Unlock the Magic in Your Story Now
Get the Free 20 questions to Ask Before Launching Your Idea workbook when you sign up for occasional updates.
Get the Free 20 questions to Ask Before Launching Your Idea workbook when you sign up for occasional updates.
The Empathy Profession
filed in Marketing, Storytelling, Strategy
When I was growing up (and maybe when you were too), careers like medicine, nursing and teaching, were regarded as being part of the ’empathy profession’.
Today, every one of us, from accountants to designers, CEOs to Astronauts, are in the ’empathy profession’. No business or brand can thrive without understanding what it is their customer wants. No leader can create meaningful change without seeing the world through the eyes of her colleagues. No innovator can create relevant solutions unless he understands the challenge his invention helps someone to overcome.
It’s hard to empathise with someone unless you know their story. That’s why the software that gets used and the cafes that stay open were created by people who started with their customer’s story.
Whether you’re a designer at Google or a chocolate maker at Pana—it’s only possible to make things that people want by figuring out how those people want to feel in the presence of your product. You tell better stories by understanding the story the customer wants to tell herself. Caring is part of every job description now.
Download and use this Empathy Map PDF to help you get started.
Image by Hernán Piñera
Share this article
A World Built On Promises
Scott and Joanna are planning to open a two-hundred-seater restaurant along a small shopping strip that backs onto a residential area in their local suburb. They know the neighbours will be concerned about the prospect of increased traffic and noise from the venue, especially at the weekend when they open until 1 am. So they draw up a plan to mitigate the negative impact their business might have on the people who live in the area. They commit on paper to limiting the number of patrons allowed in the rooftop bar and to monitoring late-night noise levels. The trouble with the plan is that the restauranteurs’ intentions are at odds with the commercial reality of running a viable business. Their success depends on having a restaurant and bar full of happy customers spending money late into the evening. They will find it almost impossible to make the business profitable while simultaneously keeping the neighbours happy. Their goals are at odds with each other.
We sometimes make promises we know in our hearts won’t be easy to keep. There will inevitably be times when we must balance good intentions with commercial imperatives. But saying one thing then doing another is the surest way to erode, not only the trust of others but our sense of integrity. The alternative is to make more honest promises, to focus on why we’re committed to keeping that promise and how exactly we’re going to do it, rather than just simply on what’s being promised.
We live in a world built on promises.
The people who keep them are the ones who win in every sense of the word.
Image by Elisa Dudnikova
Share this article
Who Trusts You?
We spend a lot of time wondering who we can trust. We are careful to work out who is worthy of our friendship, business or time. And yet, we often fail to make the connection between trust and success when it comes to ourselves.
You don’t become trusted by being more successful.
You become successful by being more trusted.
Start there.
Image by Zi Krostag
Share this article
The Hallmarks Of Good Marketing
filed in Marketing, Storytelling, Strategy
A real estate agent can generate more interest in a property by listing it well below the expected selling price. Underquoting is sometimes used as a marketing tactic to create a heightened sense of urgency in prospective buyers who don’t want to miss out. When the property sells for 30% above the quoted price range, the agent can fool himself (and his vendors) into thinking that this was simply the result of a good marketing campaign. Disappointed buyers don’t see it that way.
Good marketing attempts to inform, not deceive. A good marketer sets out to help buyers, not to confuse them. Good marketers add value. They don’t just close the sale. Good marketing is not a short-term sales tactic, it’s part of a long-term business building strategy.
Our job is to leave people feeling better for having worked with us. Good marketing starts with the intention to do just that.
Image by Robert Bell
Share this article
In Praise Of Intangibles
Think about all the things you didn’t charge your customers for today, those things that don’t appear as line items in your budget. The care with which you choose ingredients. The way you treat your employees. The time you spend listening to a prospective customer’s problems, so you can excel at anticipating your future customer’s needs.
The intangibles that differentiate your business may not be visible on the balance sheet today, but they might just be the reason it endures.
Image by Creative Industries
Share this article
Marketing Forwards
filed in Marketing, Storytelling
Lachie was a half-decent painter and decorator, but what he really had going for him was his youth and enthusiasm. He’d been in business long enough to reap some reward for his efforts, but not so long that he’d experienced the bust that inevitably followed the boom in Western Australia. Lachie had an easygoing nature. When other tradies ominously shook their heads and pursed their lips, Lachie just smiled and said nothing was a problem. It was no wonder that he’d talked himself into building a thriving business.
It wasn’t until Lachie started work painting our kitchen that I realised just how much he loved to talk. I quickly learned working from my home office was a bad idea if we wanted the job finished on time. Before the smartphone, Lachie had talkback radio for company while he worked, but the iPhone opened up a whole new world. Now he could simultaneously paint a ceiling and chat with a friend on his phone. I will never forget the morning when he spent an entire hour telling a friend about the new accounting software he was using. He waxed lyrical about how much time it saved him on invoicing. But not only that, he’d increased his customer conversion rate by using this new software for quoting. He was getting better at following up on overdue accounts, and his cashflow had improved as a result. Lachie had become a walking, talking advert for Xero overnight. He even made sure his friend noted the correct spelling. ‘Zero with an ‘x’, not a ‘z’.
As marketers, we spend a lot of time on the story we tell. We obsess about what we can say to convince more people to buy our products and services, often forgetting that the best marketing is about giving the customer a story to tell. Your marketing doesn’t happen once the product is ready to stack on the shelf. It can start by being clear about the story you want a prospective customer to tell and then working backwards to create that result.
What will your future customer tell his friend about how your product or service changed his life or worldview tomorrow? Design for that today.
Image by David Meurin
Share this article
A Measure Of Progress
In the animal kingdom ‘more’ is often the best measure of success. Herds and hoarders have a better chance of survival. But ‘more’ isn’t always the best measure of human progress.
The longest queue isn’t always a sign of better quality.
The most sales don’t always lead to a more sustainable business.
The greatest number of Facebook likes isn’t always an indication of the deepest impact.
The biggest accolade doesn’t always lead to the greatest fulfilment.
A lot of what we do every day is done in the blind pursuit of attaining more without making a direct connection to the benefit we hope to reap. But the largest number isn’t always a measure of progress. Is accumulating more followers on social media the best way to grow your business? Can you continue to produce more products with the same sense of integrity? Will you be able to give the additional customers the experience they deserve? Why is this growth strategy right for you?
It’s just as important to be intentional about the reasons we desire growth as it is to grow.
Grow because you must, not because you think you should.
Image by Jamie McCaffrey
Share this article
Ten Benefits Of Backstorytelling
filed in Storytelling, Strategy
Since the explosive growth of the advertising industry that began on Madison Avenue in the 1920s, marketing has been about creating a story to make people want something. Conventional wisdom dictated that if you wanted to sell more of a thing, you appealed to a customer’s desire to improve his situation in the moment. Then when you needed to sell the next thing you did it again. Marketing became a game of rinse and repeat.
On the way to competing for attention and building brand awareness, companies neglected the opportunity to develop an affinity with their customers. A hundred years on we’re re-discovering the benefits of truthtelling and building deeper relationships with our customers. That journey to prioritising resonance begins by embracing and sharing our backstory.
Embracing And Sharing Our Backstory….
1. Connects us to our purpose and vision for our career or business.
2. Allows us to celebrate our strengths by remembering how we got from there to here.
3. Deepens our understanding of our unique value and what differentiates us in the marketplace.
4. Reinforces our core values.
5. Helps us to act in alignment and make values-based decisions.
6. Encourages us to be responsive to customers instead of being reactive to the marketplace.
7. Attracts customers who want to support businesses that reflect or represent their values.
8. Builds brand loyalty and gives customers a story to tell.
9. Attracts the kind of like-minded employees we want.
10.Helps us to stay motivated and continue to do work we’re proud of.
One of our most effective career and business development resources is hiding in plain sight. History, heritage and hindsight are powerful teachers. But we’re in too much of a hurry to reach higher ground to learn from them. Don’t be so busy trying to get from here to there, that you forget to embrace how you got from there to here. If you want to get better at connecting the dots between your past and your future, start with your backstory. My new book Story Driven shows you how.
Image by Marcel Schewe
Share this article
Start Setting Your Brand Storytelling Goals
filed in Storytelling, Strategy
We expect brand storytelling to do a lot of heavy lifting for our business. We want our story to engage prospective customers and communicate the value we create. We rely on storytelling to create a sense of belonging and encourage people to believe in our brand. Ultimately we expect that our story will convince and convert people from browsers to buyers and then later compel them to become raving fans. We embark on the storytelling journey with this huge set of expectations often without having clearly defined goals for our story strategy. Where should we begin?
Start by choosing a single, simple outcome that you can test and measure. Begin with that outcome and work backwards.
What’s the story you need to tell if your goal is to encourage people to sign up to receive more information? What message will resonate with existing customers you want to inform about your new product line? What’s the internal narrative of the new customers you’re trying to attract and how will you ensure your story aligns with what they care about?
A story is only as effective as the insight we have about the audience and our intention about where we hope to take them.
Image by Krystal K
Share this article
The Measure Of Greatness
filed in Success
I will never forget the first assembly at my children’s school in Australia. Our family had newly migrated to Perth, Western Australia. We wanted to settle our boys as quickly as possible into their new life. So, much to our ten-year-old’s disgust, they were in new schools within two weeks of our arrival. There we were on a sunny, but brisk August morning (still trying to get our heads around that fact that it was not summer, but winter in Australia), at our local primary school. We were invited to stand and sing the national anthem by the year six student hosting the assembly. This was new to us. In the countries where we were born and raised we sang the national anthem at big public events or on more officious occasions.
When I was growing up in Ireland we learned the national anthem is Irish and to my shame, I still struggle to recall what all the words mean today. In the UK where our sons were born, we had to sing ‘God Save the Queen’ once or twice in fifteen years. And yet here we were, two weeks into our new life learning what it meant to be Australian. Every child from the age five up knew the words to the national anthem. They were not just mouthing those words. They were singing them with gusto—like they meant them. It brought tears to my eyes. Hearing it still does to this day. Our family never takes the sense of belonging to a country that welcomes people and to a culture that values generosity and fairness for granted.
In the scheme of things going on the world today, sportsmen attempting to cheat in a cricket match seems trivial. But the incident involving Australian cricketers playing in South Africa at the weekend has caused more than a stir back home. It has gotten under our skin and into our hearts—challenging our sense of who we think we are.
The way the most respected members of our sporting community have represented us on the world stage is not how we as a nation see ourselves. We pride ourselves on being fair and playing fair, on doing the right thing for the collective good over gaining a short-term advantage. Our sportspeople are admired and acknowledged for what it takes, not just to get to the top of their game, but to stay there. We are proud when we win, but we are prouder of the way we win. We understand that above all it’s a privilege to have a place on the field. The backlash is a sign of our strong culture and beliefs about what’s fair and right.
A culture with a strong set of values is the backbone of every country, community and company. The shared identity and common goals of any group are what enables it to thrive when we identify more with being winners than contributors our focus shifts. We are driven by short-term goals to create a near-term advantage. We lose sight of what’s important for the prosperity of the group in the long run. We forget that ‘greatness’ is three dimensional and throw our legacy under the bus.
We’ve all seen how a legacy can be damaged or destroyed in the business arena too. Great leaders in any arena are great not just because they hit more runs out of the park, but because they give us something to believe in and belong to. They show us the best of us, reflecting that what we do when no one is watching is who we are.
As James Carse alludes to in his brilliant book, Finite and Infinite Games. The match might be finite, but the game is infinite. It’s our job to do everything in our power to earn the privilege to play again tomorrow.
Image by cmrlee