Brands are in a fight for attention. They need to go beyond collecting reams of data to understand how a consumer engages with a product or service. Big data doesn’t trump emotions and values. You can’t just talk about features of your product anymore. At the root is story sharing not storytelling. In the act of sharing, a brand’s story is released from the wild.
If you are listening closely to your friends and family, you hear story sharing all the time. It’s the new podcast I told my brother (Story Corps) or the extraordinary whiskey brand he shared with me. (Widow Jane). I hear it when I share a book with a colleague (Content Code by Mark Schaefer) and tell the story of how we connected through Twitter and then in person at an event I helped develop. Or, when an Instagram friend meets my daughter Fanny in person and says, “I can’t wait until your book comes out. I followed your journey on the Rachael Ray’s Great American Cookbook Competition.”
Can You Enable Story Sharing NOT storytelling
It isn’t enough to have a terrific product. In a recent blind taste test reported in The Independent in the UK, three leading lagers were indistinguishable in a blind taste test of 138 consumers between 21 and 70. What will drive the difference in success, how well the story gets shared?
Technology is the grand enabler of this communications, but what will drive the emotional connection? It will always come back to human touch points. Story sharing helps make an emotional bond or relationship. It is that emotional connection that can’t be replaced because product attributes can be deconstructed. I can make an iPhone too, but I can’t make the bond you have with Apple products. I can make shoes just like Tom’s but he owns a story and millions want to share it for him.
Here are some things to consider…
- A brand can create a story but a consumer has to tell it from their own viewpoint. It isn’t about you (the brand), it is all about the consumer and the benefit derived.
- A brand can help make the story easy to share with technology and navigational design. I still find sharing on mobile too difficult but it is evolving. Are you making story sharing easier?
- A brand can help put the human being in the story so that it is beyond the transactional nature of commerce. My unique experience is what I want to share and it is truly meaningful when it is told on a different level from the sale.
- Are you clear on how you share values with your customers? I want to know more and more about whom the company is and that is a big shift in consumer’s behavior from just a decade ago.
- Is there a community you are bringing together? I want to be part of something bigger than me.
- How are you earning trust? What social proof is there that I can trust you?
- You can’t keep advertising at me. That no longer works. What else have you got?
- Is there a speed to action build in to the way I can get the word out? Velocity is important to me in this fast-paced world I live.
Can you get the consumer to articulate not how or where they purchased, but why?
Sharing is the core to brand growth today. You need to filter activities to anticipate and plan ways to make your story the one that is told by your customer. They first need to understand it but you can help them advocate for you if you listen to what truly matters.
Hint: It isn’t that thing you sell that matters. It’s how your product or service makes me feel and the story I share.
Need a hand to get your story shared. Connect with me and let’s get started.
