Branding Lessons from the STAR WARS Series II

Let's first revisit the vision and mission of STAR WARS that we covered in vol.106 "Branding Lessons from STAR WARS."

Vision = A captivating world that you can't help but reach for
In an America gripped by the dark, heavy years of the Cold War, Star Wars perceived the public's underlying need for a happier world and offered up a compelling vision of one.

Mission = Competing on a different playing field
Working from the idea of "letting fans take the world home with them," Star Wars pursued strategies that set it apart from its rivals—putting serious resources into related merchandise and embracing fan-made movies, among other things.

There aren't many films that have kept such a large fan base for so long. Star Wars became a massive hit by understanding the world its fans loved and the needs they truly had—and bringing those things to life. "Building a fan base" is, in a word, the key to its success.

When you build a brand, customers are by far the most important element. There has to be a hint here for anyone trying to create a brand that resonates with a wide audience. So, let's take a look at exactly how Star Wars built up its fan base.

Winning a large fan base means earning understanding and empathy from many people. To do that, you need to present a worldview that is easy to grasp for a broad audience. The same thing, I'd say, applies to branding.

How did Star Wars build a world that has captivated so many fans for so long? Let's dig in, using "clarity" and "empathy" as our keywords.

Today, Star Wars is regarded as one of the defining works of science fiction film, but before its release, sci-fi movies tended to be intellectually demanding, adult-oriented works—"Planet of the Apes," "2001: A Space Odyssey," and the like—a genre that leaned, frankly, toward the niche.

Star Wars transformed all of that by weaving in clear-cut good and evil and human drama like the bond between parent and child, turning sci-fi into universal content that audiences from children to adults could all enjoy. That, you could say, is how it succeeded in winning so many fans.

Another defining feature of Star Wars is its characters. It's often said you can't talk about Star Wars without talking about its characters—so many of them are charming and full of personality.

The basic structure of Star Wars centers on the protagonist and their family, the protagonist's mentor and that mentor's family, and so on. Rather than simply piling up a large cast, the characters are constructed so that each one has connections to the others. As a result, viewers can always find a character whose position resonates with their own life—an arrangement that draws out empathy all the more.

On top of that, the Star Wars series—with its expansive cast—is also famous for the way smaller details and side stories are scattered throughout, separate from the main storyline. Each character has their own history, and you can dive deeper into any of them; you can even create new stories as fan films focused on a favorite character. This kind of depth is exactly what cemented its fan base.

I'm a Star Wars fan myself, by the way. I first encountered the Star Wars universe in the first year of elementary school. Influenced by my film-loving parents, I started from Episode 1 to coincide with the release of Episode 3. The dynamic opening and the experience of seeing outer space for the first time overwhelmed me, and I was instantly pulled into that captivating world. The story was royal-road simple enough for a six-year-old to follow, of course, and as someone who loved animals I fell in love at first sight with Chewbacca, the shaggy alien character—my parents tell me I started begging for plush toys and cups featuring him. Now, as an adult, I've discovered the fun of getting to know each character's history, and I can't seem to climb back out of how deep that rabbit hole goes.

I'm one of the people who got hooked by Star Wars' strategy.

To sum up why Star Wars captivates so many people: the broad entryway of "clarity" in point 1 brings fans in, and the deep, empathy-rich world in point 2 anchors them.

Star Wars, a series that ran for 42 years, brought its long history to a pause this past December with the release of Episode 9, the final chapter. All nine films are organized into trilogies, so the saga can be broadly divided into three larger stories.

Episode 7—the first film in the latest trilogy—was released in 2015, ten years after the previous installment. You may already know that, at the time of release, it was met with a flood of criticism. Many fans were thrown off by "the present where the former heroes barely shine at all" and "a story centered on characters we'd never seen before."

And yet, those very fan reactions were exactly the strategy Star Wars deployed in the latest trilogy.

First, here's a quick recap of the storyline:
Trilogy 1: The story of the warriors of light—Luke, Leia, and Han Solo—and their archenemy, Darth Vader
Trilogy 2: The backstory of Darth Vader
Trilogy 3: Set 30 years after Trilogy 1, the story of a mysterious girl named Rey

While the main cast was largely shared between Trilogies 1 and 2, Trilogy 3 suddenly introduces a mysterious young woman, dramatically shifting the lead characters. That, perhaps, is why fans who had cherished the previous characters so deeply were thrown into confusion.

And right there is where Star Wars hides its strategy for holding on to fans.

I've broken the strategy of the latest trilogy into two big parts. The key insight is that there are two distinct target audiences.

The downside of a large, long-running franchise is that there are people in today's audience who feel they can't follow it because they haven't seen the earlier films. So, the latest Star Wars opens with a completely new story right from the start. By introducing the new lead characters and laying out their goals clearly, it was designed as a story that begins from "one"—something even first-time viewers could enjoy.

What's more, because Star Wars unfolds chronologically, viewers who watch the latest film can pick up the earlier ones not as prequels to a continuation, but as an opportunity to glimpse each character's past. By creating an "entryway" that lets fans jump in even from this latest film, Star Wars carved out a fresh strategy for winning new fans.

From point 1 alone, it might look as if the latest film makes no effort to reach long-time fans, but in fact this work is filled, throughout, with elements designed to grip the hearts of those original fans.

For example, the protagonists of the earlier films were two heroes and one heroine, and the entirely new lead trio in this latest film follows the same configuration—almost forcing you to overlay the new film with the old. By weaving homages to past works into the characters' words and actions and into the structure of the story itself, the film evokes a sense of nostalgia, which makes it enjoyable for fans who have been supporting the series for years as well.

On a TV program, someone shared this anecdote about the latest Star Wars film: "There was a married couple watching from a seat nearby, and during the final scene they were holding hands and looking into each other's eyes. They surely watched the first film together when they were young, kept following it ever since, and as Star Wars was unfolding they were also remembering their own memories together."

Over its 42-year history, Star Wars has never once changed its simple, clear story or its uniquely impactful worldview. No matter how deep you go into the story, everything comes back around into a single ring. No matter how many characters it creates, they all look toward the same hope. The pieces may look scattered, but in fact every part of the Star Wars story is connected. That's why long-time fans keep following it—and why fans who joined partway through never end up feeling left out.

The reason Star Wars has kept its fan base alive for so long, I believe, lies in an approach that leaves a lasting mark on each individual viewer's heart.

Across two articles now, we've looked at the reasons behind Star Wars' success, viewing them through the lens of branding. At its release, Star Wars achieved enormous success by being "the first to deliver something that everyone, deep down, was already wishing for." And ever since, it has continued to succeed by capturing people's hearts through endless creative ingenuity—and by reaching its audience in ways that earn lasting, long-term love.

I hope you've also come away with the takeaway that grasping the deep, underlying needs of your users and customers is the key to brand success. If we've been able to share the essential points of branding in an enjoyable way—alongside the world of the films themselves—we couldn't be happier.