Tag Archive for: marketing

What exactly are you selling?

 

What exactly are you selling?

What exactly is your client or customer buying?

The obvious answer, of course is, “your product or service”.

And that is true,

until you actually have to persuade someone to buy,

until “sell” involves something more than the physical exchange of money or value.

Then it becomes fairly obvious that there is something more involved.

Let me say, right now, that what you are selling is a story.

A story is

the story of a change,

the change that your customer or buyer goes through when they use your product or service.

And that is the story you have to sell.

And while that change will have physical aspects and outcomes that might involve things like health, wealth, relationships; ultimately the result your client or customer wants is the emotion, the feeling.  They want to feel free, valued, better than, at peace; all sorts of things.  And they may not articulate that, but the want will be there.  

There is a saying that people buy based on emotion and justify based on logic.

And that is why stories are so valuable.  They can tap into the subconscious level of emotions.  We are wired for story and stories are inherently built on emotion.  

So your client story is vital in your marketing.  

Where are you telling your client story – that story of change?

Ramping up your impact with the bigger story

Behind your business story your personal story, your leadership story, there is a bigger story.

 

 

Whenever we tell a story – in a speech, online, as a leader, as a motivator, we drop the energy, but increase impact.

If we do it well, we have our readers, audience, teams in the storytelling trance, in our story with us, following our lead.   Their brains and heart rates drop and they relax both their physiology and their resistance.

Nevertheless there is powerful impact happening with that storytelling, points communicated, minds moving towards change and messages embedded.

What we do after that can break the spell and undermine the success of our message or it can support it, build on it and add even more power.

Take your audience|readers|team out of the story trance and shift the energy and the brain patterns by introducing some left brain, rational support for the point you are making.

Tell the bigger story.

Why is this relevant to the times?

Why is this relevant to the industry you all inhabit?

Why is this relevant to your part of the world or your culture?

You are bringing yourself and your audience back into why this experience you have created with the story, and the message that is embedded behind it, is so very relevant and important to them on a much larger scale than their personal needs or wants.

They feel swept along in a movement far greater than themselves.

Then you can take them further along in the flow of your message.

Winning the Story Wars : Why Those Who Tell (and Live) the Best Stories Will Rule the Future

Trying to get your message heard? Build an iconic brand?

 

Welcome to the battlefield. The story wars are all around us. They are the struggle to be heard in a world of media noise and clamor. Today, most brand messages and mass appeals for causes are drowned out before they even reach us. But a few consistently break through the din, using the only tool that has ever moved minds and changed behavior–great stories.

With insights from mythology, advertising history, evolutionary biology, and psychology, viral storyteller and advertising expert Jonah Sachs takes readers into a fascinating world of seemingly insurmountable challenges and enormous opportunity.

You’ll discover how:

* Social media tools are driving a return to the oral tradition, in which stories that matter rise above the fray

* Marketers have become today’s mythmakers, providing society with explanation, meaning, and ritual

* Memorable stories based on timeless themes build legions of eager evangelists

* Marketers and audiences can work together to create deeper meaning and stronger partnerships in building a better world

* Brands like Old Spice, The Story of Stuff, Nike, the Tea Party, and Occupy Wall Street created and sustained massive viral buzz

Winning the Story Wars is a call to arms for business communicators to cast aside broken traditions and join a revolution to build the iconic brands of the future.

It puts marketers in the role of heroes with a chance to transform not just their craft but the enterprises they represent. After all, success in the story wars doesn’t come just from telling great stories, but from learning to live them.

Globally recognized storyteller, designer, and entrepreneur Sachs argues that only those brands that tell “values-driven stories” through the “right” channels will revolutionize marketing and may become humanity’s greatest hope for the future.
About the Author: Jonah Sachs. As the cofounder and CEO of Free Range Studios, Sachs has helped hundreds of major brands and causes break through the media noise with unforgettable campaigns. His work on renowned viral videos including The Meatrix and The Story of Stuff have brought key social issues to the attention of more than sixty-five million people online. A constant innovator, his studio’s websites and stories have taken top honors three times at the South by Southwest Interactive Festival. Sachs’s work and opinions have been featured in a variety of media, including the New York Times, NPR, and Fast Company magazine, which named him one of its fifty most influential social innovators. About the Illustrator: Drew Beam Drew Beam is the Innovation Director at Free Range Studios, where he helps clients see the future and leap into it. After earning his BFA at Rhode Island School of Design (RISD), Beam built a successful career creating visuals and innovation strategies for dozens of Fortune 500 companies. His illustrations have been published by Time Warner Books, Penguin Books, and Rolling Stone magazine, to name just a few.

Reviews

“Story Wars is a thorough guide for the novice or even practiced storytellers in all of us. Sachs offers story structures, ways of thinking about characters and messages. He pulls artfully from recent brand successes from companies including Nike and Apple. And he tells a few good stories along the way.” — Forbes

“Sachs is full of ideas and strategies to help readers give their brands the rare, compelling story that will raise their message above the melee of advertising noise… the ideas are powerful and solid, and will make inspiring reading for marketing professionals looking to set their stories apart.” — Publishers Weekly

“In this timely, practical, perceptive, and thought-provoking book, Sachs (CEO, Free Range Studios) does a remarkable job trumpeting storytelling as a means by which people can effectively influence others.” — CHOICE

“The book is an interesting blend of marketing and advertising history, mythology, and psychology that pulled me in and kept me turning the pages… the eye-catching illustrations of Drew Beam. Beam’s artwork combined with Sachs’s writing style kept me glued to the pages… this one has earned a place on my bookshelf and a noteworthy position on my leadership development reading list.” — T+D magazine, American Society for Training & Development

“This fast-paced entertaining book takes on storytelling from the POV of a 24/7 information culture and shares the strategies and tactics that fuel today’s most compelling content.” — Ketchum PR, On the Bookshelf: New Year Reads

“Sachs offers a step-by-step guide to corporate storytelling, showing how brands can use recognisable characters, such as “freaks, cheats and familiars” to create instantly relatable campaigns…Marketers who are able to define the core values of a brand then use them to engage the target audience in a compelling, relatable story are the ones who will thrive in the new media landscape of the “digitoral” age.” — Warc

“His investigation also unveiled a process to help others create winning stories that he shares with great depth and charm in this book.” — 800 CEO READ

“To influence this brave new world, first convince the global media marketplace of your story. The better the story, the better chance of making people think differently.” — Quantas magazine

“In the often superficial, deceptive world of marketing and advertising, social innovator Jonah Sachs is an individual with a conscience…Sachs’s engaging work is a call to arms for anyone who works to influence consumer choices.” — getAbstract

ADVANCE PRAISE for Winning the Story Wars: Dan Heath, coauthor, Switch and Made to Stick– “Jonah Sachs knows stories. He’s responsible for some of the most popular and respected viral messages of all time: The Story of Stuff, The Meatrix, Grocery Store Wars, and others. This book is a storytelling call to arms, an appeal to tell the stories that matter. So read Winning the Story Wars–and join the fray.”

Nick Coe, CEO, Bath & Body Works; former President, Land’s End– “History is written by the winners. And as Jonah Sachs makes abundantly clear, it is now being written by the marketers, the new mythmakers of our time. Whatever your product or your cause, if you want it to succeed, read this wise and enlightening book.”

Kumi Naidoo, Executive Director, Greenpeace International– “Winning the Story Wars will convince you that storytelling is the most powerful way to move people to action. And it will teach you to use that power to orient our world to a more positive future. If you’re ready to be a great storyteller, read this book.”

Deepak Chopra, founder, The Chopra Foundation– “Great leaders transform the world through stories that inspire hope, stability, trust, compassion, and authenticity. This important and thought-provoking book shows that leadership in marketing will require the living and telling of such stories as well.”

Bill Bradley, former US Senator; Managing Director, Allen & Company– “We know about who we are both individually and as a society through stories. In this brilliant book, Jonah Sachs tells us how we lost our storytelling capacity and how we must regain it, constructing our own myths and living the truth of the stories we tell.”

Paul Hawken, author, The Ecology of Commerce and Blessed Unrest– “In the current maelstrom of media babble and corporate deceit, Jonah Sachs makes sense where none appears to exist. Winning the Story Wars explains why we respond to lies–whether in political or product ads, campaigns or speeches–and how truth ultimately trumps all. This remarkable book delivers on that rare promise of changing how you see the world.”

Me?  I am getting so many ah-has I have to stop reading to absorb them all!!

You can buy the book at The Book Depository , The Nile , Fishpond or Amazon

All Marketers Are Liars: The Power of Telling Authentic Stories in a Low Trust World

All Marketers Are Liars: The Power of Telling Authentic Stories in a Low Trust World (2005)

This was the seventh published book by Seth Godin, and the third in a series of books on 21st century marketing, following Purple Cow and Free Prize Inside.

 

Basically, Seth Godin suggests that there are three questions to ask, as a marketer.

“What’s your story?”
“Will the people who need to hear this story believe it?”
“Is it true?”

 

First question  “What’s your story?”

There are small businesses that are so focused on what they do that they forget to take the time to describe the story of why they do it.

If what you’re doing matters, really matters, then I hope you’ll take the time to tell a story. A story that resonates and a story that can become true.

What we do know (and what we talk about) is our story. Our story about why people use, recommend or are loyal to you and your products. Our story about the origin and the impact and the utility of what we buy.

Marketing is storytelling.

The story of your product, built into your product. The ad might be part of it, the copy might be part of it, but mostly, your product and your service and your people are all part of the story.

Tell it on purpose.

 

Second Question:  “Will the people who need to hear this story believe it?”

 

Just to be clear…

The truth is elusive. No one knows the whole truth about anything. We certainly don’t know the truth about the things we buy and recommend and use.

You believe things that aren’t true.

Let me say that a different way: many things that are true are true because you believe them.

We believe what we want to believe, and once we believe something, it becomes a self-fulfilling truth.

If you think that (more expensive) wine is better, then it is. If you think your new boss is going to be more effective, then she will be. If you love the way a car handles, then you’re going to enjoy driving it.

That sounds so obvious, but if it is, why is it so ignored? Ignored by marketers, ignored by ordinarily rational consumers and ignored by our leaders.

Once we move beyond the simple satisfaction of needs, we move into the complex satisfaction of wants. And wants are hard to measure and difficult to understand. Which makes marketing the fascinating exercise it is.

 

Third question:  Is it true?

 

When you are busy telling stories to people who want to hear them, you’ll be tempted to tell stories that just don’t hold up. Lies. Deceptions.

This sort of storytelling used to work pretty well. Joe McCarthy became famous while lying about the “Communist threat.” Bottled water companies made billions while lying about the purity of their product compared to tap water in the developed world.

The thing is, lying doesn’t pay off any more. That’s because when you fabricate a story that just doesn’t hold up to scrutiny, you get caught. Fast.

So, it’s tempting to put up a demagogue for Vice President, but it doesn’t take long for the reality to catch up with the story. It’s tempting to spin a tall tale about a piece of technology or a customer service policy, but once we see it in the wild, we talk about it and you whither away.

If your stories are inauthentic, you cross the line from fib to fraud. Marketers fail when they are selfish and scurrilous, when they abuse the tools of their trade and make the world worse. That’s a lesson learned the hard way by telemarketers, cigarette companies, and sleazy politicians.

 

Godin himself has said….

 

 

“I wasn’t being completely truthful with you when I named this book. Marketers aren’t liars. They are just storytellers… I was trying to go to the edges. No one would hate a book called All Marketers Are Storytellers. No one would disagree with it. No one would challenge me on it. No one would talk about it.”[1]

Godin is witty and his writing is compelling.

There is much to learn about marketing in All marketers are liars and subjects like framing,  the attention economy, cognitive dissonance, and adoption curves, and, of course, marketing mindset.

He set out to “go to the edges”, cause hate, instigate disagreement.  And perhaps he did.

The bottom line is that marketers were, and some continue to be, liars – to some extent.  Storytelling allows us to stop that, and yet remain effective.  As I wrote in this article , the brand story you tell is the brand you live, create, deliver.

 

 

 

Prepare to be blown away by the story, the message

 

This is a client story.

Not a testimonial,

a client story.

It is a classic hero’s journey – ordinary child, snatched into something he could not control, that challenged him almost beyond endurance, of a saviour/guru who took him out of the challenges and gave him the opportunity to create a different life.  It even includes the return – coming full circle, with the hero feeling he was able to go back and reassure his mother, knowing that she would be proud of him and happy to see that he was settled and successful.

It has a message – several in fact – but it IS an advertisement.

It IS marketing.

Western Sydney University made it possible for him to return, to complete the circle, to wipe out the horribly challenging life and to be proud of what he had achieved.

What do your clients want? – pride in achievement, overcoming the challenges faced now …?   What do they want to be able to do, have, be?

What is their story

… your “client story”?

THAT

is YOUR

marketing.

 

………………………………………………………………………..

If you would  like help with writing and using your client story, please contact me here

It’s the ONE STORY you really need to tell, to use, to unpack, to make your marketing work seamlessly and easily.

 

 

 

The story of a secret – your secret

Read more

Standing out in the deluge

Read more

“The Story is Everything”

Oscar award-winning actor and producer Kevin Spacey spoke to 2,600 marketers from 50 countries at Content Marketing World 2014, held September 8-11, 2014 in Cleveland, Ohio. Mr. Spacey broke down the elements of a story: conflict, authenticity and audience during his 60-minute presentation.

 

 

The conflict between what is and what could be and what is expected.

Stay true to your voice.  Stay true to your brand.

The device and the length are no longer relevant.

 

 

The story principles Nike uses will work for you too.

 

 

This is marketing.

And

it’s a story.

 

And there’s

one word

behind that marketing,

one word

behind that story …

“Grit”.

 

Yes it’s Nike.

Yes they probably pay their creative/advertising team huge wages.

 

But those two principles can be applied to all marketing, everywhere.

And you can apply them no matter what your marketing budget.

 

What is your product/client story?

What is the one word behind your story, behind your marketing, behind your brand?

 

After that it just remains for you to find places to tell that story.

Are you in control of your story online?

Who are you?

If someone wants to know who you are, they type your name into Google.

Before the meeting,  you have been googled.

Before the interview, you have been googled.

Before the pitch, you have been googled.

What is Google saying about you?

What did you give Google to say about you?

It’s an interesting exercise to Google oneself … interesting and sometimes surprising!!

Right there is a little window into how people might be seeing you.

That is the story people are seeing and reading about you – your personal brand story, your business brand story.

Did Google put it there?  No.  But Google chose which parts of it to put in front of searchers as the first thing they saw.

Did other people put it there?  Yes.  Your clients comment on your business and connect with you.  Your friends comment on you and connect with you.  You listed yourself on other websites, and commented or interacted there.

So to some extent, this is happening without you.

Consider, though …

You gave your clients something to comment on.  What was that?

You connected with them.  What impression did that give?

You gave your friends something to comment on.  What was that?

You connected with them.  What impression did that give?

You associated yourself with other websites.  What impression does that give?

Everything communicates.

My mother said to me often and often, “Put your words on the palm of your hand before you say them.”

She probably said that as I grew into a teenager with attitude, and not much thought for what I said, or what the consequences might be.

Everything communicates, especially words, but actions too.

So everything we do on the internet communicates something and it’s not always what we might expect.

Google, and the internet as a whole, gives us an unparalleled opportunity to communicate, to share and to build a brand, and there is nothing so challenging, nor so rewarding as to to watch that brand build and grow.

Enjoy!!