In a world teeming with multimillion-dollar brands, the power of brand storytelling is paramount to the future of your business. While bold marketing campaigns and smart advertising may draw consumers to your digital door, it’s how you connect with them that makes your brand memorable and transforms customers into brand ambassadors. For that reason, it is essential that your company’s corporate communications strategy strives to not only share content, but to engage stakeholders with engaging brand stories that express the ethos of your company.
Using corporate communication as a branding strategy
Walmart, the world’s largest retailer, is a perfect example of an organization who has harnessed the power of brand storytelling for engaging their consumers. Today, Walmart manages eight global corporate websites from one powerful content marketing system (CMS) and easily weaves storytelling into each section of its websites, displaying the heart and soul behind this massive brand.
Walmart’s shift to brand storytelling
In 1950, Sam Walton opened Walton’s 5 & 10 in Bentonville, Arkansas. Today, the company is an economic force, operating more than 11,700 stores in 28 countries and employing 2.3 million associates worldwide.
In 2012, after recognizing the potential power of brand storytelling, Walmart decided to shift its corporate communications strategy to share this rich history, as well as convey its passion for its communities, associates, the environment, and innovation within its industry.
“The world has changed, and we recognized that we, as a team, needed to change the way we present and tell the rich stories we’ve been waiting to tell,” said Chad Mitchell, Senior Director of Digital Communications at Walmart.
Digital strategies for powerful corporate communications
To make this shift in their corporate communications strategy successful, the company sought a modern CMS that could streamline its entire content publishing process. The goal was to make content creation and distribution workflows more agile, efficient, and adaptable, while empowering the corporate communications team to operate as editors and publishers. Walmart needed a system with customizable user roles, clear content workflows, multi-site management, and the ability to publish to multiple channels from one system.
After discovering Brightspot was the platform that powered Coca-Cola’s digital magazine Coca-Cola Journey, Walmart determined that the digital experience and brand storytelling platform met all of its requirements and chose Brightspot as its new CMS.
How Brightspot powers Walmart’s brand storytelling strategy
In just five months, Walmart migrated its corporate website to Brightspot, complete with a fresh design and new content taxonomy. Walmart also launched its corporate blog, Walmart Today, on Brightspot. Now, Walmart’s corporate communications team owns each website’s content calendar. The team can make changes quickly and easily as they work to attach human stories and faces to Walmart’s corporate news.
With the help of Brightspot, Walmart has changed how it creates and publishes content, evolving from simple press releases and basic blog posts into full-blown brand storytelling that uses corporate communication as a branding strategy.
For more information on this powerful brand storytelling example, read the full Walmart + Brightspot case study here.
