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The Future Of Storytelling And The Currency Of That Future
filed in Storytelling, Strategy
So there we were gathered together on an island, (the best kind of place to feel that you’re truly gathered) to talk about the future of storytelling. Some of the best and brightest in the storytelling business from Burberry CEO (soon to be heading up the retail story at Apple), Angela Ahrendts, to Robert Wong from Google were there.
It seemed that almost every person I spoke to was wrestling, not with the future of storytelling, but with the future of their story. How do traditional businesses born in the industrial age, those that thrived in a Mad Menesque world, adapt and find new ways to be heard? How do digital businesses create intimacy, when what they probably want is scale? How does anyone stay relevant, in a world where expectations shift daily beneath our feet and fickle people change their behaviour?
The future we seem to be imagining is about tactics, and platforms, and technology that makes us feel somehow more able to connect and less relevant all at once. That paperless and scary place where our messages and stories seem to lose permanence. We’re running in ever decreasing circles to try to catch up with the future before it gets here, just so we can stay ahead of the game.
And the irony is that the answers we’re searching for lie in the past and the present, in looking each other in the eye, and ourselves in the mirror before we try to preempt the future.
Before paper, ink and white space we had only words. The words and stories we paid attention to had to mean something to us, otherwise they didn’t get passed on. We gathered around campfires to listen, and sat at tables talking and drinking tea, or got comfortable with a book on our mother’s lap, the medium didn’t matter, what mattered was the connection, the animal warmth and the trust. Now suddenly we feel a bit lost as to how to recreate that at scale in a digital world, so we focus on the tactics instead of the truth.
As our circles of intimacy contract, and our circles of influence expand, it’s getting harder and harder to look people in the eye, to let them know that they can trust us. And yet that’s what we have to find a way to do, not because our businesses won’t survive if we don’t, but because we won’t survive without that connection to both doing work that matters and to each other.
The currency of the future was also the currency of the past, it’s simply about intentionally creating deeper connections to each other. Before we imagine a world through Glass, or a future of wearables, digital storytelling and connection platforms of every kind, we need to acknowledge the truth about where we came from and why we’re here.
The future might not be as unpredictable or complicated as we think.
Image by Antoine Walter.
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Value Is A Story We Tell Ourselves
filed in Marketing, Storytelling, Strategy
Value is what we believe in the moment and not simply a measure of gain, relative to units of currency.
Value is a story we tell ourselves based on what we perceive and what we think is true. Our framing of the value story is the reason that passers by walked past original works of art by Banksy worth over $40,000 each, which were for sale on a stall in Central Park for just $60.
Value is how your customers feel, not what you convince them to think.
Image by Steve Rhodes.
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Marketing Is An Art
When you walk into the Bedford Cheese Shop in New York, you’re not seeing cheese sold by the pound, you’re witnessing art being made. A business owner who goes to the trouble of writing these kinds of descriptions on his product is not just a marketer, he’s an artist, practicing with intention, and generosity and most likely out of love.
Every day business leaders ask the people who ‘do’ their marketing to create campaigns that will make people love their brand. The question on everyone’s lips is, “how do we get people to care about us?” The answer is that you don’t sell them, you care about them first.
Your products and services should feel like a gift.
You can market all you want, but in the end it’s your intention, not your marketing that shines through. The truth is that people will know and that’s not a drawback, it’s an opportunity.
Image by A.J. Kandy.
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What Focus Groups Can’t Tell You
Steve Jobs famously said, “It’s really hard to design products by focus groups. A lot of times, people don’t know what they want until you show it to them.”
The committee might be able to tell you what they think is working, or what’s broken, but they can’t tell you how to matter. And no committee ever in the history of the universe knew what the world was waiting for. Right and wrong answers are facts, and as Robert McKee will tell you, “facts are not the truth.”
Focus groups can give you an opinion, but they can’t tell you how to make meaning from it.
You don’t find the truth by asking for answers. You uncover it by learning how to see.
All you have to do is trust yourself to do that.
Image by Jay Raz.
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Everyone Owns The Truth
filed in Marketing
As soon as the flight landed (two hours behind schedule), people began jostling on the spot, eager to get off. The priority of course was people with connecting flights who might have a chance of making them. For others it was too late and they’d be spending the night at the airport hotel.
A woman began to push forward from two rows behind.
“I need to get off,” she said.
Apparently her daughter and baby granddaughter were waiting.
“Don’t we all,” a fellow passenger barked back.
Every single passenger on board had their own version of an emergency, which made it difficult for them to stand in someone else’s shoes.
As business owners and marketers (let alone people), that’s exactly what we must learn to get better at doing. Understanding that everyone has their own version of the truth and that if we want to reach out to people and make our ideas matter to them, we’d better know what their version of the truth is.
The alternative is that we end up whistling into the wind.
Image by James Cridland.
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The Trouble With Positioning
filed in Marketing, Storytelling, Strategy
Do you remember when President Obama came to office first time round and negotiated with the secret service to keep his BlackBerry—Bush and Clinton didn’t even use email. In 2004, three years before the launch of the first iPhone, BlackBerry, who pioneered the smartphone had a market share of 47%. Four years ago Blackberry was the fastest growing company in the world.
Today it’s market share is just 2% and BlackBerry is facing obsolescence. The company had identified, occupied and dominated a product niche by developing a phone that could email. It was perfectly positioned to stay top of mind for years to come.
I think where BlackBerry came unstuck was in believing that their job as innovators was to change how people felt about their product, instead of wondering how smartphones might shape culture beyond accessing email on the go. In the end they didn’t lose out because of Apple and Google, they lost out by failing to understand how their brand would enable connection going forward.
The trouble with positioning is that it doesn’t take into account that business is symbiotic, that the relationship between brand and customer really is interdependent. That’s because positioning is less about considering what people value and more about telling people what to believe.
It’s not enough to be first to market or top of mind. The brands that we care about don’t just make innovative products, they shape our culture and make us feel like better versions of ourselves. They take account of what we believe, how we act and who we might want to become. Which is very different from riding the wave of first mover advantage.
Brands big and small connect people through a culture that’s bigger than themselves, provenance, adventure, sustainability, entrepreneurship, self expression, conscious consumption, sisterhood and real food to name a few.
So tell me, what beliefs are you connecting your customers to?
Image by Lindsay Turner.
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You Don’t Have To Matter To Everyone
We weren’t meant to be sitting next to each other. The European blonde, who didn’t want to be separated from her boyfriend for 10 hours overnight between Perth to Dubai, asked if I would mind moving to the middle seat in the row behind. So this is how I got chatting to a the chap in 36C.
He was a self proclaimed ‘left-brained engineer’ and partner in a growing business.
In situations like this (at the end of a long flight) I tell people I’m ‘in marketing’.
I should know better.
“That’s all smoke and mirrors.” he said.
I smiled.
He talked a little more about the challenges that he and his partners were having in their business as they grew. I asked questions and told some stories.
Before we touched down in Dubai, he asked for my card. I warned him that it had a heart on it.
Takeaways for me and for you too
1. There is no excuse for being lazy about telling your story. You may not get another chance.
2. A lot of people think marketing is advertising.
3. Marketing is a transfer of emotion. We buy with our hearts and justify decisions with our heads.
4. People make judgements based on their world view.
5. Don’t try to convince people that they are wrong because you want to be right.
6. Listen twice as much as you talk.
7. Be yourself.
8. Generosity scales.
9. Always carry cards.
10.You don’t have to matter to everyone.
If people don’t believe you can help them, you probably can’t. When they ‘get it’ you’ll know.
Image by Sam Breach.
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Demographics Vs. Worldviews
It’s impossible now to presume everything about your customers just because you know their age, sex and postcode. In a digital world, that enables ever increasing possibilities and choices, people are no longer constrained by location, age, or gender, and they are not so easy to put into a box either.
It’s far more helpful to think holistically about the people you want to serve. To consider not just their problems or needs, but to understand what they value, and how they think and feel.
Five questions to ask yourself about your customers
1. Who are they?
Not age, sex, income, no, much more than that. Tell their story as if you were about to create a new character for Breaking Bad.
2. What do they care about and what do they value?
Time, money, convenience, belonging, generosity, giving, people, planet, freedom and security.
3. Who do they trust?
People, brands, networks, platforms and on and on.
4. Where do they spend their time, online and offline?
Think about where they choose to belong, and how do they engage there.
5. Where do they spend their money?
Why?
The businesses that succeed tomorrow, will be the ones that invest time today to work out how to be able to say, “we see you” to their customers.
Image by John Fraissinet.
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What Do Your Customers Care About?
Let’s look at some cold, hard, and fun facts.
A search on Instagram one morning in mid-September for #me, gave me over 123 million results. Just 18 hours later a further 466,000 had been added. Let’s round that up to half a million a day, which means 26,000 photos with the hashtag ‘me’ are uploaded to Instagram every hour.
It’s impossible now to create products and services without considering what your potential customer believes, or understanding what they value. And increasingly what they care about is how the choices they make, and the things they consume, buy, share, or relate to, say about them.
Yes, there are a heck of a lot of people who care that the chicken in their curry was happy before it died. And as Warby Parker Co-Founder Neil Blumenthal found out, when he worked for a charity that provided glasses to people in developing countries, “you could be the poorest person on the planet and you’d rather be blind than wear a donated pair of 1970’s cat eyes”.
People are telling us what they care about and it isn’t our products, it’s their journey, their story and the meaning they can create in their lives.
It turns out that the key to creating something great, is to make something that changes how people feel and makes them fall just a little more in love, not with what we sell, but with themselves.
Image by Jodi Bart.
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Hedging Is Risky
Have ever been scared to share more about what you stand for? Concerned about opening up about who you really are on your website? Anxious that the products and services you offer might put some people off?
You’re not alone.
One of the greatest challenges entrepreneurs feel keenly is the fear of scaring people off.
And let’s face it hedging your bets feels safer.
But pleasing everyone, in order to attract someone, anyone, isn’t always the best business strategy.
In fact it’s your job to do exactly the opposite. You want to scare people off.
You want people to say, “No way, this really isn’t for me”. Because the people who get it, the ones who matter, will be saying, “At last, I’ve found her”.
Image by Simm Teller.