambition. We need stories that hold up a mirror to our lives and offer insight, understanding, or more importantly hope.  

3. Devises Compelling Conflict and Credible Resolution

A good story makes the audience want to know what happens next.

Stories like The Maltese Falcon or The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo keep my attention because I’m drawn in by uncertainty and want to discover how it gets resolved. Even though we can’t define exactly why, we all recognize when a story’s conflict has us glued to our seat. This captivation doesn’t happen just because the events are interesting. It happens because we feel something for the protagonist and relate to the circumstances. The desire to see Harry Potter vanquish Voldemort and find a home kept even teenaged readers engaged for thousands of pages in seven titles published over a ten year span.

Why Put Storytelling at the Heart of Marketing?

Most marketers agree, good marketing includes great storytelling. Five of the nine best B2B Marketing Campaigns attribute storytelling as part of their success. If you can make your audience feel something through your campaign, you’ve helped them connect with and remember your brand. If your audience relates to your message, you’ve begun to earn their trust. If the conflict within your case study grabs attention, you’ve begun persuading them you have a solution. 

While the three elements above create sticky stories, the following four benefits illustrate the strong marketing outcomes that arise from good storytelling. 

1. Creates Clarity Out of Complexity

Companies often face a fundamental challenge: how to explain something complex in a way that’s easy to grasp. Customers, especially those who aren’t deeply technical, fall into a glossy disinterested stupor when presented with jargon-laden descriptions. 

Storytelling solves this problem by transforming complexity into relatable narratives. Instead of talking about “platform architecture offering extensible applications for multiple use cases,” I offer a story about a small business automatically pricing products based on inventory availability. Instead of focusing on “data throughput,” I can share how a healthcare team delivers faster diagnoses thanks to your product.

By grounding your innovations in human stories, you create clear, relatable messaging. And clarity leads to confidence—a customer who understands your product is far more likely to buy it.

2. Differentiates Your Brand

The technology market is saturated with messaging. Right now there are probably dozens of companies offering something similar to what you sell. Competing on features or price alone is a race to the bottom. Your story can be your key differentiator.

A strong brand story creates a unique, emotive, and relatable identity that your competitors can’t replicate. For example:

• Slack didn’t just sell team communication—it told a funny story about eliminating workplace chaos.
• Apple didn’t just launch products—it told a story about empowering creativity and challenging the status quo.
• Stripe didn’t just offer payments infrastructure—it told a story about fueling internet entrepreneurship.

When you articulate why your company exists, who you serve, and the vision you’re pursuing, you stand out in ways that features and numbers cannot. Storytelling that includes conflict and resolution makes you memorable in a market where sameness is the norm.

3. Builds Credibility and Trust

Trust is currency in business, particularly when customers are considering a significant investment or integrating your solution into critical workflows. Yet trust isn’t built by statistics or performance claims alone—it’s built by stories that demonstrate credibility.

Case studies and testimonials are some of the most powerful storytelling tools for tech marketers. They show how real people and organizations use your product successfully, turning abstract claims into lived experiences. When a CIO reads about how another company in their industry solved a similar problem with your solution, skepticism turns into belief.Even creating emotions through storytelling builds trust. General Electric’s “What Matters” campaign illustrates that stories are something we all do instinctively as humans. Their well-told campaign connects with audiences, triggering chemical reactions that influence preferences and choices. Customers don’t just want technology—they want partners they can rely on. Storytelling helps you prove that reliability.

4 Fuels Engagement across Channels

Buyer attention is scarce. Whether you’re running a LinkedIn campaign, publishing a blog, or producing a video ad, you’re competing with endless noise. Storytelling is what captures and holds that attention.

Stories are inherently engaging. A product spec might bore someone after three seconds, but they might follow a narrative about how a highly recognized business saved millions by leveraging a new technology. That kind of conflict narrative draws buyers in. Stories are also more shareable—people don’t forward whitepapers to friends, but they will share a customer story that moved or inspired them.

Additionally, good storytelling can be used across every channel. From long-form content marketing to 15-second social clips, a common underlying narrative gives consistency and impact. A clear story framework ensures that no matter where buyers encounter your brand, they’re engaging with the same core message.

Storytelling Is the Strategy, Not an Add-On

Too often, businesses treat storytelling as an afterthought—something to layer on top of “real” marketing strategy. But I advocate the opposite to build lasting value. Storytelling is the strategy. It’s the beating heart that pumps life into your marketing and makes it work. You make your brand memorable to prospects by making them feel something, connecting through relatability, and illustrating how your business resolves their conflicts.

By leveraging the critical story elements you bring your brand to life: simplifying complex ideas, differentiating your solution, fostering buyer trust, and driving engagement. Put these principles into practice to see for yourself how powerful they can be. If you’re uncertain where to begin, I can help. I help companies transform complex ideas into clear stories that win trust and build loyalty. Contact me today for a free consultation.