Facts don’t persuade, feelings do. And creative story examples are the best way to get at those feelings.
Do you use stories in your customer engagement … or perhaps in marketing messages? Good stories are a great way to develop an identity, personalize, and build your customer base. Here are 4 awesome creative story examples we’ll use to illustrate their value for marketing campaigns.
Good stories:
Focus on engagement, experiences, and emotion … central tenets that are attractive to customers.
Makes your message relevant and memorable through personalization.
Get people’s attention and keep your business front of mind.
Google reunion story
Have you seen the recent Google marketing video where a story of the reunion of long lost friends is told? The video was made by Google India, and the point, of course, is to promote Google Search. But it also reaches a new level of what can be done with the value of creative stories.
If you haven’t seen it, you can watch it here …a short 3+ minutes.
The story is this: a man in Delhi tells his granddaughter about his childhood friend, Yusuf. He hasn’t seen Yusuf since the Partition of India in 1947 when India and Pakistan became separate countries and the two friends were forced to separate. The man’s granddaughter arranges for the two to meet again.
The story is simple and direct. It’s beautiful and honest, and true. The photography is spectacular. The music adds to the very good acting.
Do you use stories in your customer engagement … or perhaps in marketing messages? Good stories are a great way to develop an identity, personalize, and build your customer base.
They are also a great means for sharing and interpreting experiences, and great experiences have this innate ability to change the way in which we view our world.
Creative story lessons
A lot of us are trying to figure out how to improve the use of storytelling as part of our marketing. Very few of us do it well. There are several things to be learned from this excellent story:
Emotional connection
This video is about as emotional as it gets. Stories like this provide a chance to experience a variety of emotions without the risk of those emotions themselves. Emotions like wonder, fear, courage, or love can be tested out in the minds of those as they listen to a story.
You may remember the feelings of emotions that can trigger memories or create resolve as a result of hearing such stories. The experience of hearing stories can awaken portions of emotional lives that may have lain dormant or have not yet been explored.
If you really listen to your customers, as Google has, you can leverage their stories to drive your creativity. By analyzing their stories of how your products and services fit into their lives, you can gain valuable insight into their needs and desires, which can be hugely beneficial to other aspects of your business.
Like product design and development and ongoing marketing strategy. The reunion has done that well don’t you think?
The story of Dawn
We recently viewed a Dawn Liquid Detergent advertisement that caught our eye for several reasons. An effective TV ad that combined traditional advertising with advocacy advertising and creative storytelling. Something you don’t see very often.
Have you seen the recent Dawn TV commercial? If not, you should invest 1 minute now and check it out. It will prove beneficial in reviewing this great story.
Marketing or advertising, you need to create information that your customers find interesting and worth talking about and remembering. Stories, when done well, are most effective at this objective.
South Africa business story
Have you seen the remarkable branding story from this South African business? It was created to market and build the brand. It is a very simple story. It advocates learning to read no matter your age or status in society.
To us, it creates pure magic with the story, the visuals, the music, and the emotion. If you haven’t seen it, watch it now, it is only 2 minutes and it will inspire you. It is certainly easily in our top 5 of all time.
Of course, the whole thing was staged. Who cares? It certainly accomplished its objective to build on the brand. Over 1 million views so far for a business from South Africa that most of us have ever heard of. Of course, you can’t design for going viral. But you can target for being remarkable and engaging.
How do you rise above the noise and really stand out? It’s getting more and more difficult. But it’s still possible. Here are the remarkable elements from this story:
Finds emotional triggers
Not a real secret here. The story and music that are created, while familiar, are as distinctive as they are heartwarming. Watch the faces, actions, and passions of the people in the story and listen to the music. They draw you into the emotion.
Creates curiosity
If you knew the purpose of the video, there would be no curiosity. And with no curiosity, there would be lots less interest maintained. And many fewer people clicking to watch the video. Creating curiosity is a great way to draw and hold attention. It is way underutilized as a branding or marketing technique.
Guinness story
Have you seen the recent Guinness story in their marketing video? A significant change in the Guinness marketing strategy we believe. The strategy is using simple storytelling to gain our attention. Refreshing.
Let’s examine this video story and strategy and what contributes to its strengths. We want to evaluate if it has the ability to influence and persuade with its storytelling.
Everyone hates TV commercials, and this is a well-known fact amongst the people who make TV commercials. Fortunately, a few brands and ad agencies are turning things around with genuine, heartfelt storytelling marketing. Guinness is trying to become one of these brands.
First, some comments about the video. Here is a link to the video to refresh you or for you to review in case you haven’t seen it.
The choices we make reveal the true nature of our character.
Guinness is no stranger to effective video storytelling. This new video reached three million views within four days of online release.
A simple plot; a game of wheelchair basketball followed by a pint of Guinness. The twist is that only one of the men in the group is an actual wheelchair user – the rest, it seems, are his friends who are playing wheelchair basketball so that they can all play together.
There are no shortcuts when it comes to crafting a quality narrative. It takes a ton of creativity as well as time, patience, planning, and polishing to give your brand’s story sparkle and make it shine. We recommend you dive into using creative stories!
The bottom line
Prognosticators and futurists try to predict what will happen through some combination of extrapolation and supposition, but the truth is the future will mostly be shaped by the choices we make. We could have chosen to make our society more equal, healthier, and happier, but did not. We can, of course, choose differently. The future will be revealed in what we choose to build.
So what’s the conclusion? The conclusion is there is no conclusion. There is only the next step. And that next step is completely up to you. But believe in the effectiveness of creating stories for your marketing. And put them to good use.
It’s up to you to keep improving your creative marketing efforts. Lessons are all around you. In this case, your competitor may be providing ideas and or inspiration. But the key is in knowing that it is within you already.
All you get is what you bring to the fight. And that fight gets better every day you learn and apply new lessons.
When things go wrong, what’s most important is your next step.
Test. Learn. Improve. Repeat.
Are you devoting enough energy to improving your creative stories and marketing?
Do you have a lesson about making your marketing strategy better you can share with this community? Have any questions or comments to add in the section below?
Mike Schoultz is the founder of Digital Spark Marketing, a digital marketing and customer service agency. With 40 years of business experience, he blogs on topics that relate to improving the performance of your business. Find him on Twitter, and LinkedIn.
Digital Spark Marketing will stretch your thinking and your ability to adapt to change. We also provide some fun and inspiration along the way.
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