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Practical frameworks for crafting emotional, authentic stories
The world doesn’t remember features. It remembers feelings. No one tells their friends, “This app has the fastest loading time.” They say, “This app finally made me feel like I’m in control.”
That’s the difference between marketing claims and storytelling. Claims get skimmed. Stories get shared. And for startups, that’s the lifeline.
Every great story begins where something hurts, annoys, or falls short. Not in a pitch deck, but in the everyday frustrations people actually live.
Not: “We’re the most efficient solution.”
But: “Remember when your to-do list felt like it was managing you?”
Friction creates recognition. Recognition creates relevance.
Most brands confuse storytelling with performance. They use it like a megaphone: “Look at us! We’re different!” But the brands that last hold up a mirror. They make their audience the hero of the story — the one who overcomes, changes, or grows. The brand is just the guide.
Vague stories are forgettable. Specific stories stick.
“We help small businesses grow” vanishes by lunchtime.
“Marija, a ceramicist in Split, doubled her sales and quit her side job in three months” gets remembered, repeated, and believed.
Anyone can say they’re innovative. But showing is stronger than telling.
Storytelling isn’t a single pitch, it’s a system. The strongest brands don’t tell one story, they build a rhythm of many:
Here’s something most startup founders get wrong: they treat storytelling as an accessory, when in reality it’s the architecture. You don’t “add” a story to your brand once everything else is ready. The story is what gives shape, coherence, and soul to everything you do.
Think about it. We live in an attention economy where your audience is bombarded every second. Features get copied. Prices get undercut. Designs get replicated.
The only thing that can’t be cloned is your story.
That’s why the brands that thrive aren’t always the ones with the biggest budgets. They’re the ones people care about.
Take Adriatiko Barbershop (www.adriatikobarbershop.com), a project very close to us at The Inmediato. On the surface, it’s a barbershop in Split, founded by a Croatian-Argentinian barber and his Croatian-Argentinian wife. Yes, that’s me. But what made it powerful wasn’t the chairs, the logo, or even the precision of every cut, though those matter and a lot.
It was the narrative: a return to roots, a bridge between Patagonia and the Adriatic, a space where craft, brotherhood, and the sea all meet. We didn’t just design a brand. We uncovered a story that was already there. That’s what gave Adriatiko its weight, its uniqueness, its ability to connect.
And that’s the secret most people miss. Your story isn’t something you invent. It’s something you uncover. Sometimes it’s in your heritage, sometimes in your values, sometimes in the simple reason you started. The real work is translating it into a narrative people can enter, feel, and remember.
Because in the end, nobody builds loyalty around “services offered” or “competitive pricing.” They build it around belonging, identity, and meaning. And those live in story.
Want help finding yours? Email us at info@theinmediato.com for your free discovery call.
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