Every action that is performed by a business has an underlying narrative, whether those actions be related to the brand, customers, advocates, employees, or stakeholders.
Storytelling is a process where a narrative is created to allow a business to share its values, experiences, and history with the desired target audience. A connection is formed with the business when the audience can relate to some aspect of the business’s story in a way that is personal, emotional, and meaningful.
Businesses use these connections to foster brand loyalty among consumers, among many other applications. To get an appreciation for the power of storytelling in business, consider the following examples.
The Formula One World Championship is to most people a simple story about winners and losers. However, marketers realized that this story was too familiar and failed to engage fans beyond the race itself.
To broaden the appeal of the sport, a Netflix documentary series was released with behind-the-scenes footage of the interactions between various drivers, teams, and the FIA throughout a season. The series, which was titled Drive to Survive, was praised for its ability to give context to storylines that were often formed while the competitors were not racing.
This series was also a hit with viewers. According to data released by ESPN, viewership for the 2021 season was 53% higher than it was for 2020.
Patagonia
Patagonia is an American clothing retailer founded by climbing enthusiast Yvon Chouinard in 1973 who saw initial success by selling reusable climbing pitons and Scottish rugby shirts. Over time Patagonia also became a fashionable brand also for its focus on slow fashion. Indeed, the company sells high-priced clothing items built to last which it will repair for free.
Outdoor adventure brand Patagonia is also a master storyteller. The audacious “Don’t Buy This Jacket” campaign saw the company encouraging its customers not to buy Patagonia products unless they really needed to replace an old item.
Six years after that campaign was released, the company announced it would be suing Donald Trump after he reduced the size of public land in Utah by almost 2 million acres.
Both initiatives invited consumers with similar values to become part of the Patagonia story as a brand that advocates environmentalism, sustainability, and anti-consumerism.
TD Bank
Canadian financial institution TD Bank released a content hub called TD Stories, where employee stories are skillfully tied to the company’s mission.
During November, the hub features the stories of employees with a military background to recognize National Veterans and Military Families Month. These stories are aligned with the company’s mission to build communities where active and former military personnel can share their experiences, advance their careers, and promote awareness of veteran matters to colleagues and customers.
Rather than use storytelling to pitch to sales executives or the end-user, TD Bank collaborated with employees in customer-facing roles so consumers could relate to the company they do business in a meaningful way.
To promote its products, the company shares the stories of brand ambassadors on its blog. In one such story, ambassador Ben O’Meara wore Huckberry’s “72-Hour Merino Tee” for exactly 72 hours as he traveled across the Canadian wilderness by car and canoe.
O’ Meara camped in the beautiful Canadian wilderness and spent his time making photographs punctuated with visits to different breweries. This was the sort of vacation that is extremely attractive to Huckberry’s core audience of adventure lovers. While the company likely sold a fair few merino shirts as a result of the initiative, perhaps the greater value came from the opportunity to strengthen the relationship with its community through stories underpinned by shared values and experiences.
Airbnb
Strategy: Humanizing the brand through host and guest stories.
Execution: Airbnb launched a series of campaigns featuring real stories from hosts and guests around the world, sharing their experiences, the connections they made, and the communities they became part of thanks to Airbnb. This approach highlighted the unique experiences and personal touches that staying in an Airbnb can offer, contrasting sharply with the impersonal nature of traditional hotels.
Outcome: These stories helped to position Airbnb as more than just a lodging option; they showcased the brand as a gateway to authentic travel experiences, fostering a sense of belonging among its users. The company successfully cultivated a community of loyal users who not only prefer Airbnb for their travel accommodations but also advocate for the brand.
Dove
Strategy: Promoting real beauty and self-esteem among women.
Execution: Dove’s “Real Beauty” campaign utilized storytelling to challenge the traditional beauty standards propagated by the beauty industry. By featuring women of various ages, sizes, and ethnic backgrounds, Dove told stories that many women could see themselves in, promoting the idea that beauty comes in all forms.
Outcome: The campaign resonated deeply with women worldwide, significantly improving Dove’s brand perception and loyalty. It also sparked conversations about beauty standards and self-esteem issues, positioning Dove as a brand that cares about the well-being of its customers beyond just selling beauty products.
Spotify
Strategy: Personalizing the listening experience through data-driven stories.
Execution: Spotify’s “Wrapped” campaign provides users with personalized summaries of their listening habits over the year, including favorite artists, songs, and genres. These summaries are presented in a visually engaging and shareable format, encouraging users to share their music stories on social media.
Outcome: The “Wrapped” campaign has become an annual tradition eagerly anticipated by Spotify users. It not only strengthens the bond between Spotify and its users by personalizing their experience but also serves as a powerful marketing tool as users share their “Wrapped” summaries, effectively promoting Spotify to potential new users.
Warby Parker
Strategy: Reinventing the eyewear buying experience.
Execution: Warby Parker’s narrative centers around solving the problem of expensive eyewear by offering stylish, affordable glasses through a direct-to-consumer model. Their story includes a home try-on program, where customers can select five frames to try at home for free, creating a personalized and hassle-free shopping experience.
Outcome: This customer-centric approach and the story of challenging the traditional eyewear industry have helped Warby Parker build a strong, loyal customer base. The brand is perceived not just as an eyewear company but as an innovator that puts customer needs and experiences first.
Key takeaways:
Every action performed by a business has an underlying narrative, whether those actions be related to the brand, customers, advocates, employees, or stakeholders.
Formula 1 released a behind-the-scenes documentary series after it realized the winner and loser narrative in each race was tired and one-dimensional. The series gave more context to the stories behind the sport, which increased engagement and viewership.
Patagonia tells brand stories that appear to be counterintuitive to making a profit. However, it uses storytelling to attract consumers who share its strict environmental stance. TD Bank and Huckberry also used storytelling to align with their respective military and adventure-driven missions.
Key Highlights
Underlying Narrative: Every action taken by a business contributes to an underlying narrative, whether it’s related to the brand, customers, advocates, employees, or stakeholders.
Storytelling and Connection: Storytelling is a process that allows a business to share its values, experiences, and history with its target audience. When the audience can relate to the business’s story on a personal, emotional, and meaningful level, a strong connection is formed between the business and its audience.
Formula 1: Formula One, a racing championship, recognized that the simple winner-and-loser narrative was becoming tired and one-dimensional. To engage fans beyond the race itself, they created a Netflix documentary series called “Drive to Survive.” This series provided behind-the-scenes footage and context to the stories behind the sport, leading to increased engagement and viewership.
Patagonia: Outdoor adventure brand Patagonia is known for its storytelling prowess. They initiated the “Don’t Buy This Jacket” campaign, encouraging customers to buy only what they truly needed. Additionally, they took a bold stance on environmentalism and sustainability, even suing Donald Trump over land conservation. These initiatives attracted consumers who shared the brand’s values and beliefs.
TD Bank: Canadian financial institution TD Bank created a content hub called “TD Stories,” where employee stories were linked to the company’s mission. They highlighted employees with a military background during National Veterans and Military Families Month, aligning with their commitment to building communities for military personnel. This approach made consumers relate to the company on a deeper level.
Huckberry: eCommerce company Huckberry, selling outdoor gear, built a community of over 1 million active and adventurous consumers. They shared brand ambassador stories on their blog, such as one ambassador’s journey across the Canadian wilderness wearing a specific product. These stories helped strengthen the relationship with their community by sharing values and experiences.
Narrative Matters: Every action has a story behind it. Businesses can leverage these narratives to engage customers and stakeholders on a deeper level.
Context and Engagement: Providing context and behind-the-scenes insights can revitalize tired narratives, leading to increased engagement.
Shared Values: Storytelling can attract consumers who share the brand’s values and beliefs, fostering stronger connections.
Unconventional Approaches: Sometimes, campaigns that seem counterintuitive to profit can resonate deeply with consumers, especially when they align with the brand’s principles.
Community Building: Sharing stories aligned with the company’s mission can help build a sense of community and resonate with specific target audiences.
Account-based marketing (ABM) is a strategy where the marketing and sales departments come together to create personalized buying experiences for high-value accounts. Account-based marketing is a business-to-business (B2B) approach in which marketing and sales teams work together to target high-value accounts and turn them into customers.
Ad Ops – also known as Digital Ad Operations – refers to systems and processes that support digital advertisements’ delivery and management. The concept describes any process that helps a marketing team manage, run, or optimize ad campaigns, making them an integrating part of the business operations.
Venture capitalist, Dave McClure, coined the acronym AARRR which is a simplified model that enables to understand what metrics and channels to look at, at each stage for the users’ path toward becoming customers and referrers of a brand.
Affinity marketing involves a partnership between two or more businesses to sell more products. Note that this is a mutually beneficial arrangement where one brand can extend its reach and enhance its credibility in association with the other.
As the name suggests, ambush marketing raises awareness for brands at events in a covert and unexpected fashion. Ambush marketing takes many forms, one common element, the brand advertising their products or services has not paid for the right to do so. Thus, the business doing the ambushing attempts to capitalize on the efforts made by the business sponsoring the event.
Affiliate marketing describes the process whereby an affiliate earns a commission for selling the products of another person or company. Here, the affiliate is simply an individual who is motivated to promote a particular product through incentivization. The business whose product is being promoted will gain in terms of sales and marketing from affiliates.
The bullseye framework is a simple method that enables you to prioritize the marketing channels that will make your company gain traction. The main logic of the bullseye framework is to find the marketing channels that work and prioritize them.
Brand building is the set of activities that help companies to build an identity that can be recognized by its audience. Thus, it works as a mechanism of identification through core values that signal trust and that help build long-term relationships between the brand and its key stakeholders.
According to inbound marketing platform HubSpot, brand dilution occurs “when a company’s brand equity diminishes due to an unsuccessful brand extension, which is a new product the company develops in an industry that they don’t have any market share in.” Brand dilution, therefore, occurs when a brand decreases in value after the company releases a product that does not align with its vision, mission, or skillset.
The brand essence wheel is a templated approach businesses can use to better understand their brand. The brand essence wheel has obvious implications for external brand strategy. However, it is equally important in simplifying brand strategy for employees without a strong marketing background. Although many variations of the brand essence wheel exist, a comprehensive wheel incorporates information from five categories: attributes, benefits, values, personality, brand essence.
The brand equity is the premium that a customer is willing to pay for a product that has all the objective characteristics of existing alternatives, thus, making it different in terms of perception. The premium on seemingly equal products and quality is attributable to its brand equity.
Brand positioning is about creating a mental real estate in the mind of the target market. If successful, brand positioning allows a business to gain a competitive advantage. And it also works as a switching cost in favor of the brand. Consumers recognizing a brand might be less prone to switch to another brand.
Business storytelling is a critical part of developing a business model. Indeed, the way you frame the story of your organization will influence its brand in the long-term. That’s because your brand story is tied to your brand identity, and it enables people to identify with a company.
Content marketing is one of the most powerful commercial activities which focuses on leveraging content production (text, audio, video, or other formats) to attract a targeted audience. Content marketing focuses on building a strong brand, but also to convert part of that targeted audience into potential customers.
One of the first mentions of customer lifetime value was in the 1988 book Database Marketing: Strategy and Implementation written by Robert Shaw and Merlin Stone. Customer lifetime value (CLV) represents the value of a customer to a company over a period of time. It represents a critical business metric, especially for SaaS or recurring revenue-based businesses.
Customer segmentation is a marketing method that divides the customers in sub-groups, that share similar characteristics. Thus, product, marketing and engineering teams can center the strategy from go-to-market to product development and communication around each sub-group. Customer segments can be broken down is several ways, such as demographics, geography, psychographics and more.
Developer marketing encompasses tactics designed to grow awareness and adopt software tools, solutions, and SaaS platforms. Developer marketing has become the standard among software companies with a platform component, where developers can build applications on top of the core software or open software. Therefore, engaging developer communities has become a key element of marketing for many digital businesses.
A digital channel is a marketing channel, part of a distribution strategy, helping an organization to reach its potential customers via electronic means. There are several digital marketing channels, usually divided into organic and paid channels. Some organic channels are SEO, SMO, email marketing. And some paid channels comprise SEM, SMM, and display advertising.
Field marketing is a general term that encompasses face-to-face marketing activities carried out in the field. These activities may include street promotions, conferences, sales, and various forms of experiential marketing. Field marketing, therefore, refers to any marketing activity that is performed in the field.
interaction with a brand until they become a paid customer and beyond.
Funnel marketing is modeled after the marketing funnel, a concept that tells the company how it should market to consumers based on their position in the funnel itself. The notion of a customer embarking on a journey when interacting with a brand was first proposed by Elias St. Elmo Lewis in 1898.
Funnel marketing typically considers three stages of a non-linear marketing funnel. These are top of the funnel (TOFU), middle of the funnel (MOFU), and bottom of the funnel (BOFU). Particular marketing strategies at each stage are adapted to the level of familiarity the consumer has with a brand.
A go-to-market strategy represents how companies market their new products to reach target customers in a scalable and repeatable way. It starts with how new products/services get developed to how these organizations target potential customers (via sales and marketing models) to enable their value proposition to be delivered to create a competitive advantage.
The term “greenwashing” was first coined by environmentalist Jay Westerveld in 1986 at a time when most consumers received their news from television, radio, and print media. Some companies took advantage of limited public access to information by portraying themselves as environmental stewards – even when their actions proved otherwise. Greenwashing is a deceptive marketing practice where a company makes unsubstantiated claims about an environmentally-friendly product or service.
Grassroots marketing involves a brand creating highly targeted content for a particular niche or audience. When an organization engages in grassroots marketing, it focuses on a small group of people with the hope that its marketing message is shared with a progressively larger audience.
Growth marketing is a process of rapid experimentation, which in a way has to be “scientific” by keeping in mind that it is used by startups to grow, quickly. Thus, the “scientific” here is not meant in the academic sense. Growth marketing is expected to unlock growth, quickly and with an often limited budget.
Guerrilla marketing is an advertising strategy that seeks to utilize low-cost and sometimes unconventional tactics that are high impact. First coined by Jay Conrad Levinson in his 1984 book of the same title, guerrilla marketing works best on existing customers who are familiar with a brand or product and its particular characteristics.
Hunger marketing is a marketing strategy focused on manipulating consumer emotions. By bringing products to market with an attractive price point and restricted supply, consumers have a stronger desire to make a purchase.
Integrated marketing communication (IMC) is an approach used by businesses to coordinate and brand their communication strategies. Integrated marketing communication takes separate marketing functions and combines them into one, interconnected approach with a core brand message that is consistent across various channels. These encompass owned, earned, and paid media. Integrated marketing communication has been used to great effect by companies such as Snapchat, Snickers, and Domino’s.
Inbound marketing is a marketing strategy designed to attract customers to a brand with content and experiences that they derive value from. Inbound marketing utilizes blogs, events, SEO, and social media to create brand awareness and attract targeted consumers. By attracting or “drawing in” a targeted audience, inbound marketing differs from outbound marketing which actively pushes a brand onto consumers who may have no interest in what is being offered.
Integrated marketing describes the process of delivering consistent and relevant content to a target audience across all marketing channels. It is a cohesive, unified, and immersive marketing strategy that is cost-effective and relies on brand identity and storytelling to amplify the brand to a wider and wider audience.
The marketing mix is a term to describe the multi-faceted approach to a complete and effective marketing plan. Traditionally, this plan included the four Ps of marketing: price, product, promotion, and place. But the exact makeup of a marketing mix has undergone various changes in response to new technologies and ways of thinking. Additions to the four Ps include physical evidence, people, process, and even politics.
Marketing myopia is the nearsighted focus on selling goods and services at the expense of consumer needs. Marketing myopia was coined by Harvard Business School professor Theodore Levitt in 1960. Originally, Levitt described the concept in the context of organizations in high-growth industries that become complacent in their belief that such industries never fail.
Marketing personas give businesses a general overview of key segments of their target audience and how these segments interact with their brand. Marketing personas are based on the data of an ideal, fictional customer whose characteristics, needs, and motivations are representative of a broader market segment.
Meme marketing is any marketing strategy that uses memes to promote a brand. The term “meme” itself was popularized by author Richard Dawkins over 50 years later in his 1976 book The Selfish Gene. In the book, Dawkins described how ideas evolved and were shared across different cultures. The internet has enabled this exchange to occur at an exponential rate, with the first modern memes emerging in the late 1990s and early 2000s.
Microtargeting is a marketing strategy that utilizes consumer demographic data to identify the interests of a very specific group of individuals. Like most marketing strategies, the goal of microtargeting is to positively influence consumer behavior.
Multichannel marketing executes a marketing strategy across multiple platforms to reach as many consumers as possible. Here, a platform may refer to product packaging, word-of-mouth advertising, mobile apps, email, websites, or promotional events, and all the other channels that can help amplify the brand to reach as many consumers as possible.
Multi-level marketing (MLM), otherwise known as network or referral marketing, is a strategy in which businesses sell their products through person-to-person sales. When consumers join MLM programs, they act as distributors. Distributors make money by selling the product directly to other consumers. They earn a small percentage of sales from those that they recruit to do the same – often referred to as their “downline”.
The Net Promoter Score (NPS) is a measure of the ability of a product or service to attract word-of-mouth advertising. NPS is a crucial part of any marketing strategy since attracting and then retaining customers means they are more likely to recommend a business to others.
Neuromarketing information is collected by measuring brain activity related to specific brain functions using sophisticated and expensive technology such as MRI machines. Some businesses also choose to make inferences of neurological responses by analyzing biometric and heart-rate data.
Neuromarketing is the domain of large companies with similarly large budgets or subsidies. These include Frito-Lay, Google, and The Weather Channel.
Newsjacking as a marketing strategy was popularised by David Meerman Scott in his book Newsjacking: How to Inject Your Ideas into a Breaking News Story and Generate Tons of Media Coverage. Newsjacking describes the practice of aligning a brand with a current event to generate media attention and increase brand exposure.
A microniche is a subset of potential customers within a niche. In the era of dominating digital super-platforms, identifying a microniche can kick off the strategy of digital businesses to prevent competition against large platforms. As the microniche becomes a niche, then a market, scale becomes an option.
We can define pull and push marketing from the perspective of the target audience or customers. In push marketing, as the name suggests, you’re promoting a product so that consumers can see it. In a pull strategy, consumers might look for your product or service drawn by its brand.
Real-time marketing is as exactly as it sounds. It involves in-the-moment marketing to customers across any channel based on how that customer is interacting with the brand.
Relationship marketing involves businesses and their brands forming long-term relationships with customers. The focus of relationship marketing is to increase customer loyalty and engagement through high-quality products and services. It differs from short-term processes focused solely on customer acquisition and individual sales.
Reverse marketing describes any marketing strategy that encourages consumers to seek out a product or company on their own. This approach differs from a traditional marketing strategy where marketers seek out the consumer.
Remarketing involves the creation of personalized and targeted ads for consumers who have already visited a company’s website. The process works in this way: as users visit a brand’s website, they are tagged with cookies that follow the users, and as they land on advertising platforms where retargeting is an option (like social media platforms) they get served ads based on their navigation.
Sensory marketing describes any marketing campaign designed to appeal to the five human senses of touch, taste, smell, sight, and sound. Technologies such as artificial intelligence, virtual reality, and the Internet of Things (IoT) are enabling marketers to design fun, interactive, and immersive sensory marketing brand experiences. Long term, businesses must develop sensory marketing campaigns that are relevant and effective in eCommerce.
Services marketing originated as a separate field of study during the 1980s. Researchers realized that the unique characteristics of services required different marketing strategies to those used in the promotion of physical goods. Services marketing is a specialized branch of marketing that promotes the intangible benefits delivered by a company to create customer value.
Sustainable marketing describes how a business will invest in social and environmental initiatives as part of its marketing strategy. Also known as green marketing, it is often used to counteract public criticism around wastage, misleading advertising, and poor quality or unsafe products.
Word-of-mouth marketing is a marketing strategy skewed toward offering a great experience to existing customers and incentivizing them to share it with other potential customers. That is one of the most effective forms of marketing as it enables a company to gain traction based on existing customers’ referrals. When repeat customers become a key enabler for the brand this is one of the best organic and sustainable growth marketing strategies.
360 marketing is a marketing campaign that utilizes all available mediums, channels, and consumer touchpoints. 360 marketing requires the business to maintain a consistent presence across multiple online and offline channels. This ensures it does not miss potentially lucrative customer segments. By its very nature, 360 marketing describes any number of different marketing strategies. However, a broad and holistic marketing strategy should incorporate a website, SEO, PPC, email marketing, social media, public relations, in-store relations, and traditional forms of advertising such as television.
Gennaro is the creator of FourWeekMBA, which reached about four million business people, comprising C-level executives, investors, analysts, product managers, and aspiring digital entrepreneurs in 2022 alone | He is also Director of Sales for a high-tech scaleup in the AI Industry | In 2012, Gennaro earned an International MBA with emphasis on Corporate Finance and Business Strategy.
