Marketing via storytelling

Photo by Suzy Hazelwood: https://www.pexels.com/photo/opened-white-book-1447273/

 

Mankind has been using storytelling to educate and motivate people from the earliest days of cave dwellers who would draw scenes inspired by their surroundings on the walls of their dwellings. They would often depict the animals they lived amongst, with many of the paintings showing groups of people indulging in hunting. These paintings told tales to the young, teaching them valuable lessons about what kind of life lay ahead for them. To a youngster looking at these paintings on the roof and walls of his or her cave in the flickering light of a log fire, the stories told by them would appear almost like watching a movie in a darkened cinema theatre.

As mankind evolved, so did its ability to tell emotive tales about legends, folklore, and religion to one another. The hold that such vivid imagery implanted in people's minds became unshakeable and this remains true to this day. Look at the world around us and you will see people going to war over religion and perceived historical wrongs imprinted on their minds, thanks to all the stories heard by them about these.

This happens because mankind is more emotional than rational. The reason for that is that humans are not really very different from other animals in that they react primarily on the basis of instinct, rather than any well-thought-out reasoned argument.  The only difference is that humans have a much better ability to communicate with each other and are able to very well articulate their hopes, fears and aspirations. This is something that they do best with the help of storytelling.

Savvy marketers know that the best way to connect with their target audience is on an emotional level rather than a factual one. This led to the rise of the advertising industry whose primary function was to emotionally connect a product to a potential customer by relating a story about it that resonated with the latter. Advertising worked fine for a very long time, but eventually, its magic wore thin with the intended target audience being put off by the slickness of the ads in question. They no longer related to the synthetic emotions associated with the brand.

The advent of the digital age and the age of social media which empowered the customers to engage in real time both with the brands and other consumers sounded the death knell of traditional advertising as one knew it. Instead, consumers shared their personal stories about their real-life experiences with the brands in question. This forced brands to invest in long-term, personal relations with their customers. The only way to do that was to exchange stories with them.

These needn’t necessarily only be about using the brand, but more about what’s going on in their lives and helping find what they are looking for or fulfilling their aspirations. The brand still exists, but more as a friend and an enabler than a product or service that needs to be sold. People are bored of artifice and crave genuineness. That is the reason why we see the movie industry in the doldrums. People would rather see YouTube videos of people like them doing stuff that interests them than watch the fake heroics and the dramatic scenarios that traditional cinema throws at them.

If you can get your customers invested in your brand through the tales you relate to them, you will not only make paying customers out of them but also loyal advocates of your brand. They will buy your brand not because you sold it to them, but because they bought it from you, as it is the natural thing for them to do.