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Articles filed in: Storytelling
Story Is The Universal Marketing Tool
filed in Storytelling, Strategy
Story doesn’t discriminate. It’s not dependent on a big advertising department or celebrity endorsement. It’s the universal marketing tool available to anyone.
That includes you.
When Target had a store in every suburb. Zappos had a story about delivering ‘wow through service’. When Borders had floor upon floor of books you could touch. Amazon had every book in stock and available to order today. Now Sappho has books you’ve forgotten and long to touch again. When Gillette had celebrity endorsement Dollar Shave Club had the truth.
The big guys might have a marketing budget, but you have a story.
Don’t be afraid to tell it.
Image by Pixelmaniac.
A Reason To Decide
filed in Marketing, Storytelling, Strategy
She spotted the black dress just as she was about to give up. It was perfect. She imagined how it would cling in all the right places at the party on Friday night. And how she would feel when he spotted her across the crowded room.
The reason you buy the dress isn’t the same as the reason you only wear it once.
The reason you pick up the book isn’t the same as the reason you finish it.
The reason you choose the movie isn’t the same as the reason you’d watch it again.
And so it goes with your clients and customers.
The reason people decide might not be the reason you think. A big part of your work is to tell a story that gives them reasons to decide.
Image by Jason Hargrove.
Apple’s Not-So-Secret Marketing Secret
filed in Marketing, Storytelling
Why would anyone buy a 13 inch MacBook Air?
Why not buy the Pro? It’s faster, has more memory, it’s actually only 700 grams heavier and .7cm thicker (or 2.4cm ‘thin’ in Applespeak) and it costs exactly the same.
Why pay a chunk of cash for less of something?
When I asked my Twitter friends who had one they talked about needing something ultra-portable, fast, lightweight (although they weren’t sure exactly how much lighter it was). One had blogged about the Air’s “Awwwww” factor.
The 13 inch MacBook Air is a classic example of the illogical purchasing decisions we make every day. It offers less of everything for roughly the same price. Less memory and less storage. It’s slower and has a shorter battery life. But who wouldn’t want to own “The world’s thinnest notebook”?
According to Harvard marketing professor Gerald Zaltman a tiny fraction of our decisions, just 5%, are based on logic. The truth is people aren’t buying your specifications and your facts.
The path to success is littered with great ideas poorly marketed, but armed with this knowledge Apple succeeds by marketing to the whole customer. By giving us products we love as much as our cat, and making us want them by understanding our heart’s desires, then telling us that story.
Image by rando mix.
The Story Makes The Product Better
filed in Entrepreneurship, Marketing, Storytelling
For three decades, 10% of the population of the tiny Welsh town, Cardigan, made jeans.
35,000 pairs every week.
Then one day the factory died, and the jean artisans could no longer practice their art.
They simply had no way to do the thing they did well, until Hiut Denim was founded.
Now the company’s ‘Grand Masters’ make a handful of jeans each day. Each pair has a unique number, and a ‘History Tag’ that the owner can register on the website, to begin adding the memories associated with wearing their jeans.
Hiut are telling the story of a product built to last, and they are encouraging their customers to consume less by attaching meaning to the things that they love.
“We make jeans. That’s it. Nothing else. No distractions. Nothing to steal our focus. No kidding ourselves that we can be good at everything. No trying to conquer the whole world. We just do our best to conquer our bit of it. So each day we come in and make the best jeans we know how.”
Hiut didn’t just make an average product, then try sticking a marketing story on as an after thought. They made the story part of the product, and the story makes the product better.
Image by Don Shall.
How Dollar Shave Club Succeeds With A Better Brand Story
filed in Entrepreneurship, Marketing, Storytelling
How does a startup come on to the scene, take on giant global brands like Gillette, and win?
That’s what Dollar Shave Club did, by harnessing the power of great brand storytelling. This is how they did it.
- By telling the truth, and keeping it simple.
- With an easy to remember brand name and tagline, which reinforces the brand’s value proposition.
- Presenting that clear value proposition right there on the home page.
- Educating the audience and clarifying why they are different from the competition.
- Appealing to the target demographic, with anti-status quo values, design, tone and copy.
- Giving customers plenty of calls to action. All roads on the site lead to customer conversion.
- By showing their audience that other people are excited by this product too. Using social proof; almost 5 million shares on YouTube, and thousands of tweets and Facebook likes.
- With a great affiliate program. Customer incentives are front and centre, (the photographer who took the photo above is earning free razors with an affiliate link on his Flickr!).
- By making their customers feel, enlightened and doing what the big brands were not prepared to do.
You no longer need to own the means of production, to secure a slice of the market. Big companies will try to work out how to avoid being ‘dollar shaved’.
But the truth is, that today, you don’t need $57 million to tell a better brand story.
Iage by Mitchell Bartlett.
What Does The Competition Do?
filed in Marketing, Storytelling, Strategy
I was consulting with two financial planners this week. We were discussing what made them different, when they told me this story about working with one of their clients.
Jonathan was offered $9 million for his house, which had amazing, never to be replaced views out over the river. He was in a quandary about what to do. Most advisers, (thinking about maximising the return of a portfolio) would have told him to make hay, sell immediately, take the equity and reinvest it.
Not Mark. He sat out on the balcony with Jonathan and chatted to him about his personal and life goals. They talked about why Jonathan had chosen to live there in the first place. Mark encouraged him to imagine what life would be like with the money in the bank, but no view. Jonathan decided to walk away from the $9 million, that could never replace the feeling he got every day by just living comfortably where he was.
No surprise then that Mark and his partner don’t need to advertise, and that 95% of their business is generated by word of mouth.
Work out how you are least like the competition, then tell that story.
Image by marksjonathan.
Being The Most
filed in Entrepreneurship, Marketing, Storytelling
In the 80’s Starbucks set out to be the most inspiring coffee brand on the planet. When they forgot this in the 90’s and tried becoming the most ubiquitous, they lost their way.
If you could be ‘the most’ to people what ‘most’ would you be?
Most reliable.
Most irresistible.
Most ubiquitous.
Most loved.
Most —————.
You get to choose.
Image by Steve Rhodes.
The Internet Is Not A Shortcut
filed in Marketing, Storytelling
Here is the cold hard truth about the Internet, viral marketing and the way to make your ideas matter.
The Internet gives you a million and one chances to amplify what’s great about what you do.
It doesn’t actually make your idea better.
70,000 people found Philippa on Instagram. She was an amazing visual storyteller, who touched people, long before she downloaded the Instagram app.
There’s only one formula for getting your work noticed over and over again.
Do good work.
Then do it over and over again.
If you do good work people will find you. If you give them something to come back for they’ll keep coming back. And if you make them care, they’ll share you with their friends.
Image by abrinsky.
How Coffee Became As Seductive As Diamonds
filed in Marketing, Storytelling, Strategy
I have no idea how this happened, but twenty five years ago when my husband and I were choosing my engagement ring on student budgets, I found myself inside a tiny strategically lit room with a £20,000 ring on my finger. £20,000 was enough to buy a house in Dublin in those days.
Fast forward to last Saturday when I had a flashback of the moment we were seduced into a plush room by a hopeful jeweller. This time though I was in a coffee store.
Nespresso have made choosing and buying coffee as seductive as shopping for diamonds. Their stores are expensively lit, architecturally designed boutiques, where coffee machines are uplit in recessed walls, tiny glass cups arranged like works of art and muted coffee pods are displayed in glass cases. Their goal —’a retail experience that satisfies your every desire.’
And it works. I watched as people queued behind velvet ropes to speak to a ‘specialist’ about their coffee choices, while others jostled for position at the Carpe Diem tasting lounge. There are limited edition flavours that sell out in a week and are resold on eBay at a premium.
The last line of a review of the Sydney store on Yelp says it all.
“I purposely buy only 2 weeks worth of capsules, so I can keep going back.”
‘Experience’ has change how we perceive commodities. People buy what they buy, not just because they believe in what you do, but because of what they want to believe about themselves.
Your customers want to be seduced. What will they keep coming back for?
Image by Martin Stabenfeldt.
Well-Designed Moments Build Brands
filed in Marketing, Storytelling, Strategy
That moment when the airline tells you that lost luggage is just a fact of life, or the sales assistant can’t exchange a faulty shirt on the spot because of company policy is a crack in the foundation of the brand. In that moment you begin to disconnect and feel like you don’t belong.
Every brand is built on the feelings and experiences it delivers to customers in the blink of an eye.
Returns should be made as easy as purchases. Cancelling subscriptions should be as easy as signing up. They rarely are.
The trick is to see the moment when the bubble bursts as an opportunity to deepen the relationship. The opportunity to make a 404 a well designed moment is open to everyone.
Image by Duncan Rawlinson.