Better Brand Engagement Through Creative Storytelling

The path to better consumer engagement lies in making the customer the hero of the story

Suddenly, everyone is a storyteller. As if stories haven’t been at the heart of human culture since the dawn of time. It’s easy sometimes to become enamored with all our technological advances and arrogantly believe we have transcended our primitive roots. We can ignore the stories now and get right to the details. Forget the narrative and show them the goods. The thing is, that’s rarely the case. Eventually, we come back down to earth and realize that it’s all storytelling in the end.

The biggest obstacle facing most brands today is the ability to reach potential and existing customers and then engage with them in some sort of meaningful way. The media landscape has become so fractured, and the sheer amount of content so overwhelming, that it can be difficult to simply find your customer, let alone break through the endless clutter to engage with them.

Many of our legacy outlets, such as television, radio, out-of-home, magazines, or newspapers, are no longer effective for all but the largest brands, and in many markets, they have become cost-prohibitive. Between ad-free streaming services and the internet at large, many of our most sought-after targets are paying for the privilege of tuning us out. Digital advertising and social media are the go-to for most brands, but space and time are limited, while the amount of content is mind-boggling, making it difficult to garner any meaningful attention. How much can you really get across in a few seconds over a few square inches? It’s a challenge.

There is a lot of discussion about metrics these days. All manner of handwringing and complex analysis over search optimization, image/copy testing, and omnichannel market distribution, not to mention the incomprehensible and delusional AI component.

Not nearly enough attention is being paid to developing stories that will resonate emotionally and have the ability to compel your customers to engage. We can measure every element of a consumer’s exposure except how they felt about your message and what behavior it elicited, if any. We know, or at least believe, that people saw it, but we don’t know if they cared one way or another about what they saw.

If you’re selling widgets and someone clicks through and completes the purchase, that’s pretty clear evidence that your ad was successful. But with most service businesses, it’s never quite so simple, as there are so many moving parts and no clear evidence that Ad A had any influence on Action Z. Everyone agrees that it’s important to have a presence on whatever platform you think your customers are on, and brand awareness plays no small part in your success, but you need engagement, not just eyeballs.

The Power Of Story

According to decades of research, we engage a significantly larger portion of our brains when listening to or reading a story versus being fed a list of features and benefits. Humans have been telling stories to explain the world we live in since we were sitting around the fire, struggling to make sense of the universe. It’s not much different today, although the special effects have improved quite a bit.

In traditional story structure, there is a hero who must overcome an obstacle, sometimes with the help of a guide, and then they are transformed in the end. There are endless permutations to this, but the basic structure remains the same. A good story requires tension and release, struggle and achievement.

One of the main problems we see when it comes to brands engaging with their customer is that the brands too often consider themselves to be the hero of the story. It’s their ad, after all. It’s their message, their money. Even if it’s a consumer-centric ad, the brand too often makes the mistake of believing it is the one saving the consumer. They are the hero, and the customer is merely the beneficiary.

Unfortunately, they have it backward.

The customer is always going to be the hero of their own epic tale. Everyone else in their world, including their closest family and friends, are mere side characters. If you’re really lucky, your brand might be considered a benevolent guide, but more than likely, you are simply part of the scenery. You’re not a main character. You’re part of the background — an extra, a tree. The trick is to figure out how to convince the hero that you can help them in their quest, and that requires a story.

Making Your Customer The Hero

There’s an odd paradox within storytelling whereby extremely specific details can elicit a stronger-than-usual response. One would think it would be quite the opposite. These details seem way too specific to apply to anyone else, we think. But that’s not the way the human mind works. Ask any standup comedian. The more specific the joke, the more universal its appeal. Why? Because we instantly recognize the authenticity of a real story. It’s why we’re so obsessed with true stories based on real people.

When a story gets into the nitty-gritty of the human condition, we are able to empathize because we can imagine ourselves in the story. We subconsciously replace the unfamiliar details with those of our own and this allows us to enter as the hero. Now we are invested in the outcome. Rather than watching from above as someone rows a boat, suddenly we are in the boat. We’re not watching the story unfold, we’re in the story as it unfolds.

This is the great irony in professional storytelling. We give the audience the space to enter our world, and then make them the hero by not pandering to them. We create an authentic story they can relate to by not making it some generic, one-size-fits-all homogeneous character we think represents the entire audience.

We show them authentic people with lives that are so defined they could only be real. This is one of the reasons why AI will always struggle when it comes to human authenticity. The perfect amalgamation of all human traits leads to dull, two-dimensional characters that are eminently forgettable. The human mind rejects perfection as a concept. We seek out the imperfect because it’s real.

What Does Your Customer Really Want?

As brand managers, we like to think that what we have to sell is worthy of our customer’s time and attention. We’ve built a better mousetrap and included all these impressive features that we spent a lot of time and money implementing. There’s even an app, for Pete’s sake! But the reality is our widget is not what they want — at least not initially or directly. They might actually be interested in your product or service, but you can’t just launch into it right off the bat. First, you have to figure out what it is they really want.

To find this out, we have to go much deeper into the psyche. What are their more base emotions? What are their hopes, dreams, and fears? Are they looking for entertainment, status, security, comfort, allure, or nostalgia? It depends on what your product is and who might be interested in it. Somewhere within the cross-section of that Venn diagram lies the truth.

If you can determine what it is they really want, you can tell a story about a character with authenticity that gets what they want by using your product as a tool in their quest for glory. This is how you entice engagement. You make it their idea. You give them the opportunity to choose you. They become the wise ones. The ones with style, class, and taste. The special people deserving of such things. They become the hero, and you are just the background scenery of their lives. That said, never underestimate the power of the supporting cast to make a difference in the hero’s journey.

You don’t need to be the hero; you just need to be in the story. It’s not your story, after all. It’s theirs.