From Advertising to Storytelling

Back in the glory days of Madison Avenue, designing an advertising message was much simpler. You’d do your consumer research, create some copy and art, and maybe even test a few different messages before it went out. Your media team would traffic the ads, and that was pretty much it. Some consumers may have talked about the ad, but the majority of your exposure was controlled within your advertising environment.

Of course, hindsight is 20/20. I can criticise the simplicity in retrospect because we know that those were the only parameters they had to work with. The success of their advertising was measured on reach and frequency. They had an excuse.

Fast-forward to today. What’s our excuse? Why do we design communications under the same parameters as our Madison Avenue predecessors despite the fact that our media environment has drastically changed in consumer behaviour and measurability?

This is the point when savvy digital marketers shout out in defense, “Hey! We measure our ad performance all the way through the funnel, from click-through rates and content views to conversion rates. We measure engagement and the ROI that it creates.”

That methodology is not wrong by any means, but I think we can take it a step further.

Marketers love to set up funnels and count the quantities of consumers that pass through them. But given that consumers don’t travel in a linear path to a product or service, is a quantitative measure of a funnel telling marketers enough about the performance of their communication? Instead, we should move our focus from driving through funnels to creating behavioural change. Consumers don’t remember your call to action to move them one step down the funnel, but they will remember a bigger idea that can motivate them to behave differently towards you. In order to do this, we must move from advertising to storytelling.

We Are Storytellers Playing a Big Game of Telephone

Today, we design communications with a lot more variables in play. Consumers do talk about your brand. And more importantly, they get to control how your message is passed on. Your 30 second TVC is no longer sacred if a consumer on Facebook shares it with their 500 friends saying “this commercial sucks!” Likewise, your “amazing 10 percent discount” isn’t that amazing if consumers share it as a “useless 10 percent discount.”

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When we think about sharing of messages in social media, we usually only think about the number of times it will be shared. But more importantly, we should be asking ourselves, “How is it going to be shared? And will the core communication retain its shape?” If you’re successful in creating the word-of-mouth story that you originally planned, then you’ve probably affected the behavioural change you originally wanted as well. How do we know this? Each human resender is an indication of someone influenced by your story and potentially influencing others. By taking part in telling your story, they’ve demonstrated an understanding of your message, or at least modified it in a way that’s representative of their beliefs.

Quantitative funnels are a poor indication of whether or not you’re actually influencing behavioural change.

How to Become a Better Storyteller

The output of our communications is complex. The creativity and planning that goes into what we say creates emotions, expectations, ideas, and actions from our consumers. That’s the beauty of good advertising or a good story. How do we harness these reactions and make them work in the direction we intended so that the story is told with consistency and accuracy?

Let’s use NPR’s Scott Simon as a model of excellence. He tells stories for a living so he should know a thing or two about how to make a story memorable and moving. Here’s the original three-minute video, but I’ll summarise the key points that are important to making us better storytelling marketers:

“The point”

Give them something to take away and repeat to others. Sometimes it’s just a single phrase. It’s the vivid details that get recalled when told again.

“A strong beginning”

This ensures that people are listening before they get lost in the details. It’s the hook that wins the fleeting attention of hyperactive consumers.

“Tell it like a swim”

Tell a story with rhythm and breathable sections so people can follow along. Unless you’re in the business of making epic movies, chances are your audience only wants to bite off a little bit at a time.

Consider these storytelling tips the next time you’re planning communication content that needs to spread in social media. Remember that the end goal of your communication should be focused on the response and how it’s shared. Our messages are no longer contained within controlled advertising environments.

It’s not what you say. It’s how they say it.