brand storytelling
638 posts
How To Tell The Story Of Your Products
Why is real estate copywriting so terrible? Maybe it’s not that bad in your town or city, but wherever I have lived the copy seems to serve one purpose—to fill the space between the images and the floor plan in the brochure. Here are a couple of examples of copy written to sell million dollar…
Your Brand Story Is More Than What You Say
It’s a chilly autumn morning and the waitress in the cafe down the street is folding blankets to put over the chairs outside just in case customers are feeling the cold. The local doctor who is half way through her busy surgery, comes out to the waiting room and invites Adam into her consulting room
The Value Of What We Don’t Know
Six years. That’s how long it took IKEA to research the South Korean culture before they were ready to open the first store there. Six years of understanding what they didn’t know about the story Korean customers lived and wanted to believe—so that they could tell a story that resonated. The goal wa
Before And After
Before any business is done you and your potential customer each have a story playing in your head. There is the worldview you each have before the transaction takes place and the outcome you hope will eventuate afterwards. The outcome that you want and the one that the customer is hoping for may be
Where Marketing Starts And The Marketing Ladder
For many business owners marketing begins with tactics. Someone suggests that printing flyers or making a ‘viral’ video to get the word out is a good idea. Even if the tactic works this time round it doesn’t mean you’ve got a sustainable strategy for connecting with your audience or building your br
The Difference Between A Pitch And A Brand Story
A pitch is what you tell the world about you. It’s presented as the polished version of your story. The one you hope people will grasp and believe within a few short minutes as they reach for their wallets. Your pitch and your story are two very different things. So how is a brand storytelling…
A Lesson In Unlocking Value
When you book a room at the Hilton or the Hyatt you either have a pleasant conversation with someone in a call centre who you will never hear from again, or you get a polite, well-crafted email in your inbox. Your expectation about the experience is based on the photos from the website and the…
What’s Your Customer’s Why?
It’s true that people buy from companies they like. We feel an affinity with some brands and not others and our purchasing decisions reinforce our values. The Internet has given rise to a new kind of savvy, connected customer. She seeks out purpose driven brands whose ideals resonate with hers. Whil
A Category Of One
The sign was in the perfect spot—right next to the traffic lights at a notoriously slow moving T-junction, to maximise the number of people who would see it. The message was clear: “NEED A WEBSITE? 04040404040” What’s also clear is that the people who call are not likely to be the customers that the
We Don’t Buy Things
Once upon a time and not so long ago, almonds were a fatty, to-be-avoided snack. Today they are a protein-rich superfood. Almond sales in the US have increased 220% since 2005. When, and how exactly did almonds change? Of course almonds haven’t changed at all, what has changed is what we believe abo
The Power Of The Minimum Viable Experience
I like my insurance company, or should I say I like the people who work for my insurance company. I’ve been with them almost ten years and have no intention of switching. Their call centre team is well trained and they really go out of their way to be helpful and make the customer feel…
The Meaningful Advantage
The newspaper delivery van still drives up our street at 4am on Saturday morning. You can hear the rolled, plastic wrapped weekend edition thud onto the neighbour’s lawn as the driver takes aim from the window. And even at 4am you can’t help wondering if this service will be meaningful to enough peo
Changing The Customer
The craft beer industry is flourishing, naturally that’s eating into the market share of the bigger brewers. Budweiser sales in the US have dropped by more than two thirds since 1988 and the company is losing mindshare and market share amongst 21-27 year olds. The solution seems to be to change what
Why People Buy And Why You Need To Know
We spend a great deal of our time and energy trying to convince people to choose us—often without giving enough consideration to why they might. It turns out that there are only three reasons people buy anything and every product or service falls somewhere on this buying hierarchy. 1. Utility If you
When Did Marketing Become About Telling?
In the village marketing was always about showing. Quality was demonstrated and trust was earned. As we outgrew the village and our small circles of trust and influence marketing became about telling. Loyalty was bought and exposure was paid for. But our digital connectedness is taking us back. Back
We Don’t Need Better Marketing
When I was growing up in Dublin home baking was the norm. Most families couldn’t afford the luxury of expensive, shop bought cakes, so ironically something like a mass-produced Mr Kipling’s French Fancy was seen as a decadent treat—the kind that was rolled out on a doily when you were having a speci
Thinking About Your Advantages
Every traditional car dealer sells a similar product. What can one Ford dealer do that his competitors in the next suburb can’t? There is very little he has a monopoly on. John is a car dealer who has been operating in Perth for 45 years, he periodically takes out a double page spread in the…
How Value Is Created
Value is created at the intersection of the customer’s worldview and your understanding of how your product meets that. If that’s hard to get your head around think about plugging a real world example into the model. Customer’s Worldview: Branded razors are expensive. The quality doesn’t reflect the
Why Strategy Must Come Before Tactics
What’s the best time to send a tweet? How do you develop a content strategy? What’s the easiest way to drive traffic to your website? How do you build a great landing page? If you can ‘Google’ the question and get an answer does that give you an unfair advantage over your competitors? Do you…
Where A Sale Begins
The sale of the first GoPro camera didn’t begin when the customer walked through the retailer’s door. It didn’t even begin with the huddle of engineers in the tiny innovation department at the factory. The first sale began in the lineup, as the surfers waited to catch a wave. A marketer’s story typi
