Sometimes reality is too complex for us. Stories do a great job of giving a meaning that can be remembered. Are you familiar with the business Tom’s Shoes? They are most known for their establishing and giving to a cause. The cause is, of course, shoes for the needy. TOMS donates one pair of shoes to a child in need for every pair of shoes it sells. In April of 2011, Blake Mycoskie, the founder of TOM’s shoes, did something even more radical: He asked everyone to go barefoot for a day. Mycoskie understood storytelling for maximum attention.
In essence, he is a master storyteller with a good eye for important trends. Unfortunately, many people take him to be something more, which can be problematic when someone who has read one of his books takes it as Gospel without looking for further substantiation. However, I’m not sure Mycoskie deserves all the blame for that.
Here is another excellent example:
1960 two men made a bet. There was only $50 on the line, but millions of people would feel the impact of this little wager. The first man, Bennett Cerf, was the founder of the publishing firm, Random House. The second man was named Theo Geisel, but you probably know him as Dr. Seuss.
Cerf proposed the bet and challenged that Dr. Seuss would not be able to write an entertaining children’s book using only 50 different words. Dr. Seuss took the bet and won. The result was a little book called Green Eggs and Ham.
Since publication, Green Eggs and Ham has sold more than 200 million copies, making it the most popular of Seuss’s works and one of the best-selling children’s books in history. At first glance, you might think this was a lucky fluke.
A talented author plays a fun game with 50 words and ends up producing a hit. But there is actually more to this story and the lessons in it can help us become more creative and stick to better habits over the long-run.
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By making his customers a part of the narrative, he was able to make a much larger difference than if TOMS had simply donated the shoes without a social media campaign.
One Day Without Shoes is now a yearly campaign dedicated to educating the world of how many children in developing countries grow up barefoot and without shoes, putting them at risk of infections and diseases.
Recently, the company took it one step further. For every photo of bare feet tagged on Instagram, they gave a new pair of shoes to a child in need. At the end of the campaign, 296,243 photos were tagged—and the same number of shoes was pledged to children in the developing world.
Why use a story?
Facts often can be boring and overwhelming, can’t they? Stories, though, not nearly as much. They are much easier to understand and much more entertaining. Therefore they are much better at spreading ideas.
Facts are meaningless without a contextual story. Don’t tell facts to influence, tell stories. The more you improve storytelling, the more your influence increases… it is as simple as that.
Stories make it easier for people to understand. They are the best way, by far, to spread your ideas. Especially when there is a large competition for people’s attention.
The art of storytelling … what makes stories great?
Although everyone defines a ‘story’ differently, Andrew Linderman, founder of The Story Source and adjunct instructor at New York University, notes that, at its core, content marketing is storytelling with the goal of driving a particular action.
Business storytelling, specifically, is a way of connecting an experience, or series of experiences, to a specific call to action. But before marketers can effectively drive business through content, good stories must all exhibit these three key qualities:
Details
Marketers must be explicit about what’s possible as a result of using their company’s product or service. The product or service is an extension of the customer experience, as well as the company’s values, the central idea of the brand.
As such, every “story” should communicate these values to help future marketing.
Personal
Marketers should develop content that establishes the consumer’s stake in the outcome of the story, a.k.a. the success of the product or service being sold.
Linderman highlights that, by creating campaigns in which the characters in the story have clearly something at stake, consumers will begin to engage, for the more personal something is, the more people will care and interact.
Honest
Linderman explains that humans have an innate sense for detecting when someone’s lying to them, and dishonesty—especially from a marketing standpoint—can be lethal for the brand. Therefore, content marketers need to tell it like it is to gain consumers’ respect, for they will admire the company’s candor and authenticity.
Engage customers’ emotions
Emotion stands as the primary pillar of successful storytelling because this element permits marketers to create intimacy between customers and the brand.
Most purchase decisions depend upon emotion on some level, as consumers usually gravitate toward brands that share the same values and better their everyday lives.
For example, the Swifter “Golden Couple”, Lee and Morty Kaufman, real people who demonstrate how Swifter products have changed their lives. These two 90-year-old lovebirds from New York talk about the “Swiffer effect” in everyday life and do so as real people carrying out real lives.
The commercial tells the story of the couple using the Swiffer and adds in elements relevant and authentic to both genders.
Good content often begins with some question or thought-provoking statement—Imagine a world where…—because such phrases invite customers into the story. Ultimately, customers want to be engaged.
They want to be part of the story, and appealing to their emotions lets them become part of the story.
The secrets of telling remarkable stories
We’re curious beings. As marketers, we can satisfy this innate human curiosity by involving our readers and customers and showing them what happens behind the scenes of our businesses.
Engage your audience
Your audience needs something to do. They need a reason to be there, listening. Stories, when properly practiced, pull people into a dialogue. It’s about engagement and interaction. The audience is just as an active participant as the storyteller.
Ask the audience to think back to early passions and interests and bundle the story with specific experiences. Show them this is important, this is remarkable and you are a part of it
Case studies also act as powerful social proof that allows your fans and users to experience the journey of your product or service through another person’s story.
If you want a true connection with your fans and followers, open up your heart to them, as Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg did after the death of her husband, in a post that went viral and inspired countless women to share their own stories.
When you allow your customers to see the strengths and the weaknesses, the highs and the lows of yourself and your brand, you create a connection with them on a basic human level and create fond associations with your brand.
Start with a message
Every storytelling exercise should begin by asking: Who is my audience and what is the message I want to share with them? Each decision about your story should flow from those questions.
Sachs says that leaders should ask, “What is the core moral that I’m trying to implant in my team?” and “How can I boil that down to a compelling single statement?”
For instance, if your team is behaving as if failure is not an option, you might decide to impart the message that failure is actually the grandfather of success. Or if you are trying to convince senior leaders to take a risk by supporting your project, you could convey that most companies are built on taking smart chances.
First, settle on your ultimate message; then you can figure out the best way to illustrate it.
The Art of Storytelling Book.
Construct anticipation
In a great story, the audience wants to know what happens next and most of all how it all concludes. In an explanatory narrative, a series of actions can establish a narrative flow and the sense of journey that is created is one form of anticipation of what comes next.
A good story has a beginning where a sympathetic character encounters a complicated situation, a middle where the character confronts and attempts to resolve the situation, and an end where the outcome is revealed. It does not interpret or explain the action in the story for the audience.
Instead, a good story allows each member of the audience to interpret the story as he or she understands the action. This is why people find good stories so appealing and why they find advertising that simply conveys facts and information boring.
Highlight a struggle
A story without a challenge simply isn’t very interesting. Good storytellers understand that a story needs conflict. Is there a competitor that needs to be the best? A market challenge that needs to be overcome? A change-resistant industry that needs to be transformed?
Don’t be afraid to suggest the road ahead will be difficult. A well-crafted story embedded with that kind of a rallying cry means you don’t have to demand change or effort.
Employees and consumers will become your partners in change because they want to be part of the journey.
Keep it simple
Not every story you tell has to be a surprising, edge-of-your-seat epic. Some of the most successful and memorable stories are relatively simple and straightforward. Don’t let needless details detract from your core message. Work from the principle that “less is more.”
Don’t tell your audience what day of the week it was, for instance, or what shoes you were wearing if it doesn’t advance the story in an artful way.
But transporting your audience with a few interesting, well-placed details — how you felt, the expression on a face, the humble beginnings of a now-great company — can help immerse your listeners and drive home your message.
Emphasize the visual
“Show the readers everything, tell them nothing.” – Ernest Hemingway
Here visual does not mean only the use of graphics such as photography, video, animations, visualizations of data, and so on.
Visual also means helping the audience to clearly “see” your ideas through your use of descriptive language, through the use of concrete examples, and by the power and simplicity of metaphor.
The art of storytelling … examples of the use of stories
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.
This story 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.
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 is simple and direct. It’s beautiful and honest, and true. The photography is spectacular. The music adds to the very good acting.
Guinness
Have you noticed that the world of marketing is changing? And rapidly. Traditional media vehicles are losing effectiveness as people communicate in new and different ways. Mass audiences are fragmenting into small segments.
Developing a point of difference is harder than ever. This Guinness marketing story demonstrates that Guinness marketing has certainly noticed.
And Guinness marketing has adapted and come up with some cool new marketing stories. This new ad from Guinness proves that beer commercials can be so much more than guys and bars.
“Empty Chair,” tells the story of a bartender who leaves a pint of Guinness at an empty table every night amongst birthday celebrations and sports team’s victories. No one sits at the table, and the woman shoots a dirty look to anyone she catches eyeing one of the empty chairs.
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Without fail, the frosted glass is there each and every night. It’s a powerful image that serves as a sign of hope for the bartender.
But we aren’t exactly sure who the beer is for until the very end. Everything comes together when a soldier finally returns home to claim his Guinness.
The spot finishes with the tagline “The choices we make reveal the true nature of our character.”
A simple yet powerful way to add meaning to the story.
Dawn
We recently viewed a Dawn Liquid Detergent story told in one of their advertisements 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 this Dawn story in their TV commercial? If not, you should invest 1 minute now and check it out. It will prove beneficial in reviewing their great story.
Interesting information, well presented, showing emotion, always holds attention, yes? Keep in mind that people don’t watch ads … they watch what interests them. Your stories must be interesting to your target communities.
Similarly, Dawn reaches beyond dish soap by demonstrating other uses for its products. Dawn focuses on how wildlife rescuers use their soap to safely clean animals that have been threatened by oil spills and other man-made disasters.
In fact, Dawn has helped rescue and release more than 75,000 wild animals over the past 30 years. By buying these products, consumers know they’re part of something greater because each purchase helps the brand support future efforts to protect animals in need.
This story message certainly grabs and holds attention based on emotion, superb visuals, and great issue advocacy.
The bottom line
Telling remarkable stories, at its center, doesn’t aim to sell products or services by blatantly revealing the benefits. Instead, as proven above, effective stories come from the heart.
Content marketers should embrace these opportunities and understand that honest emotion and authentic stories resonate more than direct marketing campaigns, thereby building brand advocates in the process.
Great storytelling and stories are a very integral part of being persuasive. If you want to persuade your customers and create a memorable experience at the same time, you must master the psychology of storytelling. Give them a try today.
All you get is what you bring to the fight. And that fight gets better every day you learn and apply new ideas.
When things are not what you want them to be, what’s most important is your next step.
Test. Learn. Improve. Repeat.
Are you devoting enough energy improving your marketing, branding, and advertising?
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.
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