- In this video, you will learn five great tips
on how to craft amazing stories that will help you
form a deeper connection with your audience.
Storytelling isn't just for films, it's for businesses too!
Well-told stories draw emotional responses
from your audience that make them more likely to convert,
stay loyal to your brand,
and keep making purchases again and again.
Good storytelling is therefore a vital ingredient
to any successful marketing campaign,
so keep watching to learn just how you
can make the most of storytelling for your business!
(gentle music)
Hi there, I'm Jess here at Spiel Creative.
Now before we get started,
make sure you click the subscribe button and hit the bell
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So, let's dive right in.
Too many businesses think that providing
cold hard facts alone about their products and services
is enough to convince their prospects
to make a purchasing decision.
However, the results of numerous studies
clearly suggest that this just isn't the case.
In fact, according to experts like Dr Gerald Zaltman,
a professor at Harvard Business school,
up to 95% of our purchase decisions
are actually based on our subconscious judgments
and emotions, which we later justify
with rational reasoning.
That's why smart marketers use storytelling
to connect with our emotional sides,
making us far more receptive to their message.
But don't take our word for it,
let's take a look at a case study that shows
just how powerful proper storytelling can be.
Before 2016, the Canadian arm of the popular diaper brand,
Huggies, was losing out in a big way to its rival, Pampers,
who had 100% of all Canadian hospital contracts.
Huggies knew that if they wanted to compete,
they really needed to find a way to forge
an emotional connection with expecting mothers
to convince them to buy Huggies
before arriving at the hospital,
instead of defaulting to the brand
that the hospital would provide.
After a period of deliberation,
Huggies realized that actually, the solution
was right under their noses, in their brand name!
By telling the story of how babies benefit
from hugs and linking their brand Huggies
to the mission of leaving no baby unhugged,
Huggies managed to create a much stronger emotional bond
between its brand and its customers.
And the results their campaign
achieved were simply phenomenal.
After Huggies ran the campaign,
their sales skyrocketed by a whopping 30%.
Not only this, on social media, the campaign went viral,
generating more than two million likes,
comments, and shares, with engagement rates
that were 300% higher than the industry standard.
So, after hearing of Huggies great success,
you are probably wondering how you can use storytelling
to get results like they did right?
Well, to help you with exactly this,
we've got five great tips, starting with tip one,
swap your stories format from beginning, middle, end,
to normal, explosion, new normal.
In marketing, successful storytelling
is all about the transformation that your product
will bring to its customers.
While we all know stories need to have a beginning,
a middle, and a end, it's not actually that useful
to think about them in quite this same way
when it comes to marketing.
Consider this:
if you're following the typical beginning-middle-end model,
you could make a story about your sandwich business
for example that goes something like this,
John forgot he had a sandwich in his coat pocket,
he reached in, he took out the sandwich,
he begins eating it, and finishes eating that sandwich.
Buy sandwiches at John's sandwich store.
I'm sure you'll agree it wasn't exactly very inspiring.
However, if you follow the normal, explosion, new normal,
storytelling model developed by professional storytelling
expert Kindra Hall, you have to write your story
in such a way which involves a convincing transformation,
as the structure requires
that you explain how life was before your product,
i.e. the normal, then that you introduce your product,
the explosion, and then that you show how life has changed
afterwards, that becomes the new normal.
Using this normal, explosion, new normal framework,
we can now change our story of John to something like this.
Ten years ago, on his birthday,
John was starving in the frozen arctic,
that's our normal.
Just as his body was on the edge
and he was about to give in to hypothermia,
he thought of his wife, and remembered the sandwich
she had left him in his jacket pocket.
He reached into his pocket,
grabbed out the sandwich she had made,
took a bite,
and was restored to full health almost immediately.
That's our explosion.
John made it back home, where doctors studied him
as a miracle of medicine.
Now, John and his wife pass on their good fortune
by making Brighton's best sandwiches,
based on the same exact recipe that saved his life
so many years ago.
Order right now on the corner of first and Broadway.
And that becomes our new normal.
It's quite a bit more interesting and engaging right?
So make sure you consider this framework
when crafting stories for your business!
Tip two, time and place.
Great stories are always set in a time and a place
that helps capture the audience's interest
right from the get go.
Have you never thought of why some of our favorite
fairy tales when you were growing up bigin with
"once upon a time"?
It's important that you consider this
when telling your story as providing the right context
is key to hooking your audience
and making it that much more relatable.
And now you know why our story of John is set 10 years ago,
on his birthday, in the frozen arctic!
Okay, so moving on, we have tip three,
include a relatable character.
The best stories are always character driven,
which means they focus in one way or another
on the journey of a character that the audience
can in some way relate with.
Just think of any great story
and inevitably it will be associated
with at least one great character.
So how do you come up with a great character for your story?
Well, as we are discussing crafting stories
for your business, a good natural place to start
is surely by understanding your target audience
and considering what kind of characters
they would be most likely to relate with.
For example, if you're a clothing brand,
your core target audience being professional men
between say 21 and 35, a 25 year old male
may be a suitable character for your story.
Not only should you think about the age and the gender
of your character in relation to your target audience,
but also consider the persona of the character.
It should be relatable for your audience.
Another key component of making your character relatable
is having them show some kind of vulnerability.
Look, nobody is perfect,
so your main character shouldn't be either.
Just think of some of the most popular characters of time:
Batman, Cinderella, Spiderman,
they all have flaws and vulnerabilities
that we can relate to and therefore empathize with.
The key is to ensure that your audience
can see themselves at least on some level
in the shoes of your story's main protagonist,
and showing some kind of vulnerability
can go a long, long way in achieving this!
Okay, so now that we've covered the importance
of a relatable character, the next tip I will cover
pretty much is the secret sauce
which separates a mundane story for a truly great one
which wins hearts as well as minds!
Tip four, elicit emotion.
Now when I say emotion,
I don't necessarily mean overwhelming feelings
of hope, or grief, or fear, or joy.
Of course, there are many cases in which strong emotions
are entirely necessary,
like if you're promoting an importable charitable cause
and really need to move people to take action.
But in other situations, it's also fine
to go for more subtle types of emotions,
like the feeling of relief you might experience
when you realize dinner just got a whole lot easier
with the help of a new delivery app for example.
Those emotions can be just as effective
as the more intense ones, and they can be harnessed
to huge effect in your campaigns.
The key takeaway here is that you really think
about the emotional journey you want your story
to take your audience on,
and not just concentrate on the rational hard facts.
But how do you actually solicit
an emotional response from your story?
Well, in video storytelling the saying show, don't tell
really does apply!
So making sure your visuals properly
capture the right emotions is absolute key.
This means alongside have a good narrative,
directing the clips in a way which maximizes
their impact is key.
This is where using an experienced team
can really, really be of help.
In addition to showing,
hearing is also key to generating the right emotions.
This include making sure the dialogue used in your script
really hooks your audience.
Words used should be descriptive and catchy
and try not to let your script get overly wordy.
As a rule of thumb, alongside show, don't tell,
less is more really does apply when it comes to dialogue.
In addition, the right choice of background music
and good use of sound effects are absolutely crucial
to triggering the right emotions for your viewers.
A perfect example of this, if you try watching
a scary movie scene without any background music
or any sound effects,
you will notice its emotional impact drops drastically.
On our channel, we actually have dedicated videos
which cover background music and sound effects in detail,
so if you do need any more help with this,
make sure you check out these videos.
I've actually included the link to these videos
in the description below as well.
Okay, and lastly but certainly not least,
tip five, have a moral to your story.
The moral of your story can be something
related directly to your product or service,
for example, your story can lead to a conclusion
such as you really care about saving your customers time
so they can spend more of it with their family and friends,
or we provide real value for money.
However, it doesn't necessarily have to be something
so specifically related to your product or service.
Now another strategy that many successful brands also use
is to provide a more generic moral to their story
which is then anchored to their brand.
For example, although Nike sell sportswear
they rarely directly promote a specific product
in their adverts but rather focus on a more generic moral
which is "Just Do It".
This moral inspires people to achieve their goals
and dreams and this positivity is then anchored
to Nike's brand and Nike's products.
The type of moral you choose to include in your story
really depends on the type of business you are in
and the specific goals of your story.
The key thing is that you give this thought
and choose the option which is right for your business.
And ladies and gentlemen, that is a wrap.
I really hope you've enjoyed this video
and maybe you've learnt something new.
If so, please remember to subscribe to our channel
so that you get notified each and every time
we release new videos to help you with you marketing.
As always, you can also reach out to us
at www.spielcreative.com
if you need any further help or have any further questions.
Now, what are you waiting for?
Get out there, and go and tell your story to the world.