Video Transcription
In this video, you will learn 5 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 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!
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 so that you’ll get notified every time we upload a new video to help you with your video marketing.
So, let’s dive right in.
Too many businesses think that providing cold hard facts alone about their products and services enough to convince their prospects to make a purchasing decision. However, the results of numerous studies clearly suggest that this 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 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 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 nose – 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 2 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 can you use storytelling to get results like they did right.
Well, to help you with exactly this, we’ve got 5 great tips, starting with….
TIP 1: 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, middle, and end, it’s not actually that useful to think about them in quit the 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, “Jordan forgot he had a sandwich in his coat pocket, he reached in, he took out the sandwich, he begins eating it, and finishes eating the sandwich. Buy sandwiches at Jordan’s sandwich store.”.
I’m sure you’ll agree that the story 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 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 THAT YOU THEN SHOW HOW LIFE HAS CHANGED AFTERWARDS (THE NEW NORMAL).
Using the normal,
explosion, new normal framework, we can now change our story of ‘Jordan’ to
something like this:
“Ten years ago, on his birthday, John was starving in the frozen arctic
(the normal).
Just as his body was giving 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 down the sandwich which she made, took a bite, and was restored to full health almost immediately
(the explosion).
John made it back home, where doctors studied him as a medical miracle. 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.”
(the new normal).
It is Quite a bit more interesting and engaging right? So make sure you consider this framework when crafting stories for your business!
TIP 2: TIME & PLACE
Great stories are always set in a time and place that helps capture the audience’s interest right from the get go.
Have you’re ever thought of why our favorite fairy tales when you was growing up begin 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 Jordan is set 10 years ago, on his birthday, in the frozen arctic!
Ok, so moving on, we have…
TIP 3. 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 are a clothing brand with your core target audience being professional men between the ages of 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 gender of your character in relation to your target audience, but also consider the persona of your character should be relatable for your audience.
Another key component of making your character relatable is having them show some kind of vulnerability. 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 and therefor 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 along long way in achieving this!
Ok, so now that we have 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 4. ELICIT EMOTION
When I say “emotion”, I don’t necessarily mean overwhelming feelings of hope, grief, 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 is also fine to go, for more subtle 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 great 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 elicit 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 captures 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 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 try not to let your script get overly wordy. As a rule of thumb, alongside ‘show, don’t tell’, ‘less in 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 sounds effect. You will notice that 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 have included the link to these videos in the description below as well.
Okay and lastly, but certainly not least……
TIP 5. 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 you ‘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’s a wrap!
I really hope you enjoyed this video and may be you 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 you are waiting for, get out there, and tell your story to the world.
