Why marketers should stop selling and start storytelling

Legendary adman John Wannamaker once said: “people buy things for two reasons, the right reason and the real reason.” The right reason is always rational and logical, while the real reason is always emotional.

If you’re a marketer looking to make a bigger impact, you need to stop thinking about creating advertising and start focusing on storytelling. Great storytelling establishes strong emotional connections. It transforms ideas and information into memorable experiences. And all great advertising is memorable for how it makes people feel.

The reason why so many ads are so bad is that most marketers develop advertising from a product-centric perspective. And since product-centric advertising promotes features and benefits, it usually leads to campaign messages that are overly rational and void of emotion.

Here are three simple steps that can help you shift your advertising focus from product-centric thinking to storytelling.

1. Identify the primary emotion driving consumer behavior in your product or service category. Is your audience driven to feel safe? Happy? Loved? Sexy? Energized? Etc.
2. Find your authentic1 voice. Examine the consumer purchase path and the actions that your brand takes to serve customers at each step of the decision making process. Your actions, along with the tone and manner in which they’re provided, define your authentic and true voice. This represents your brand’s emotional DNA.
3. Build your story one chapter at a time. Break down the ideas and messages you’re trying to communicate into singular topics. Create a “storytelling messaging map”2 to illustrate how your brand will emotionally communicate all key messaging points.   Then define the tactics across paid, earned and owned media which will work most effectively to convey the desired emotion and build content narratives to guide the story.

Great brand building isn’t about advertising, it’s about storytelling and creating an emotional experience that consumers enjoy, talk about, remember and act on.

To read more about the how emotions influence what we buy,check out this interesting article from Psychology Today.

1Be careful to avoid using aspirational language and words to define your brand voice that aren’t an accurate reflection of how people feel based on their actual experience with your products and services. There’s no room for disconnect when you’re trying to be authentic.

2A storytelling messaging map works very similar to a curriculum.  It spells out specific messages (lessons) that will help your audience emotionally connect and learn. It is different than a storyboard.  The messaging map defines the requirements and priorities for effective communication. A storyboard, or content narrative, represents the tactical approach to conveying a particular emotion and message point.