Yearlong Brand Story System
Build recurring characters and plots that compound audience attention all year.
- Difficulty
- Advanced
- Time to result
- ~months to results
- Steps
- 6
- Confidence
- 91%
Treat at least one year of brand activity as a television season rather than a sequence of unrelated quarterly campaigns. Establish recurring characters with recognizable personalities, define a differentiated point of view, and plan plotlines that can develop across short video, long-form content, social posts, and other media. Use capable writers—including comedic writers when appropriate—to make installments entertaining rather than merely informative. The product should appear as a natural part of the story instead of an inserted sales pitch. The operating cadence is to win the brand's small corner of the internet each week, then repeat long enough for familiarity and perceived cultural relevance to compound. The system favors memorable narrative continuity over constantly introducing new themes that disappear before audiences can care.
Origin
Extracted from Marketing Against The Grain during a critique of short-lived B2B brand campaigns and a proposal to structure them like television series.
Core principles
- 01Repeated characters build familiarity more effectively than disconnected campaigns.
- 02Entertainment and humor can differentiate a conventional B2B brand.
- 03A strong point of view creates stories worth sharing.
- 04Weekly consistency compounds into durable mindshare.
- 05The product should participate naturally in the narrative.
How to run it
- 1
Define the point of view
State what the brand believes that is distinctive, relevant, and capable of generating repeated stories.
Pro tip Choose a perspective strong enough to imply what the brand rejects.
Watch out A generic mission statement will not sustain a narrative.
- 2
Create recurring characters
Design characters with clear personalities, motivations, tensions, and recognizable roles in the audience's world.
Pro tip Use characters who embody real customer conflicts.
Watch out Do not substitute mascots for character development.
- 3
Plan the season
Outline the year's central plot, important turns, recurring themes, and relationship to the product.
Pro tip Leave room to respond to current events without abandoning continuity.
Watch out Overplanning can make the campaign feel detached from audience feedback.
- 4
Adapt across formats
Assign long-form, short-form, written, and visual content different jobs within the same narrative.
Pro tip Let each format reveal something new rather than repeating identical copy.
Watch out Inconsistent characterization will break audience familiarity.
- 5
Publish weekly moments
Create one distinctive story, scene, or idea each week that can win attention in the brand's niche.
Pro tip Maintain a rolling backlog of several episodes or installments.
Watch out A few strong weeks will not produce the intended compounding effect.
- 6
Measure accumulated mindshare
Track recall, direct traffic, branded search, audience discussion, and qualitative recognition over the season.
Pro tip Ask customers which characters or stories they remember.
Watch out Judging every installment solely by immediate leads will prematurely kill the system.
In the wild
A B2B automation company creates recurring characters representing an overwhelmed operations manager, an overconfident executive, and a quietly effective automation specialist. Weekly scenes develop their workplace conflicts across YouTube, LinkedIn, and email, while the product resolves selected problems without becoming the sole subject.
→ Audience familiarity compounds, and customers begin referencing characters when describing their own operational problems.
Common mistakes
Resetting every quarter
Introducing new characters and themes every few months prevents the audience from developing familiarity or attachment.
Writing another generic B2B campaign
Safe language and predictable plots make the brand indistinguishable from competitors despite high production quality.
Forcing the product into every scene
Overly aggressive integration makes the story feel like an advertisement and weakens audience interest.
Is it for you?
Best for
It is best for brands willing to publish consistently and take creative risks across multiple media formats.
Not ideal for
It is not ideal for teams seeking immediate direct-response attribution from every individual installment.
From the transcript
“I think brand should be treated like each year at least should be treated like a mini kind of TV series”
“how do you win your little corner of the internet for the week and how do you do that then every week for a year”
“you only do it by being different you only do it by standing out”
From the episode
If We Started a Business Today, Here's How We'd Get 100k Leads/Month