Commerce is our goal here at Tyrell. More human than human is our motto.
-Blade Runner
Those who had not heard of storytelling cast the first stone.
And those who are not thinking of it, or maybe have already begun to speak in-house or with their customers that it is necessary to give a voice to their brands, cast the second.
The question is, do we really know what "brand storytelling" means?
Do we really know why it is important for increasing brand recognition, optimizing customer retention, and (hopefully) attain that status of thought leaders in our niche that we all aspire to achieve?
Do we really understand why it is also important from an SEO point of view?
Finally, do we really know the rhetoric of storytelling — the laws behind a good narrative?
The truth is that everyone can tell a story, but only a few know how to tell it well and naturally. Fortunately, it is an art that can be learned.
Storytelling
Stories and irrational impulses are what change behavior. Not facts or bullet points.
-Seth Godin
One of the things that surprises me most when it comes to us, the internet marketers, is that we still often tend to think analogically:
Having A, doing B, performing C, I will obtain D.
I have a product, I write some "great content," I promote it, and people will come like bees attracted to a field of flowers.
Unfortunately, things are not so anymore. To tell the truth, they were never so.
Our mistake, paraphrasing Seth Godin, is that we tend to create nothing but bullet points and present nothing but facts. We forget that our audience reacts to everything specifically because of its emotions, so we don’t really work on those emotions, which are rationalized in just a moment.
The secret of storytelling is not in its final expressions (so many in a digital era) but in the act itself of telling a story.
Telling stories is what helps human beings rationalize and understand emotions, and thus accept or refuse a statement.
For this reason, humankind has told stories since it was living in the caves of Altamira or Lascaux. Culture was transmitted though stories, legends, and myths; religions and states have been founded on stories.
The 300 Spartans fought against the immense Persian army at Thermopylae not just because Leonidas guided them or because they were the bravest warriors of ancient Greece, but especially because a mythology composed by hundreds of stories assured them they were the descendants of Heracles.
Citing the Big Fish character of Wil Bloom, "a man tells so many stories that he becomes the stories. They live on after him, and in that way he becomes immortal."
For this reason we love family stories, and for this reason we relate to brands with stories we lived while using and enjoying them.
Think for a moment about your youth, and you will notice how you can write down a never-ending list of brands you remember because of the emotions they helped you feel. Personally, if I think to when I was a teenager in the '80s, I cannot help but remember brands like Commodore, Atari, Saba (the first color television my family bought) and many others.
Neuroscience explains quite well how evolution has wired us for storytelling, as Leo Widrich of Buffer explained so well on LifeHacker.
But the most interesting conclusion neuroscience offers to us is that the brain of the storyteller and the brain of their listeners start acting in synchronization when a story is told, as the same areas of their brain start being used.
There are other interesting theories, including Jung's conclusions about archetypes and myths, and if you want to dig into how to use literary modes for internet marketing you can read this post I wrote a few months ago.
Brand storytelling
Storytelling, then, is possibly the best way to convince a person of something, whether it be voting for a candidate for president, choosing one religion over another, adhering to certain moral conduct, or buying one product rather than another.
I can already hear the distant murmur of a thousand voices saying, "But the product that I have to sell is a bolt!"
Once again, that's the shortsighted mistake of seeing only the end result and forgetting everything that led to its creation. We stop ourselves at the what and forget the why and the how.
What do you think of when I mention Red Bull? I am sure that you think about adventure, extreme sport, and a crazy guy who skydived from the stratosphere. And what if I mention Lucozade? Maybe if you are into energy drinks you know of it, but I am quite sure that many of you, as was my case, have just now heard its name for the first time.
The products are practically the same: bottles and cans of energy drinks. Red Bull, though, has been able to create stories around its brand while Lucozade has not. And people love stories that respond to their needs, desires, and dreams.
As reported by Ty Montague on Medium, Dietrich Mateschitz, the founder of Red Bull, explained the reasoning behind the tagline Red Bull gives you wings: "[it] means that it provides skills, abilities, power, etc., to achieve whatever you want to. It is an invitation as well as a request to be active, performance-oriented, alert and to take challenges. When you work or study, do your very best. When you do sports, go for your limits. When you have fun or just relax, be aware of it and appreciate it."
Red Bull, hence, proposes itself as a lifestyle and not just an energy drink. For that reason, its Brand is far more memorable than Lucozade.
Where to start
There is a world of stories hidden in the About Us and Mission pages (it's a shame that those are usually hidden in the footer menu).
The biggest mistake a marketer can make is not understanding that brands are the final expression of a company, and that a company is just something real people created in order to achieve something (which usually isn't "making money").
Let's check out a few examples:
- Moz was founded because Rand Fishkin and Gillian Muessig had the vision of helping people doing better marketing.
- People, who were convinced there are ideas worth spreading, have created TED Talks.
- Patagonia has as its mission to "build the best product, cause no unnecessary harm, and use business to inspire and implement solutions to the environmental crisis."
- Betabrand's mission is to "design, manufacture, and sell a stylish array of anti-nudity equipment known as "clothing."
- REI's mission is to "inspire, educate, and outfit for a lifetime of outdoor adventure and stewardship."
- ZenDesk's is to "help you deliver exceptional customer service."
- Fitbit's mission is "to empower and inspire you to live a healthier, more active life."
- Nike wants "to bring inspiration and innovation to every athlete in the world." And, one of its mottos is, "If you have a body, you are an athlete."
Missions are an expression of the values that guide a company and are the ethical basis of its stories (the how). The protagonists of those stories are not only the company's products, but also (and especially) the people who use, live with, and make those products their own.
The Blues Brothers had a mission. What about you?
The schema of brand storytelling
Even the simplest story has very sophisticated mechanisms working behind the scenes. The listeners don't always see them, but they know them and expect them to be present. If they aren't present, they won’t laugh when they are meant to laugh or cry when they are meant to cry.
In his essay Ars Poetica, the Greek philosopher Aristotle described the six elements of every story:
- Plot
- Character
- Thought
- Diction
- Song
- Spectacle
Plot
It is thanks to Aristotle that we usually say a plot must have a beginning, middle, and an end, and that events of the plot must causally relate to one another as being either necessary or probable. Most importantly, a plot must arouse emotion in the psyche of the audience.
In this simple scheme, the middle is especially important, because after the status quo is introduced in the beginning, during this phase we have:
- The accident, which is what imperils or upsets the status quo;
- The anticlimax, which is the lowest point of the story, when everything seems as if it won't be solved;
- The climax, when someone or something happens that turns things around, helping the hero find a solution
After those events, the end usually represents the establishment of a new, better status quo.
From a brand storytelling point of view, the plot is the how, as in how the values of the brand (its why) responds to the needs of its audience.
For instance, using Moz as an example, the mission of helping people do better marketing is fulfilled by the creation of tools built under the spirit of the mission tenets (the TAGFEE principles), which respond to the needs of every kind of internet marketer. The community, whose knowledge encompasses every discipline of inbound marketing, responds by using those tools. This is the main plot line of Moz.
Characters and theme
Intrinsically related to the plot are the characters and the theme.
The main characters are the heroes of the stories, whose actions determine the plot of the story. The secondary ones are those who provide the main characters with information, materials, goods, services, or whatever is needed to advance the plot.
Using Moz as an example again, the main character is the user — maybe someone who has just started her adventure in internet marketing — while the secondary characters are the products and (this being the characteristic of every business with a strong, active community) the Mozzers.
Users and brands, therefore, are the characters of every brand story, with the users being the main characters.
With the users as the main characters, it is then easy to understand how important is to know them as well as possible before, during, and after the release of a product. Hence the strategic importance of personas, audience targeting, the continuous feedback from the users, and the post-sale follow-ups and growth hacking.
The theme is the universe where the plot takes place, and the laws governing that universe in brand storytelling are the tenets (for instance, the TAGFEE tenets), which make the rules with which the mission will be achieved explicit.
This universe is usually an ideal world the users would love to live in, because it offers the answers to their needs, and it is a universe that only the brand can offer them.
The brand universe can be totally mythical — a representation of reality as we want it.
Diction, rhythm, and spectacle
Once the plot, the characters, and the theme are set up, we can start thinking about the diction, rhythm, and spectacle.
Diction is the expression of meaning in words, and it is a consequence of the tone and style.
In brand storytelling, and here SEOs may play a great role, diction is not just how the brand talks to the users, but also the creation of brand language where the language spoken by users is enriched by those that Dan Shure brilliantly defined as Propwords.
MozCon, MozBot, Roger, Whiteboard Friday, Mozinar, Mozzers, and many others are the propwords of Moz, which are immediately understood and appropriated by the users.
Diction is what helps create a indissoluble relationship between keywords and the brand, creating the so-called branded keywords.
Rhythm is usability. When we narrate a story we always use an underlying rhythm, which helps the story flow so the listeners won't notice the rhetorical mechanisms behind the story itself.
Finally, spectacle is the organization of appearances that are simultaneously enticing, deceptive, and superficial.
The web expression of spectacle is graphic design.
Examples of brand storytelling
Dumb Ways to Die
The Metro Trains public company of Melbourne (Australia) had one thing clear: people don't pay attention to signs and recorded messages.
So, in order to ensure its message about how we all must pay attention when in the metro station was heard, and thereby diminish the cases of accidents due to distraction, Metro Trains decided to produce a song — Dumb Ways to Die — and launch it on YouTube.
What happened after is the story of maybe the best case of transmedia brand storytelling ever created until now.
Spread the TEDx, Buenos Aires
We all know about TED Talks, and maybe many of you have attended one of the community-generated events called TEDx.
Well, TED Talks had a problem in Buenos Aires: Not many people there knew what the heck a TEDx was, simply because no one had the ability to explain it to them.
So, consistent with its mission that there are ideas worth spreading, TEDx decided to use what could have been its best brand ambassadors, the taxi drivers:
NIKE — Find Your Greatness
NIKE has done brand storytelling since before the existence of the internet, but its "Find Your Greatness" campaign was the first held entirely without buying classic television ad spaces. Instead, it used all the possible digital channels could to make its story, based on its "if you have a body, you are an athlete" principle, touch its audience.
Oreo Daily Twist
Oreo is the classic brand that we tend to associate with little memorable moments of our daily lives. It reminds us of when we were kids and having breakfast, and the simple emotions attached to those memories is able — because of the way our brain works — to make us remember other unrelated events.
Based on this simple idea, Oreo created the Daily Twist campaign.
Conclusions
When doing brand storytelling, if we follow the principle of narrative described above, we will be able to design an ongoing conversation with our users, who — and this is the great difference between analogical brand storytelling and digital one — will start creating new stories related to the brand.
Here is where inbound marketing, in its core meaning of creating brand stories and presenting them to the right audience in the right place and at the right time, gains a bigger meaning.
And here is where branding and SEO collide, because all the stories we tell will compose our story, and all the stories we tell will help us create our unavoidable existence as an online entity (and you should already know what that means in the eyes of Google, both right now and in the future).
As Tracey Halvorsen put very well: "Today, more than ever before in the history of modern civilization, individuals [and brands — my annotation] are empowered with the tools to be storytellers and the technology to see their stories spread far and wide in the blink of an eye."
Am I the only one that sees Gianluca has proved storytelling=inception?
From the lifehacker article:
"According to Princeton researcher Hasson, storytelling is the only way to plant ideas into other people's minds."
Ah! So happy you got it!!! :)
Actually Storytellers are nothing but Architects :)
Honestly, Gianluca, this is the best exposition of brand storytelling I have found online. It's a "concept" that has gone viral, it seems, with nearly everyone working to tell a better story. There is value in that.
Where the problem arises is in businesses assuming their corporate narrative begins and ends with the/a story. It does not. Telling a great story can and often does help at the top of the funnel, when we're attempting to draw interest from prospects. It also has value, assuming the story is compelling, engaging and poignant to those interested in the brand, in helping to forge lasting relationships.
However, business owners do need some clarity on the topic. Storytelling works best (a) when it is/can be "lived" through the owners, customers, evangelists and (b) the substance of the entity extends far beyond a story.
For example, what attracted me to Moz was Rand's story, how the company began. What drew me in was the vibrant, active community of people who are living the story each day.
I find myself having to tell clients/prospects daily that "It's about far more than just a story."
Thanks, Gianluca, for such a thorough, interesting (and needed) piece.
RS
Personally, dear Ronell, I consider that both the new Manifesto and the tenets present in Contently's Code of Ethics explain quite well what Contently is all about. Also its mission should not be clearer: Contently’s mission is to help creators—from individuals to Fortune 500s—to tell great stories. With tools for creating and showcasing amazing content, and by fostering connections between publisher and talent, Contently empowers storytelling that makes a difference.
You are right saying that Storytelling for Storytelling does not really offer a value to the users, but I agree to disagree when you say that Storytelling is good just for the Top of Funnel.
If "Theme" is Usability, then you will understand how a correct Storytelling should be present in all the steps of the funnel.
It's great to see a post about storytelling that's more than just "hey you guys, we should be telling stories". Not only does it look at what stories are, it doesn't shy away from the idea of emotional manipulation which, let's face it, is what marketers are trying to achieve.
One thing I would add is that it's important to avoid getting so carried away with the idea of storytelling, that you forget to let people know what you actually do. Take the Contently website, for example. Now I'm sure they're great at what they do, I've heard a lot of good stuff about them, but I've read pretty much every page of their website and I can't for the life of me work out what they acually do.
You're totally right. As Seo, storytelling should be invisible.
It narrates the products, the services, the mission and values of the brand, but it makes it flawlessly, in such way that it doesn't sound fake or make the mechanisms visible.
This last thing, which could be defined ironic in literary terms, or meta storytelling can be done, but it is the most difficult of all storytelling options, hence very risky (betabrands does it wonderfully)
I thought for sure I was wasting my time with this one, but this actually turned out to be a really pleasant read Gianluca. Sometimes we just have to step back and figure out why it is someone would want to purchase the stuff we have to offer. And you are right the brands we all remember growing up are the ones that created emotions in us. Great work, thanks!
Thanks Ryan,
I consider a personal success having being able to surprise you :).
I guess Gianluca have the ability to surprise, all the time! :)
Gianluca -
Great stuff here, man. I love how you explain the 5 important parts of storytelling as it relates to brand. I'll be referring to this one often.
Here is a great post that I read recently about storytelling and business. You'll like it, I'm sure - https://www.linkedin.com/today/post/article/20130802112108-7374576-this-will-be-the-1-business-skill-of-the-next-5-years
Thanks John!
And thanks for the link to the post of Shane Snow, which is not only great by itself, but also for the links to other important sources it offers.
I think what makes story telling very successful is the fact that it can touch people's emotions. They almost always relate their situation (in one way or the other) to the story (often times subconciously) making them act on what they've just read or heard.
Awesome post....really good one to understand brand story telling
Wonderful post! This is what marketing is truly about. As yes even the most boring of products can have a fantastic story behind it.
I recommend everyone go out and read "All Marketers are Liars/Storytellers" by Seth Godin.
Yup, that book by Seth Godin surely is a must for understanding Brand Storytelling.
Here the link to his post talking about it: https://sethgodin.typepad.com/all_marketers_are_liars/
And here the video (48 minutes long) of the speech Seth Godin did at Google about it
I agree with most of your points Gianluca and appreciate the examples.
Storytelling is successful when people relate to it, and advocate its messages...having a story to tell is one thing, having one that resonates with your target audience is another.
That's why I'd like to give Lucozade a bit of a fairer mention here.
It's often the go-to drink for someone with cold or flu in the UK - I'm not sure specifically why that is (there aren't medical claims advertised), but there are a lot of parents who follow this practice - great consumer advocacy.
It's targeted primarily as a Sports Drink - the story they tell is more to do with replenishing your energy after exercise. It's primarily aimed at non-adventure sports (football, athletics). Red Bull have done a great job of associating themselves with adventure sports (everything from Mountain Biking to Felix Baumgartner's dive).
Whilst Lucozade don't have the same large set-piece approach Red Bull have used, they are present in most UK Sports facilities (often the first thing you see coming out of a sports hall), sponsoring Athletic events (the runners amongst us might like their freebies included in the goody bag after a 10k) and frequently during ads at half time during Football matches.
Having a story that resonates with your target audience is key, and Lucozade IMHO have got one.
Hi Robert,
yours are the comments I like, because a comment like yours - even if you are correcting me, and especially because of that - helps a post like mine getting deeper.
You are right, and maybe I did a bad comparison using Lucozade.
At the same time though, you are confirming once again the correctness of brand storytelling and the importance of understanding your audience before even thinking about telling a story.
More over, you add another point of interest, which was implicit in the post: you can choose storytelling also for targeting different audiences.
Thanks again for your comment.
Astonishing post Gianluca.
Also as an internet marketer what we can learn from TV commercial ads is how to relate your product to customer's emotions. Like some ads relate Pizzas and Coke to quality time we spend with our families and these products become part of that moment. In similar fashion we can connect with our audience/customers just to make them feel, we are connected.
Connection takes a brand to Perfection :)
Actually none of the examples I used has in TV ads their primary channel (Nike, for instance, did not used them for the campaign I presented), but you are saying the truth when you suggest to look at commercials as a source of inspiration for how Brands craft their narrative.
Story telling is the best way to promote brands. It is a successful way to touch people's emotion. Stories help the people to make decisions on what they have read. Sometimes people try to relate them with the stories and try to understand the value of the products related with the stories. Really a nice post. Great Job!!
You're a bit all over the place with this post. One doesn't start with branding, and sometimes the story of how a company is founded is irrelevant or doesn't resonate with the market. You start with a positioning, and then extend into branding. And I recommend working with a branding expert, or someone who has done it. You can't just follow 6 steps, and do it. It has to be authentic and at your core.
Maybe it's semantics we're disagreeing on, but there is disagreement.
Hi William,
thanks for your comment.
My post wasn't pretending to teach how to do brand storytelling. In fact I didn't use a title like: "How to do brand storytelling as Coca Cola in six simple steps".
Mine was an attempt to explain clearly:
Finally, I was urging the readers in finding their story not really in the story of the company, which is a kind of page I didn't cite, but in the mission and about us ones.
The story, or the fundaments of the stories the brand may tell to its audience, are in the company's values and ideal purpose. If it was not so, I wouldn't have listed the missions of companies like Moz, Betabrand, Patagonia et all.
I agree with you that Branding is a facet of marketing that should be done by an expert in that area, but: wasn't that so obvious that it doesn't need to be told? I think that was clear, as we all know that SEO should be performed by an SEO expert, and Social Media by a Social Media expert, as well Branding must be done by a Brand Marketing expert.
Being that assumed, I consider that the clearer the concept of Brand Marketing is to all marketers (and to all business owners, especially of small businesses) the better.
Finally, I am sorry I wasn't able to explain clearly my points... maybe I still need to improve my English.
Ciao
The proofs actually in your pudding mate. I actually took the time to read this article and consequently learned a lot from it. Taking the time to read and write is also a massive key to blogging success. There are times to scan, times to learn and digest and more importantly times to remember. Thanks superb article.
I always say that a brand is the personification of a company. I wrote an article expressing this titled "What is A Brand."
When I worked for Red Bull, they gave us some internal documentation about the brand. And no, it had nothing to do with style guides or font sizes.
One free, from Red Bull:
"If Red Bull were a person, it was the first teenager to start smoking and the first one to quit."
Now THAT is a billion dollar brand.
gfiorelli1@
I strongly believe on Branding - its branding who increase our sale and get lots and lots of business for our company and product. I agree that we must give preferences to our Brand so that it can be easily relate to the customers.Eve customer must get emotional attachment with our brand. As being an Internet marketer, our primary focus is to get customers for our business and once we get that our customers are attached emotionally with our brand, we won the battle. I enjoyed the post as it has described very well about the sensational topic.
I think storytelling is something that not everyone understands right away but it's the key to a good video! Nowadays explainer videos are being used as the brand's online identity so it's important not to just focus on what the idea is about but also HOW is going to be told. Storytelling is the answer!
Great article btw!
I love that scene from "The Life of Brian". ;-) Great article and great Monty Python reference!
Really enjoyed this article. I've been trying to incorporate story telling into my blog content and social media posts and will be using this article as inspiration to create new content that tells who we are and not just what we do. I also enjoyed reading Believe Me by Michael Margolis for ideas on story telling.
I'm glad you recently posted this because I've been very interested in this topic lately in regards to how to run a better, more interactive Facebook page. I would take 2 different pages, one a lot more popular than the other (okay, a lot when you really compare the numbers), but they both have great platforms to work with. Check out the Skittles Facebook page, and then compare and contrast it to the Altoids Facebook page. Both are generally in the same market and have similar targets, but what does Skittles do differently to have 25 MILLION more followers? I think that it comes back to the storytelling issue. IMO, Altoids is a company that has a brand name established. I'm not sure if "the curiously strong mint" is as great as "taste the rainbow," but you can tell a lot of stories when it comes to the topic of curiosity. Another point I would make would be relative to the photos they use as well. Look at the posted media on each page...quite a different story isn't it.
Awesome points and beautifully put together.
This is honestly the longest, yet greatest, article I think I have ever had the pleasure to read on the internet. I'm lost for words with the detail and precision this article provides, although I would agree with MagicRob with regards to Lucozade, although compared to Red Bull it definitely proves a point. Yes, Lucozade may well be extremely popular here in the UK, but Red Bull is usually chosen instead.
With storytelling it is easy to built emotional connect which leads to better retention in consumer's Mind.
Nice!
I really enjoyed this post Gianluca. And you said some great things that will be useful for our clients to read as well (especially on the importance of the ABOUT page).
People very much want to feel as though they are part of something meaningful. Through stories we can connect to people we've never met and develop an affinity for a brand we may not know very well.
As we help our clients build community, we are very focused on the experience that they are providing their customers. This experience needs to transcend their website, the blog, their social outlets, their face-to-face efforts with events, customer support, and and day-to-day human interactions. They all need to be providing the same consistent experience and telling the same story. You've provided some great ways that companies can do this (I especially like how Nike found people who are not famous who are the most common athletes of all--people).
Thanks for the inspiration Gianluca. I have a few ideas for some of our clients who are working on building their story.
Thanks for the storytelling insight, Gianluca.
Companies and brands must start storytelling in this age where there are many agorae to tell it. We live in a time with multiple outlets where customers can add their telling to the brand's story. The companies who define their mission and integrate it with its many channels and raconteurs will survive.
I understand that Red Bull is used as an example of successful storytelling, but saying it provides skills is just plain ludicrous.
Thanks for this article, really inspiring. You certainly have seen this story telling trend a lot lately in advertising, think about all the new Apple ads, they tie the use of their products to your life, how you don't even know it's there but it's a part of your life.
Yes, the latest campaign by Apple - Our Signature - is surely a wonderful example of how a Mission can craft a wonderful story.
Didn't cite it because... well... Apple is an example everybody use and I wanted to cite something different in this post.
I recently saw an interview where Steve Jobs spoke how good companies see products 15 months down the line while having a vision of products customers use 15 years later. This is a new concept to me but have to agree with it, along with planning to use it. Companies need a balance of sight like this in their mission and storytelling to serve their customers.
We are trying to develop the "persona" of the person doing the story telling for our brand. Does anyone have suggestions on the best and smartest way to go about this?
Thanks :)
As I write in the post, find the psychology of your Brand persona in your mission and company tenets. And create a past to that persona, which is not only the past of the business company, but especially the past of the people doing the company.
The valuable insights of the human journey (warts and all), as told by storytelling. Love this paragraph and the structured way you've presented your expertise in this fundamentally important area!
Authenticity, honesty and jagged edges are what bring a story to life, whether online or offline. People want to hear about the struggles, challenges and pitfalls that companies and their workforce have overcome (or are overcoming) to achieve their future goals.
"Authentic marketing" (thankfully) removes the false perception that firms must be 100% perfect to win market-share. And today's critical buyer is searching (instead) for signs of reality, determination and a trail of once 'insurmountable', but now 'overcome' obstacles.
This, backed up with a large dose of passion, often wins hands-down :)
Great post and thanks for sharing!
PS Love the images & videos - really brings the story-telling to life ;)
I really do like this post! - Especially the fantastic examples. Thanks for that!
You're welcome Lukas
Love all the movie references. Storytelling is so important. No one wants to engage with your brand if haven't peeked their interest and imaginations. Let's reach in and find our inner child.
Correct. In fact, especially in the case of startups, Storytelling can be a powerful weapon.
Creating an attractive Universe for their targeted Audience and reaching it there where they are present, and titillating it with your stories, as Buzzfeed did so well, is surely rewarding.
Great storytelling about storytelling, Gianluca! I consider it as the bridge that shorten the distance between what you do and what your customers really want from your product or service. There is a great difference between a product and what it means to customers. And storytelling defines the aspects of the products that synchronize with the customers' psychology.
Amen :)
Amen :)
I like the concept here. I might add re. a 'brand' story: Consider creating three (or so) versions of the story, all essentially having the same outline: (1) The quick and dirty tag-line version (e.g., site or brand tagline); (2) Elevator pitch version (e.g., one minute intro video); and (3) Unabridged (e.g., "New. Start Here" page, 4 min. video, etc.).
I market in a B2B environment, I would love to hear people's thoughts on the effectiveness of story telling in this field. I love story telling we employ it but always good to hear others ideas on what their customers like to see in the stories as said in this field.
Nice piece Gianluca, passed it around the office and to our colleagues in Buenos Aires as well - Taxi drivers, love it, how clever.
David
The philosophy of Brand Storytelling is usually the same whatever the industry is.
In B2B, though, staying firm that the Users are the main character/hero of the plot, the Brand usually tend to assume the role of the mentor, who teaches the hero understanding his power and control it and use it for the good with "magic" tools... which ultimately are the products of the Brand.
Very well said, indeed!
We, SEO specialists must be architects, must “build” from scratch a brand that is supposed to remain in people’s minds and hearts. It’s a great idea to make such an eloquent parallel between storytelling, branding and SEO. In my activity, I realized how important is to understand what you have to promote. It’s not a site, the final product, is the story of a company, is the story of the team witch build that company, is the story of making products.
Thinking in these terms, a good SEO specialist will become an excellent SEO specialist.
Thank you for sharing with us!
Quite long but very interesting read from one of the person i admire the most in the digital marketing bubble!
I believe storytelling is important as there are many competitors in the market and if you want your customers to remember you, you have to have a powerful story associated with your brand! Now when I look back I only remember the brands from my childhood that have a powerful story with their brand that I remember!
An Awesome Read!
Storytelling has always been and will always be a significant tool of promoting brands. Stories have the power to be heard if narrated correctly. Stories have it in them to cut through the noise created by the competition and rise above the ordinary campaign. Stories don't necessarily have to be narrated through a video or a lengthy blog post - it could be a short message or just a creative image increasingly tailored to perfection focused on the niche audience. If you want to propagate your brand and want them to follow it like a religion, go make more stories that hit home the message.
Great insights, Gianluca! Thanks for making me think! :-)
The deluge of information on the Internet has forced people to concentrate on their content to stand out. I can see the similarities and how some standard marketing techniques such a customer interaction and content that expresses your message.
Great article, I will be discussing this with the copywriters in our weekly meeting. To me storytelling is my favorite part of Internet Marketing. It opens the door for real human interaction and emotions, giving us the chance to reach out to our audience or customers in a way that is different than just flashing an advertisement with a logo on it.