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Articles filed in: Storytelling
Tiny Markets Of Someone
filed in Marketing, Storytelling, Strategy
Mr Ryan owned a corner shop in the tiny Dublin suburb where I grew up. It supported his family and employed his children while they studied for over 20 years. He didn’t seem to worry when yet another big supermarket opened close by. Sure, he knew some of his customers would go there for special offers, but he also knew that he wasn’t after the ‘market of everyone’. He didn’t need everyone to keep going, he just needed to matter to enough people, by doing things the big guys couldn’t do.
When industry and innovation became very focused on the metric of more, we lost sight of the fact that more wasn’t always the best place to start. And then ironically the Internet, which could help us to reach everyone, made us realise that there were ‘tiny markets of someone’. As Seth Godin pointed out in a recent and brilliant (as always) talk the bell curve has melted. Not only is there no longer a mass market, but most of the successful companies, game-changing innovations and products and services we care about were designed to cater for people at the edges.
How did a tiny yogurt company compete with industry giants who had twenty times their budget and controlled two-thirds of the market? In five years, Chobani went from having almost no revenue to selling a predicted $1 billion worth of yogurt in 2013. They started at the edges, doing things the bigger brands were not prepared to do, for people that wanted difference.
Airbnb went from appealing to people at the edges (who would want to share a stranger’s apartment?), to having over 300,000 listings worldwide in 33,000 cities and booking 10 million nights in 192 countries within 5 years.
Method entered the household cleaner market which was dominated by big players like P&G, and differentiated at the edges on results, safety, sustainability, design, and scent. The company achieved over 500% growth in just 3 years.
Can you name any brand that’s gained loyalty, love and traction over the past decade that didn’t begin at the edges? Red Bull, Facebook, zipcar, TED, Kickstarter, Instagram, Spanx, Starbucks, Warby Parker, Zappos, Kindle, Innocent, PayPal, TaskRabbit, Green & Blacks, even Amazon and Apple didn’t begin by targeting the market of everyone.
The truth is that ‘the masses’ don’t want to feel like ‘the masses’. They want to discern. To choose. To be seen. To matter. Your customers don’t want to be just anyone, they want to be someone.
Image by erban.
The Best Brands Are Mirrors
filed in Marketing, Storytelling, Strategy
The genius of the ‘Dove Sketches’ campaign wasn’t that it highlighted the issues women have around body image and beauty, it was that it held a mirror up to every one of us. It tapped into our collective vulnerability on a visceral level.
Brands like Dove, Instagram, Harley-Davidson, Virgin, Nike, Moleskine, Dyson, Brene Brown, Apple, Tiffany, Airbnb, Red Bull, my BodyPump instructor Duane and your local organic butcher, shift our perception about what’s possible for us. The real reason we come back to them again and again has less to do with how well they work and more to do with the way they change how we feel by degrees.
The best brands reflect our potential back to us. They resonate with us not necessarily because they sell the best products, but because they help us to see the best in ourselves.
Image by Ivana Vasilj.
Want To Make And Impact? Just Add Context
filed in Marketing, Storytelling, Strategy
The path to success is littered with great ideas that don’t fly.
Even a good idea won’t catch on if people don’t see the value in it.
It’s not enough to have an idea that might change everything, you have to find a way to help people buy into it.
The truth is it doesn’t matter how good your idea is if nobody cares.
Here’s the equation.
IDEA + CONTEXT = IMPACT
The value is not in the innovation, the information, the platform or the app. The value is in the meaning it enables people to create for themselves.
So don’t just make, find ways to make people matter.
Image by Suizilla.
What If You’re Neither Closer, Faster Or Cheaper?
filed in Storytelling, Strategy
There was no size 12 in stock, but there were two identical black dresses showing on ‘the system’, one in the City store the other equally far away (but not there in reality as it turned out).
In a world of infinite choices where faster and cheaper is two clicks away, and free overnight shipping makes closer increasingly irrelevant, every business must question why people will pay for their services.
The Internet has given plenty of businesses the opportunity to become more relevant to their customers and it’s forced others to question what they are really offering beyond the thing that they wrap up for customers to take home.
The value of everything was always in the meaning and the story we told ourselves about having, owning or doing the thing, the Internet just brought that into sharp focus.
If you can’t add value in the moment then the only opportunity open to you is to add meaning.
What reason are you giving your customers to bypass a hundred (or maybe 100 million) other choices, to get in their car or to cross the street. Opening your doors (even if they are virtual ones) isn’t enough any more.
Image by Filippo Minelli.
Intangibles Have A Real World Value
filed in Marketing, Storytelling, Strategy
Once upon a time earphones were ‘functional black’, until Apple changed everything by adding a layer of meaning to what was once a commodity worth nothing more than a few dollars.
By making earphones ‘accessory white’ Apple gave iPod owners a way to be noticed and to belong.
The most famous roof line in the world brings in a billion dollars a year to the Australian economy. Those vaulted shells don’t make Sydney Opera House more functional, but they change how people feel when they stand in front of it. They deliver joy far beyond the cost of the concrete, wood and tiles used to build them. The shells enable us to attach meaning and significance to a building and give us a story to tell.
In the real world a disproportionate amount of value is placed on the tangible. Things we can easily explain, or put our finger on. Of course it’s easier to place a value on what can be weighed and measured. And yet all around us, every day we are surrounded by proof that ‘soft innovation’ and that which we can’t touch, or easily measure has a real world value.
Time and again the market proves that the value of stuff is finite, but that the meaning we attach to stuff, the experiences we create around it and the stories we tell ourselves about it has exponential value. The fortune, not the cookie is what people really care about.
Image by Ed Yourdon.
The Competition Isn’t Your Competition
filed in Marketing, Storytelling, Strategy
Bread Society is a beautiful artisan bakery in Singapore (the website doesn’t do it justice). At the back of the store the bakers roll, and knead and prove in full view, whilst just in front an assistant packages delectable breads. Self serve cabinets filled with Chocolate Melon Brioche, Honey Lemon Danish and Sundried Tomato Bagels are lit from above by glass chandeliers. It’s an experience from start to finish and a story we want to tell.
But the company doesn’t want us to share it. When one of my boys tried to take a photo he was politely informed that photography wasn’t allowed. We’d missed the sign in the window.
Why go to all the trouble of telling a great story, and creating a fantastic experience only to stop the best marketing you could ever dream of from filtering out?
If you’ve created a brand story worth sharing why worry about the competition?
A secret sauce is worthless without people who care about what you do and why you do it. Your mission then isn’t to prevent your idea being copied or stolen, it’s to find a way to matter.
The bigger concern for any business now is not the competition, it’s obscurity.
Image by Robyn Lee.
The Most Powerful Person In The World
filed in Storytelling
During the summer of 1994 while on a lunch break at his new company NeXT, Steve Jobs struck up a conversation with some of his team in the lunch room about power. Here’s what he told them.
“The most powerful person in the world is the storyteller.
The storyteller sets the vision, values and agenda of an entire generation that is to come.”
Of course Steve went on to tell great stories at both Pixar and Apple, by nailing things that his competitors didn’t think to care about, like changing how it felt to unbox a product.
The exciting part for you and your ideas is that story doesn’t discriminate, you don’t need the biggest marketing budget to be able to tell a great true story.
You just need to decide that it’s what you want to do, then go do it.
How are you shaping the world that’s to come?
Thanks to Tomas Higbey for sharing a great story.
Image by Camillo Miller.
10 Things A Brand Does
filed in Marketing, Storytelling, Strategy
A brand…..
1. Creates meaning around your product or service.
2. Determines what you sell, where and when.
3. Dictates the price range you can sell at.
4. Influences the kind of customers you can sell to.
5. Changes how people feel about commodities.
6. Sets expectations.
7. Affects the kind of staff you can attract.
8. Demonstrates your values.
9. Shapes business models.
10.Enables loyalty, connection, belonging and love.
Image by Pedro.
The 20 Keys To A Brand Story
filed in Marketing, Storytelling, Strategy
A brand story is more than a narrative. The story goes beyond the copy on a website, the text in a brochure, or the presentation used to pitch to investors. Your story isn’t just what you tell people. It’s what they believe about you based on the signals your brand sends. The story is a complete picture made up of facts, feelings, and interpretations, which means that part of your story isn’t even told by you.
Everything you do, from the colours and texture of your packaging to the staff you hire, is part of your brand story, and every element of it should reflect the truth about your brand back to your audience.
If you want to build a successful, sustainable business, a brand that will garner loyalty and, if you’re lucky, become loved, you have to start with your story.
THE 20 KEYS TO A BRAND STORY
1. The Truth
What business are you in?
Car companies don’t just manufacture boxes to get people from A to B.
2. Purpose
The reason you exist.
3. Vision
What impact do you see your business making in the world?
4. Values
Your values reinforce the vision for the business, shape its culture, and guide its behaviours.
5. Products and Services
Do they live up to the story you want to tell?
6. Your People
Leaders and employees, their values and posture.
7. Value you deliver
Think beyond features and benefits.
People don’t buy what you do; they buy how it makes them feel.
8. Name and Tagline
Your opening move.
9. Content and Copy
Your content and copy are the way you woo your customers. They are your voice and the way you communicate your brand’s personality.
10. Design
The visual shorthand that helps people to make decisions about your brand.
It also shapes the user’s experience of your products and makes them work better.
11. Your Actions
How you do everything, from greeting customers to answering the phone and requesting payment,
12. Customer Experience
Customer experience is everything that happens when people encounter your brand and how it makes your customers feel.
13. Price and Quality
The price you charge and the quality of what you sell or serve sends a signal to the right people.
14. Perception
Your position is your customers’ perception. It’s shaped by the way in which you touch their hearts, not by how you manipulate their thinking.
15. Distribution
How you get your products and services into the hands of customers sends them a signal about your brand. It can also provide a competitive advantage.
16. Location
Your location has to align with your business strategy.
17. Ubiquity or Scarcity
Do you want to have a product in every store, or will being selective about where your brand is stocked align with your story? Is your plan to have a presence on the tablet of every consumer with access to an Internet connection, or will you serve just a handful of consulting clients each year?
18. Community
Your audience. The people you want to reach out to, those your brand resonates with.
The people who feel like they belong and who want to share your story.
19. Reputation
The story your customers tell about you. How your idea and brand story is spread. What one person says to another to recommend your brand.
20. Reaction and Reach
How your customers behave towards your brand. Lines at the Apple store.
You’ll find more about how to tell a great brand story using the 20 keys in my new book
The Fortune Cookie Principle now available on Amazon.
The story you tell is a choice. What story are you telling?
The Fortune Cookie Principle. The Keys To Telling Your Brand Story
filed in Marketing, Storytelling, Strategy
I’ve been working to get my new book into your hands for the past nine months, so I’m thrilled to let you know that The Fortune Cookie Principle: The 20 Keys to a Great Brand Story and Why Your Business Needs One is now available on Amazon.
The Kindle edition is on sale at the introductory price of $3.99.
So today is great day to buy your copy and to give one to a friend who has a story to tell.
In the book I share the 20 keys that will help you to tell your brand story. For each key I provide examples of businesses big and small who have used that key to tell their story well. At the end of each section I’ve added questions for you to answer which will help you to tell your story better.
In business we talk a lot about marketing plans and content strategies and features and benefits, often forgetting the reason we needed to think about any of these in the first place.
The very first question that Apple asks before they design a thing is;
“What do we want people to feel?”
Apple became the most loved company in the world by telling a better story and you can do it too.
I wanted to give you a place to begin and that’s the reason I wrote this book.
Your brand story is more than a narrative and content. The story goes beyond the copy on your website, the text in your brochure, or the presentation you use to pitch to investors. Your story isn’t just what you tell people. It’s what they believe about you based on the signals your brand sends. The story is a complete picture made up of facts, feelings, and interpretations, which means that part of your story isn’t even told by you.
People don’t buy what you do, or why you do it.
They buy how it makes them feel.
Marketers spend most of their time selling the cookie, when what they should be doing is finding a better way to tell the story of the fortune. Bake a good cookie but spend your time working out to tell your story well.
Everything you do, from the colours and texture of your packaging to the staff you hire, is part of your brand story, and every part of it should reflect the truth about your brand back to your audience. If you want to build a successful, sustainable business, a brand that will garner loyalty and, if you’re lucky, become loved, you have to start with your story.
The most successful brands in the world don’t behave like commodities and neither should you.
A great brand story will make you stand out, increase brand awareness, create customer loyalty and power profits. Isn’t it time you gave your customers a story to tell?
The Fortune Cookie Principle will show you how.