What’s in a story? Stories typically involve a character embarking on a journey in pursuit of a goal. Harry Potter went in search of the Philosopher’s Stone, Tony Montana pursued money and power, ET just wanted to return home. Along the way, characters must overcome various obstacles before a conclusive event decides whether they achieve their goal or their ambitions are thwarted.
For marketing teams looking to promote their brand, the storytelling arc is much the same. The same fundamental elements of stories in popular culture are also found in brand and business stories. The main characters are customers – businesses or consumers in search of a product or service to fulfil their goal. And the resolution is the sale – the product being purchased or a handshake in the boardroom at the conclusion of a deal.
For example, a company (the main character) may want to increase visibility in its supply chain (the goal), but is reluctant to invest in cloud software thanks to concerns about data migration and security (the obstacles). By creating a compelling story, a savvy B2B marketer at a cloud-software firm can help decision-makers at this company see past their reservations and, eventually, guide them to a sale.
Marketers have a lot to gain from using stories to engage with customers. Stories are up to 22 times more memorable than facts and figures alone, according to Dr Jennifer Aaker, a behavioural psychologist and professor at the Stanford Graduate School of Business. Plus, more than nine in 10 consumers (92%) prefer ads that feel like a story to those that don’t, according to a study by OneSpot.
The most effective stories are those that tap into universal truths – experiences an audience can relate to because they mirror their own lives
Moreover, studies have shown that reading and watching character-based stories can stimulate the release of oxytocin, the hormone that creates feelings of empathy. Storytelling therefore can be a powerful tactic for brands aiming to build trust with customers and influence their emotions, attitudes and purchasing decisions.
So how can companies execute stories that will resonate with their audience? Some clues can be found in the marketing and advertising efforts of brands that have sewn storytelling into their DNA.
In 1988, Nike’s first-ever ‘Just Do It’ advert told the story of 80-year-old Walt Stack. The 30-second video shows him wearing nothing but a pair of shorts and running trainers as he jogs over San Francisco’s Golden Gate Bridge with passing cars beeping in support. “I run 17 miles every morning,” he says. “People ask me how I keep my teeth from chattering in the winter time. I leave them in my locker.” The ad, which features minimal branding, ends with Nike’s now-iconic ‘Just Do It’ slogan.
In the months that followed Nike was inundated with letters and calls from elite athletes and ordinary Americans praising its portrayal of the tenacious octogenarian and inquiring about its products. It was a viral moment before the birth of the internet that helped to build the Nike brand. The reason for the ad’s success is now clear: skillful storytelling.
Stack, a relatable elderly man, was the main character in the story in pursuit of his daily 17-mile goal. His main obstacle was age, but his Nike trainers helped him to achieve his goal each day. The ad delivered a powerful message: if an 80-year-old man can keep fit, what’s stopping ordinary Americans?
The benefits of effective storytelling are widely recognised among marketing professionals, but many businesses still struggle to create a compelling story around their products and services. This is especially true in B2B marketing, which often lacks the flair and creativity of B2C campaigns.
But B2B marketing isn’t doomed to be dry. Business buyers are just as responsive to a well-crafted story as individual consumers. If B2B sellers are able to create a relatable, evocative story around their products and services, they are likely to see a boost to the bottom line. And that’s an ending that will always keep board members happy.
Case study: Boots x VMLY&R
Alexia Vasilarou, freelance creative director at Joandalexia.com
Our approach to storytelling for brands is focused on relatability. For us, the most effective stories are those that tap into universal truths – emotions and experiences an audience can relate to because they act as a mirror for their own lives. We want to speak to customers directly and have them really understand what we’re trying to say.
Those universal truths depend on the type of brand you’re working with. Sometimes your job as a marketer is to find the truth behind something as simple as chocolate. How does it make you feel? Why do you eat it? Is there a typical moment when you consume chocolate? But sometimes you have the opportunity to explore deeper, more meaningful truths.
My creative partner, Jo Ridley, and I were given such an opportunity while working on a campaign for Boots, after being hired by VMLY&R to work on a broader project.
Boots’s tagline is ‘With you, for life’ and our job was to find ways to bring that message to life across various campaigns. As we explored different areas of the brand, we saw an opportunity to talk about the menopause, an issue that receives little attention, which leaves many women feeling isolated or confused by their symptoms. At the time, there was a lot of discussion about women’s health, so we felt it was the right time to tell this story.
Menopause affects millions of women, but it’s poorly understood, even by those going through it. We recognised the gap in awareness and used it as the foundation for the campaign idea we pitched to Boots. We highlighted the universal truth that, because of the lack of dialogue around the subject, many women are unaware that what they’re going through are symptoms of the menopause.
Boots gave us the green light and we began by carrying out extensive research and gathering testimonials from women who had been through the menopause. There are 15.5 million perimenopausal and menopausal women in the UK and 90% of them struggle to identify their symptoms as menopausal. On average it takes 14 months to make the connection. As we gathered these stories, we realised that it was a deeply personal experience because the symptoms can vary dramatically from person to person.
We decided that print was the best medium to tell this story across multiple national publications, including OK!, New! and the Daily Express. In an age dominated by digital content, print can often cut through the noise in a way that other mediums cannot. We decided on a double-page spread format and I had the idea to draw attention to the confusion and lack of information on the menopause by explaining what the menopause is on the left-hand side, but including redacted text which would leave out crucial bits of information and leave people wanting to know more.
On the right-hand side of the spread we created a personal story about the menopause that was an amalgamation of the many stories and testimonials we read online. The aim of this was to reveal the personal, human experience of going through the menopause, highlighting its impact on womens’ daily lives and explaining why the symptoms can be so confusing. At the end of this account, we directed readers to the Boots Health Hub, where women can get access to products, services and advice.
The campaign is a great example of how storytelling, when done well, doesn’t just sell products or services, it also offers real value to people. Addressing a topic that affects so many women but is rarely discussed in the public realm, helped to enhance Boots’s brand image, but also enabled them to contribute to a much needed conversation about women’s health.
Case study: Tork x Publicis
Barret Helander, creative director at Publicis
Business storytelling is about connecting with people. If you can connect through emotion, you can take something that may not seem relatable at first and make it so on a very innate level. We can use emotion in storytelling to make you empathise with a group of people on the other side of the world, for instance, and realise that we’re all a lot more similar than you think.
Purpose has been at the heart of brand storytelling for some time now. Rather than just simply telling customers to buy a product, advertisers and marketers are keen to find a way to tell stories that show how their products are contributing to society, creating shared experiences and positive emotions that connect people.
One of the big traps we fall into in our industry is deciding the medium before the idea
But one of the big traps we fall into in our industry is deciding the medium before the idea. Often we’ll discuss broadly what the client wants to achieve and begin talking about the video assets they already have on YouTube or their website, for instance, before we even know what the idea is. Instead, we should agree on the idea and then discuss the best way to tell the story.
Tork’s Paper Towel Plea campaign is a great example of this. Tork is a hygiene supplies company and one of the world’s biggest brands. We’d been working with them for a while but we were struggling to come up with the right idea for their tagline, ‘Better hygiene, better business’. Tork sells many different products – hand sanitizer, paper towels, toilet paper, etc – so it was difficult to hone in on an idea that brought all of these elements together. In situations such as this we try to make it as simple as possible. We decided to select what we believe is their most iconic product – the paper towel – and then explore the most interesting story we could tell involving the product and the company.
After doing some research, we were amazed by how many people struggle to wash their hands each day because of various health conditions or disabilities. We then had this lightbulb moment: Tork’s paper towels are distributed to more businesses in the world than any other product, so the seemingly insignificant paper towel presented the perfect medium to tell this story and get the message in front of business leaders who have the power to change this.
Our strategists started finding people with barriers to washing their hands, such as contamination OCD triggered by dirty restrooms, eczema that is irritated by harsh soaps and gels and arthritis that can make it difficult to use facilities. We began filming them speaking about their conditions and the frustrations they face on a daily basis when using public restrooms. As they told their story, we showed them writing it down on a paper towel. These actual stories were then printed on Tork paper towels. We visited the company’s research and development facility in France to work with designers on putting this into action.
Since we launched the campaign, the response from Tork has been really positive. They’re discussing launching the exact same campaign in different countries, which shows the real business benefits of purpose-driven storytelling. They’re also keen to use this as a north star and figure out ways to tell other stories about how their business and products genuinely aid the lives of consumers all over the world.
