People don’t buy brands – they buy brand stories. To make your brand story land, consider putting a leader at the centre: a sympathetic character who draws your target audience in.
By Dr Erin O’Dwyer
In brand storytelling, we often make a critical mistake: we focus too much on the story of the company and not enough on its leader.
Yes, your audience needs to know what your company does. But people don’t buy brands – they buy brand stories. We connect with stories. And, in particular, stories about people.
Think about Steve Jobs. Jobs stood for Apple and Apple stood for Jobs. His vision, his quirks, his flaws – all of it became shorthand for what the company represented. When he walked on stage in a black turtleneck, people didn’t just see a product launch. They saw a leader whose story was inseparable from the brand.
That’s the power of centering the person.
Why sympathetic characters matter
The Law of Sympathetic Characters in storytelling tells us that audiences are drawn not to abstract ideas but to characters they can care about. Sympathetic characters are the emotional anchors of any story. They pull us in by evoking empathy, connection and investment.
Sympathetic characters pull us in by evoking empathy, connection and investment.
They don’t have to be perfect. They can be interesting, funny, quirky, or intensely likeable. Vulnerability makes them more relatable. Dark horses who behave in unexpected ways capture our attention. Even “bad” characters can win us back if they are given the chance for redemption.
Think of Tom Hanks in Forrest Gump. What made the film unforgettable wasn’t the events themselves, but the fact that we experience them through Forrest – a character whose simplicity, humour and humanity carries us through a particular time in history.
Lesson for leaders
The same principle applies in leadership storytelling. An organisation’s story will always feel distant if there isn’t a human at its heart. Your audience – whether they are customers, employees or investors – isn’t looking to connect with a balance sheet or a brand slogan. They want to connect with you.
And this is where many leaders hesitate. It can feel safer to hide behind the corporate narrative. But the leaders who make the deepest impact are those who are willing to show themselves: their vision, their values, and yes, even their vulnerabilities.
That’s what makes people buy. Because it’s what makes the story stick.
A final thought
When you put a leader at the centre of a brand story, you give people a sympathetic character to follow. Someone they can care about, believe in and invest in. Get that right, and the company story will always fall into place.
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