The consumer shift to ad-free media will only accelerate, and so the brand shift to story-driven models must fast-track with them… or die. [Location 2507] Storynomics by Robert McKee and Thomas Gerace
You’re In My Way
We are out here trying to enjoy our time watching TV, watching a YouTube video, freakin’ just driving down the road! It’s everywhere!
What is? Advertisements. Marketing. Annoying, yet rarely noticed, interruption marketing.
Then How Should You Market?
Stepping into a marketer’s shoes, you can see how hard it can be to market without being tempted to shove it in people’s faces.
Well, I think there is a better way to go about making people aware of what you do.
What the hell are you talking about, Frank?
Let me explain.
We Pay to Not See Ads
First, we need to take a look at where the marketing trend is moving.
Look at all the streaming services, the subscriptions people pay for. Why are they paying for them? Sure, they get more out of the service but also they don’t have to deal with ads!
People pay for those suckers to disappear. Crazy right? Not really.
As a business owner or marketer, you need to make money to keep the lights on to continue to do what you do. So what should you do?
As consumers block, ignore and pay to avoid advertisements, marketers must scramble to find a new way to reach their customers. Brands that fail to connect will surrender to challenger brands that discover the secret. [Location 271] Storynomics by Robert McKee and Thomas Gerace
What to Do
Marketing needs to find a new way to get through to their audience because viewers are doing a lot to avoid it.
There is one thing that I think is being ignored when it comes to marketing. The simple question of, ‘what is the most efficient way to communicate’ often seems ignored.
Well, what is the most effective form of communication? Story.
Storified communication is the most powerful form of messaging because story fits the mind; story fits the mind because the mind converts actuality into story in the first place. [Location 543] Storynomics by Robert McKee and Thomas Gerace
Take Advantage of Human Biology
Conserve Calories
Our brain is built to help us survive, to help us make it to next year, next month, the next minute! Our brain is concerned with conserving calories because calories mean survival.
the burning of too many calories acts against the brain’s primary job: to help us survive and thrive.” [Location 344] Building a StoryBrand by Donald Miller
How does our brain conserve calories? Well, it ignores everything it doesn’t need by seeking out patterns. We take in so much information everyday that our brain needs a way to know what to remember and what it can forget because it can’t remember everything.
Throughout the day, the body absorbs millions of bits of raw, sensory stimuli. … It ignores 99 percent of all data and concentrates on the 1 percent that grabs attention. [Location 464] Storynomics by Robert McKee and Thomas Gerace
Easily Digestible
So why is story the most efficient way to work with human biology? Because the brain is worried about saving calories and when the information is packaged in a story, it is easily digestible.
Story helps because it is a sense-making mechanism. Essentially, story formulas put everything in order so the brain doesn’t have to work to understand what’s going on.” [Location 314] Building a StoryBrand by Donald Miller
We Enjoy It
Not to mention, story is something that we enjoy and are drawn to because of the lessons we learn from them. We are able to vicariously live through the characters and learn from their mistakes without having to go through the experiences that brought the lessons.
We go to the movies to enter a new, fascinating world, to inhabit vicariously another human being who at first seems so unlike us and yet at heart is like us, to live in a fictional reality that illuminates our daily reality. We do not wish to escape life but to find life, to use our minds in fresh, experimental ways, to flex our emotions, to enjoy, to learn, to add depth to our days. [Location 96] Story by Robert McKee
Help Them Survive and Thrive or Else
There is something called the Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs, where a psychologist formed a pyramid that shows and explains our primal needs that our body naturally is built to fulfill. Things like food and water, relationships, meaning, etc. These things are what our body is built naturally to desire and will do what it needs to get it.
That being said, when we show something to our audience that doesn’t speak to these primal instincts, they have no reason to pay attention. We are in a constant, whether we know it or not, awareness to gauge what is important and what isn’t.
without us knowing it, human beings are constantly scanning their environment (even advertising) for information that is going to help them meet their primitive need to survive. [Location 319] Building a StoryBrand by Donald Miller
Help your potential customers survive and thrive or their brain will tune you out without them even knowing.
Side note for you side note people out there. This understanding of human biology can be used as a form of manipulation but as I discuss later in this article, manipulation not only hurts your customers but maybe more so, you. These things should be used to take something that you know your customers need because of the beauties it can bring to their lives and simply getting them to see how it can change their lives.
Marketing Entertainment
There is a book called Building a StoryBrand by Donald Miller where the idea is, “What if the marketing is the entertainment.” People flock to stories all the time. What if those stories bring clarity to your offerings?
Mmmmhm… What an idea…
What would that look like? Well, I’m glad you asked.
I Like Hearing Stories About Me
As the viewer, we hate hearing about something we can’t relate to. Something that our brain tunes out automatically in an attempt to help us survive.
“Our company was founded in 1406. We are a family run business striving to bring you the best quality … blah blah blah”
No one wants to hear that. What people want to hear are stories that they can relate to. Stories they can learn from in order to survive and thrive, give them hope, inspire them, etc.
Customer is the Hero, Not You
Because people want to hear stories they can relate to, the stories you tell should be about the customer and not you, as hard as that can be sometimes.
The customer should be the hero of the story because otherwise, your audience’s brain will tune you out.
All stories start out with a character living another day in their world, when all of a sudden, an inciting incident occurs and throws their life out of balance. The rest of the story is them trying to regain balance in their life.
How can your offering help your customer regain balance in their life?
That’s where you come in. Yoda you are. You are the guide in their story.
Star Wars is not about Yoda, yet Luke wouldn’t have got where he needed to go without Yoda. That’s how you must position your company. As the solution to your customers conscious or even unconscious desires.
This process of taking your customer and creating a story, whether scripted or documentary, and showing how your product gets them to where they want to go, is called Story Centric Marketing. It’s designed to work with biology and avoid the marketing trends. Interruption Marketing is slowly but surely dying and if you don’t make that MARKETING SHIFT, your company may DIE.
Stop Manipulating, You’re Hurting Yourself
Using story is not only the best way to get information to your potential customers, it is also a way to help avoid the vicious cycle of manipulation tactics that plague the business world.
Buy 1 Get 1 Free, is nothing more than an incentive to buy a product that you otherwise wouldn’t purchase. This is the world of commodities.
Commodities must differentiate themselves by features, price, etc which is not an easy ask to stay on top of. Once you start manipulating, you set a standard that must be upheld, which means more manipulation. VICIOUS CYCLE!
Manipulative techniques have become such a mainstay in American business today that it has become virtually impossible for some to kick the habit. Like any addiction, the drive is not to get sober, but to find the next fix faster and more frequently. [Location 444] Start with Why by Simon Sinek
Here’s where things change though. When you stand on the solid foundation of creating clarity through emotion and feeling, those feature and price competitions melt away because you can’t fake authenticity. Others can’t compete with your stories, they just have to come up with their own.
Create Loyalty with Story
loyalty is when people are willing to suffer some inconvenience or pay a premium to do business with you. They may even turn down a better offer from someone else… [Location 1716] Start with Why by Simon Sinek
Creating loyalty is built off of emotion. It’s built off of a feeling. It’s built off of a relatability and all of those things are found in story.
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. Forbes
Use story to bring a feeling and emotion to your brand. When people think of your brand, they will think of the feelings they felt that the story delivered to them.
There’s something called an Open Mind Moment. It’s where there’s a climax of feeling. By placing a brand in that moment, the viewer associates that feeling to the brand.
Claudio faces a critical decision: hop over a gap in the track and shave critical seconds off his time or take a safer, slower route. With a leap, Claudio risks his life and a rush of white-knuckled excitement runs through us, followed by relief as he lands on solid ground. In that open-mind moment, the Red Bull brand appears on screen connecting its image with the charge you just felt. [Location 1648] Storynomics by Robert McKee and Thomas Gerace
Using story to create a feeling for the viewer is the foundation to creating loyalty and where loyalty exists, manipulation dies.
Therefore, tell stories for the sake of not only your customer’s sanity but also your own.
