In my previous article, I addressed the necessity of transitioning from Interruption Marketing to Story Centric Marketing. While I did present one approach to accomplish this transition, I would like to explore an alternative option. This alternative strategy can help you navigate potential pitfalls that may impede your success in Story Centric Marketing.
How to Use Story in Marketing: Previous Option
I proposed an option to use a service or product as the guide in a customer’s story. To rebalance their life with the product or service after their inciting incident, that knocked their life out of balance.
While this is one way of using story to market, there is a certain pitfall that this approach creates which can have adverse effects on your Story Centric Marketing success.
Option 1 Problems
What is this pitfall? Cliché.
We want to avoid it at all costs.
Why? Because cliché can hinder your ability to connect with your audience.
We want the viewer to get lost in the story, not become aware that they are looking at a screen.
The mind rejects pictures that are false and confusing, thus taking the viewer out of the moment and back into the position of sitting looking at a screen. [Location 122] Lighting for Cinematography by David Landau
How Does Option 1 Create Cliché?
Focusing on the advantages of a service or product and how it restores balance in a customer’s life can pose the risk of portraying a scenario that solely aligns with the product or service’s intended purpose.
Often, when you have a particular goal in mind, it leads to a predetermined path.
In the context of storytelling, when you have a specific outcome in mind, you’re more inclined to craft a scenario that ensures that desired outcome. This can result in a formulaic and predictable narrative, lacking depth, relatability and therefore lacking emotion.
If content is cliché, the telling will be cliché. But if your vision is deep and original, your story design will be unique. Conversely, if the telling is conventional and predictable, it will demand stereotypical roles to act out well-worn behaviors. [Location 157] Story by Robert McKee
How to Use Story in Marketing: Alternative
How do I propose to fix this problem, to avoid cliché?
Attribute Story Emotion to the Brand
We are emotional creatures. We purchase based on emotion. When we FEEL something towards a brand, we are more likely to be attracted by it and support it.
Emotional connection creates preference over the competition. Customers don’t just come back out of convenience. They see a difference between doing business with your company and other companies. [Link]
How to Attribute Emotion to a Brand
There is something called an “Open Mind Moment”. In a moment of insight or emotion, the viewer’s mind opens. Anything shown in that moment will be imprinted in the viewers mind.
[S]tory’s climax impacts the audience’s mind with a sudden rush of meaningful emotional insight, a flash of “I get it!” In this instant, a flood of charged understanding opens the mind. Neuroscientists have measured this open-mind phenomenon and found that it lasts for six to eight seconds. In this moment of wonder and pleasure, anything presented to the mind lodges in its memory. [Location 1378] Story by Robert McKee
So what am I trying to say?
Focus on telling powerful stories regardless of direct correlation to your brand’s offerings. Knowing why your brand exists creates a mold for the emotion you should shoot to create for your viewers. By keeping the focus on the story and its impact rather than self-promotion, you can ensure that the resulting emotional connection remains authentic and free from clichés.
This resulting emotion can then be attributed to a brand through credits, product placement/logo/tagline at open mind moments, etc.
When similar emotions surface in customers’ lives, they will recall your brand or seek to incorporate more of that emotion by inviting your brand into their lives.
Separate from Commodity Competition
Think about it. What are your other options to get customers, other than manipulation?
Competing as a commodity.
What’s the commodity competition?
Competition often revolves around offering better quality, lower prices, or a combination of both – a challenging pain to maintain. I’d say creating emotion with story is a more viable option.
By harnessing the emotions and feelings elicited by powerful stories, you can differentiate yourself and avoid being perceived as a mere replaceable commodity.
Story Tells Another Narrative
When you prioritize storytelling, you convey another valuable narrative.
You communicate to your customers you have a goal bigger than yourself, driven by the emotions you aim to create. This not only benefits business, it also benefits your own personal well-being.
[W]e had to teach the despairing men, that it did not really matter what we expected from life, but rather what life expected from us. [Location 998] Man’s Search for Meaning by
In Man’s Search for Meaning by , Frankl shows how the concentration camp prisoners that were able to survive did so through finding a meaning in their life. A purpose to their suffering.
Consider this eye opening moment from the book:
Once, an elderly general practitioner consulted me because of his severe depression. He could not overcome the loss of his wife who had died two years before and whom he had loved above all else. Now, how could I help him? What should I tell him? Well, I refrained from telling him anything but instead confronted him with the question, “What would have happened, Doctor, if you had died first, and your wife would have had to survive you?” “Oh,” he said, “for her this would have been terrible; how she would have suffered!” Whereupon I replied, “You see, Doctor, such a suffering has been spared her, and it was you who have spared her this suffering—to be sure, at the price that now you have to survive and mourn her.” He said no word but shook my hand and calmly left my office. In some way, suffering ceases to be suffering at the moment it finds a meaning, such as the meaning of a sacrifice. [Location 1384] Man’s Search for Meaning by
This perspective shift shows how meaning can change one’s outlook on life.
Show your customers you aren’t interested in their money, looking for way to squeeze them of it. Show them you simply need it to make a living and pursue what you want accomplished in the world.
Bless Others with What You Were Blessed With
I spent a lot of time trying to find my way through freelance work, not making enough money to support myself. Granted I was dealing with personal problems but one thing I can say about having a purpose is that it pushed me through those difficult times.
Because I wasn’t in it for the money but a pursuit of my meaning in life, I was able to risk ‘good opportunities’ in pursuit of the great ones.
It has paid dividends. I am doing what I never thought I’d want to do and I love every minute of it.
What is my meaning and purpose in life?
What is my meaning in life? To give others what I was blessed with.
What was I blessed with? A neurological disorder.
Yep. I found out I’ve been tired my whole life without knowing it. It took years to relearn how to think, operate, etc. Massively disorienting at a point in life when I “should have already had those things figured out”.
Yet, I was woken up to life. I would have never known how beautiful life is without that blessing.
That experience changed my life. It was so powerful that all I want to do is bless other people in a similar way.
I think we all are asleep in different ways. Therefore, I want to help wake others up to life.
Authenticity = Loyalty
The benefit of avoiding cliché is that it maintains authenticity.
If you rely on using your service or product as the guide in your customers’ story, you have to be careful of cliché.
We are all very good at gauging authenticity. Cliché is the death of authenticity and without authenticity, there will be no loyalty. You will have to rely on commodity competition and manipulation.
To focus on your mission and to tell beautifully powerful stories that pursue that mission, cliché will be nowhere to be found. Authenticity will be the only outcome.
Not to mention, accomplishing the deep seeded purpose you were destined to accomplish is a nice cherry on top.
Allow Yourself to Seep Out
Go out there and find what you were destined to accomplish, tell stories that share its impact, allow it to create emotion and loyalty will result.
Allow yourself to seep out. Open yourself up and let who you were destined to be shine. Your new customers and the new you will thank you.
Don’t be afraid to show your flaws. Imperfections are real and people respond to real. It’s why we like real flowers that wilt, not perfect plastic ones that never change. Don’t worry about how you’re supposed to sound and how you’re supposed to act. Show the world what you’re really like, warts and all. [Location 1113] Rework by Jason Fried and David Heinemeier Hansson
Wake Up
Part of what I was destined to do is help others realize what they were destined to do. If you need help, you know where to find me.
