Internet DNA Podcast
What? Why? How? Exactly, that is the reason for our discussion today. Filling you in on all you need to know about creating a story for your business and how this helps growth, loyalty and ultimately success. Peppered with some strange and interesting facts as always.
Transcription
(this transcription is written by robots… so don’t be surprised!)
Hello, and welcome to this week's episode of internet DNA with me, Abi
and me Dan
This week, going to talk about storytelling as a marketing tool. When I think of storytelling, I think of a parent reading to a child or a room with someone with a really great voice, captivating an audience for me. It's quite an audio thing.
Obviously story telling is in every book, it's a narrative, isn't it?
Every film and every TV, drama and stories are interwoven into everything pretty much
even into sport in many ways it's a story of a season.
Ah, I didn't think of it like that. Yeah, the better the storytelling is, the more popular something is I think it's the word telling, do you think of spoken word or written word?
And the thing that's displaying a narrative. That to me is a story, I guess you were, when you say story telling makes you think a little bit more of someone speaking it, but I think everything is a story.
Life has a story and some would say it's pre-written. Well,
yeah. Some would say that but no one sensible
oh, I'm sure the great philosophers and Buddhists out there that,
yeah, not in prehistory. I'm sure. It seems that way. I've got a feeling that Greeks and maybe the Romans, but, and certainly the Vikings, because they believe that their fates were woven by the fates strangely enough
woven. That's where I'm going to get to.
So nowadays, A marketing tactic that works very well. And what we're going to discuss is weaving the intricacies of a brand into a large colorful tapestry, take little red riding hood. Right. Hold on. She didn't get eaten at the end.
She wasn't a great brand either.
Well, no. Well, exactly. And that's the thing.
She had a hard life. It was difficult. And she had lots to do, and she didn't have much money, but she's strived. And then she saved the day and she overcame the big bad wolf and then everything was okay and she was happy
The red riding hood I remember she sort of skipped gaily through the forest, taking apples to her granny. It didn't seem like that harder life to me
wasn't it cold?
I don't think so. I think it was generally green and there were squirrels and bluebirds.
I thought it was really snowy as all of Hans Christian Anderson. Well, the idea is people like stories where the underdog triumphs and succeed. So things are hard. Things are difficult. You have to overcome things, you get some knock-backs and then sort of David and Goliath. You beat the big, bad guy and. You succeed and with it, you are nice, kind and help other people succeed. And that's the stories that, you know, I mean, obviously people like mysteries, they like adventures, they like romance and they like zombie Brand we might know, bring in the zombies unless you're, I don't know some face paint company, a story it's got to be real. Where am I talking your brands? And it's got to be transparent. You can't really make it. But people like to know. That you worked really hard to get where you were and that you've looked after people internally and externally, along the way it
has to reinforce your brand.
Let's take a brand that you think has a decent story to it. Red bull, the energy drink tell a story of human endeavor, whether that's jumping out balloons. Whether it's racing across the desert, whether it's formula one, if you think about everything that they associate themselves, it's saying this to the consumer, who's going to drink a Red Bull
oh, that it's a part of a lifestyle of adventure. Yeah. And pushing human boundaries. The average person drinking a red bull is probably never, ever going to do any of those things, but they buy into that story. And I think another one that you could go quite heavily with is Coca Cola, whose story is it's the heartbeat of America.
It's why Santa Claus is red, but I think you have to be quite a big brand to get away with those kinds of stories.
Do that for a moment. You're using single words, you're using hooks. Endeavor heart of America. We're talking about a whole story. Now you get to the hook. Once you've written the story, it's much easier to write a story when you're a single person, actually.
And I wrote the story about my company, where I'd come from and what I did and the design and the art. And I suggested that I provide. Good advice. Good design, good service and good aftercare.
How did your story tie that in? Because obviously every business would like to say that. So how does your story, but you've written it.
So I used my past, I used my training. I used what I'd gone through having a company and then going freelance, what I'd gone through as working for a really large corporations and doing user experience, but also taking that knowledge to smaller companies, how I was pushing forward. My. Design boundaries, how I was researching and making sure that I was giving the best advice possible to whoever I was working with and using experience and the fact that I've done it a very long time and often for similar people that I can cross pollinate in my work.
And that for me, I don't feel I've done a good job unless I've done the best that I can do. And therefore I will keep looking after them and the clients part of my family and I'm there for them. But what I did then this good thing that kept. Cropping up. That was then when I did a promotional flyer that was neon pink, which I also bought into my brand.
And so you have to read the story to get to that. It was said damn good. Was its main thing. And then, yeah, I think you have to read to get to that. Well, I
would definitely have to read, I would almost. Guaranteed that you would have gone with orange,
my favorite color, but no one would ever let me do a pink website.
So I did one for myself. Well, but the damn good was the hook that I then started hooking everything else on just like endeavor or the heart of America before you get to those points. And I'm certainly not saying I'm anything like red bull or Coca Cola. You have to write the story. For those words to manifest themselves, expose themselves.
So I think taking a step back, but where you are, right. And people are living and embodying a story, take Apple. I don't even know what their story is, but all I know is that everybody wants to live that Apple story. They want it to be their story. They want to be part of it. They want to imagine they're in it.
And so they buy the product. So it can be their story. Same with Nike.
It's really interesting because it was created by runners. They generated the first actual running shoe. Rather than what we would have called a plimsoll or trainer, because they were the Olympic runners. They designed a shoe to help you run.
And obviously Nike is the God of speed. And so they have got a story that backs up their sporting credential.
And they're telling that story at every point of the way, they're not selling their shoes, they're selling the story that we are with. The sports people. So in American football, where the guy took his knee and they were with Colin Kaepernick, even though he was thrown out from competing, they are always speaking out for the runner, the person that's pushing themselves and just doing it. What I want to get on to with this. Podcast is once you've even got your story, how do you keep telling it?
And they're always telling it, they have ambassadors. They have top athletes living, Nike, living the dream, living the story of what it is to be Nike, but I'm getting in front of myself a bit here, but you have to live the story as well. And someone like Sony have little notes in the corridors and in the loos telling you how to live that story and Disney are fiercely contained in what you must be to work at Disney. So, so that actually I took my children when they're really young to a kid's party and it was Disney party and Cinderella was there and Cinderella was beautiful. And although guys had grudgingly taken their children to the party was sitting on the back row with their eyes and stalks.
Anyway, she was in full Disney mode. She had the American accent. She was only allowed to say certain words and she was not allowed to say one word outside that Disney character in the whole time she was at out even when she was leaving the door. She was not allowed to say any words that hadn't been okayed by Disney in the voice and the accent.
Otherwise, they would have kicked her out and taken away her glass slipper. That's the other extreme of really enforcing a story.
Yeah. And I think those type of brands are going to struggle because as that was very easy, when you could control the media, that's why a lot of shine has gone from Disney. And one could argue from companies like Nintendo as well, which is they have pushed against what we now call social media, but is effectively new media because they can't control the story.
Right. But I've seen it happening a lot more recently, a lot of brands where they've realized. You've got to let go of that. And you've got to be able to create your story outside your own story tellers, Apple have been very good at that, which is getting everybody to tell their story.
So it's like Harry Potter, isn't it.
Harry Porter is now a brand. So they have brand ambassadors everywhere that they obviously don't pay. But the fans just telling the Harry Potter story and they promote themselves through, well, it used to be billboards. Merchandise, you can do spells they've got the music, they've got a special language so everyone feels that they can be in the story.
And then everyone's constantly creating, moving forward. That story. It's like those funny books back in the dark ages, when you and I were young, the first sort of user centric content was these books that it could say. And so, and so got to a ditch. Would they a) fall in and cry? or b) leap over it like a hero, go to page 21.
And as part of his computer studies has been doing exactly that. So three pathways, three stories. So he had to create a whole set of trees and objects. You can pick up the sword and he had to resolve them all into three endings, which was really quite interesting because obviously you can create all the branches, but then getting them to come back to three specific endings was quite difficult.
Well, that's what computer games is, isn't it
that's teaching them how to create that kind of storyline. So how to give people the appearance that they're making choices. Yeah. It was really interesting. But we're getting a little bit away from storyteller
We talk to small businesses, and we're not about your Apples and your Sony's.
How do you create a story? And then how do you keep the story alive? And why do you keep the story alive? For example, if you're a farm shop and your parents had a farm in the seventies and they had too much soft fruit and berries one year, so they made some jam and then they thought the next year they'd sell the next door farms produce too.
And then people petted the cows and then. Some evil bugs came and ate all the soft fruit. So they had to diversify. And now they've got an amazing farm shop and they're a brilliant day out. And there is your story all true, but let's say you're a company that sells gutters. How do you write a story for your brand?
The point of telling a story is so that people can understand the ethos of your company. So if we were going back to your farm, then its telling a story of rural family. Honest provenance, that kind of thing.
So one of the real issues with stories is that people want to tell a story that they can't live up to.
They're not telling the story they're telling the dream.
Yeah, exactly. And actually that will lead to. Customer dissatisfaction because if they believe the story and then the actual experience doesn't match that story, then basically everything you say is a lie to them immediately. So people have got to be very careful when they're crafting stories to make sure that that story is true enough, that it will resonate , resonate I hate that word. it means nothing.
I hate the word engage. Why can't we talk or even communicate? Why do we always have to engage?
Yeah, my one is passionate. We're passionate about sofas. Are you, are you really passionate about sofas? I don't think you are. If this is your level of passion, then I'm really upset for your wife about that.
It will match the user experience. So their expectation matches their experience. So I can understand when people read your story and then they meet you. The expectations set by the story is going to match their experience when they meet you. I'm not suggesting that people don't Polish their stories, but that you don't Polish it into a point where it's not recognizable as your company anymore. So if you told me a story about guttering, that made me think, wow, these guys are going to turn up, they're going to do an amazing job? And then you leave bits of plastic around and then I'm going to say, well, wait a minute. That's not the story I read. And I don't believe anything you say anymore.
And I'm going to go into trust pilot with social media and say that they were rubbish.
And Im going to say they're more rubbish than if they'd said. We're a bunch of guys. We put up gutters, we come on time. We leave on time. And then if that's what they did, then that's fine.
I wouldn't have been upset about the fact that they left some bits of plastic around because I hadn't expected spic and span to turn up.
You get your story. Yeah. So you go out and talk to everyone that uses your gutters. And say, what do you think about when you think of us and they should start to say similar things and it's so similar things you pick up and weave again into your history and your company and your people to make the true story.
Yeah. It's about differentiating yourself. And selling your strengths. That's important because there's probably a million people that do gutters. And when I come and I do the job, I want you to focus on the strengths that I have, not on the weaknesses. And if my story tells you about the strengths, then they're the things that you're expecting.
Don't try and gloss over stuff that you're shit at.
This is where it says, sell your strengths. And everyone goes, well, my strengths are, I'm really good. My product's really good. And I'm really cheap, but that's, everybody's, you're not differentiating yourself. And so by talking to the people that you're selling to and asking them to tell a story about using your product, trying to get anecdotes.
And that's the point of a sorry, it's not, we do really good guttering and it's at the best price a story is well we provided this gutter to these people and it meant that they could fill that pond up and suddenly they had a swimming pond and it was all amazing.
Oh, they were going on holiday that day and we arrived at nine and we're done by three.
So they could go on a holiday knowing that the job was finished showing that you're reliable. And on time, I mean, I don't know anything about guttering, so I don't know why we've chosen this
just because if I sell guttering, I would find it really hard to create my brand story. So I wanted to discuss the ways in which you would start to unearth it because as we've already pointed out, it's all there.
It just might not be as obvious and by people to start telling you little anecdotes. That's your staff and your clients and your suppliers, then all these little stories will start to form your story and you'll find out your real USP is not just the USP that every gutter person uses it.
This is why I think video is really important for businesses.
Let's say you're thinking about getting. A van, that you can sleep in and you can put stuff in or whatever you want to do in it. You're going to look on the internet. If you're the sort of person like me, for people who do up vans and because you then get to know, Oh, this is the people, these are the things they do.
This is the interesting stuff. These are the tips that they have and they actually, although you're going well, I could do it myself. Now, what you realize is, wow, these guys are really good at this. And I like this guy he's really funny or he's very into it. Oh, he's got the same kind of values I have. And I think that's a really good way of telling these little anecdotal stories rather than going.
We're really good at lining and insulating vans. You do a whole thing about insulating vans showing how you do it, and then the person gets to see, wow, that's an amazing job. Video becomes very important. People are frightened of it, hopefully less. So now we've done a whole year on zoom to realize that it's fine.
People don't really care all that much about high production values, what they want to see as personality and ability
you are right. But as we've had the conversation before, I hate videos, I would rather read. Now, whenever someone goes oh, here's a video. I go, Oh, really? Can't you just tell me in a few bullet points.
Okay, but you're a dinosaur though. Aren't you?
Pretty much. Yeah. No, quite as much as dinosaurs you, but, but yes,
no, I watch videos I'm down with the youth I'm older, but more youthful.
Yeah, because what you're doing is even if it's a video or the text, you're not standing there going, we have certified gutters we are, value for money.
You're going. Oh, I don't even have to talk about myself or the company. I'm going to talk about fitting this. It's what I do every day. So it's really easy.
Why did I choose this gutter? Why have I fitted it in this way? And it's that when people go, wow, there's a real attention to detail that he's put into this.
You know, I just thought it was gutters, but obviously there are loads of choices about gutters and this guy is interesting and has told me about this stuff. I like how he works.
What other ways will help you create your story?
Just go back to how do you create friendships? And what you do is you tell stories about yourself, who you are in a way that you think will engage that.
And so you might talk about a subject, but what you're doing is saying we've got similar values, we've got similar experiences. We think in a similar way, when people go well, I've got nothing in common with them. What they're actually saying is I've got no value touchpoints with them and that's fair enough.
But when you make really good friends, what you find is that you've got loads of value touchpoints in many ways, telling a story. You've got to think of it much more in chapters. When you first meet someone, what do you do? Hi, my name is Dan. What do you do? That's almost the first question that you'd ever have.
That's basically what features and benefits are. So you introduce yourself and then you ask somebody about themselves. This is what I am, and these are the sorts of things that I do. And are these the kind of problems that you have? So if you think about how do I really tell a story? I'm not going to tell it all in one chapter, I'm going to add this phased approach where I'm going to introduce people and bring them along with me, because I know once we get to a certain point, we're besties.
Once were besties, we will do anything for each other. And that's the kind of thing small businesses need.
We trust each other, value points made me laugh. We're really going into the marketing speak today.
Well, it's a very marketing speak thing.
Also what you bought into there, which was quite interesting was the gamification that we talked about before called scaffolding and onboarding.
Yes, then the next phase is, okay. Let me tell you a bit more. And if you think about that from a business point, that is more a specifications pricing, and then the next thing is help documentation. That's actually like, you're really interested now. So this is called phasing. And then actually we need to talk to probably one on one at that point, then people who just come and look at the features and benefits and leave we say hi, who are you to a lot of people.
Well, it's interesting talking to people about their business and when I do initial workshops and I just say, talk about your passion and off they go, I don’t use the word passion. I used that just to annoy you and it's fascinating. And our whole body comes awake and is alive. And it's interesting and engaging is my word and draws you in.
And then if I say right, can you just write the introduction to a business for the homepage? I would just get the most dry bit of information I've ever come across. So this whole storytelling again, is about translating what you feel when you talk about your business and therefore how face to face you tell it to someone into a tangible written piece story or mission statement or brand guideline document. And that's the importance and why marketing companies are trying to get that story written that is to build on how people communicate face to face.and bring it into the online arena.
So I did a really interesting thing where someone else who does a podcast said, I'm investigating the effect of sending small children to boarding school. And I would like to do a set of chats over a pint about your life. So I went to the pub and we had a pint and they just said, tell me stories about your life. And I've said, look, you're going to have to understand that. These are very well polished pebbles. I've told these stories hundreds and hundreds of times and they probably no longer read, really equate to the truth or the reality of the situation, but they make very nice little stories.
And that's what I did. And I realized that I basically explained who I was. By telling stories about periods in my life.
That's really interesting. And a really clever way to get the truth out of people in an interview, or be able to get
deeper she didn't ask me about going to school. Just tell the storyteller.
She did some of the stories about my school, like sending my mother an empty letter every week. She's doing lots of people. What she's looking for is common threads.
It's a great way to sum up what we're trying to do about how to use stories, but I want to be able to, as when you've written your story, how do you then use it to promote your company and sell your products and services?
There are two things which is when you start telling your story, you should start to understand what are the defining moments or defining things about this company. And from that you can develop a company ethos. I know once you understand what that is, you can tie everything back to it. If people say, well, let's do this, or you can go well, does that reinforce or de-enforce our company story?
Because if it de-enforces your company story, it's probably not something that you're going to be that good at.
For every bit of marketing pitch, new product, you do. If you make sure that it's telling your story, then it will cement your brand, everything you did, your point of sales, all fit the story. Then like Nike, everyone can hear the story.
It becomes louder and louder. So people are being part of this story. And what happens and what we talked about earlier. So this sort of quite nicely brings it back to the beginning is certain words, the ethos or the brand values start to rise to the top. So in the end you don't need to even be going, does that fit with our story?
We go. Does that fit with endeavor? Does that fit with, just do it, does that? Yeah.
So if you think about Harry Potter, if one of his books, he was a self centered, not very good at magic loser. You would go, uh, I don't really like this. Harry Potter breaks the story and now I'm not interested in because I don't like those values about him.
They're not the values that I associate with him. You kind of broken the spell and I don't believe the story anymore.
The spell, where you want to get to is that people want to be part of that story. They want to be living that story. It's a bit like it's their own film. They want to be in it.
And that's where the big brands that we talked about earlier had got to, but suddenly you have something that you can always rely on to see whether you're doing this right, or whether you're wasting your money on a bit of marketing. That's just not you or just changed
because it may be that your story has changed.
You may have developed as a business where that story no longer applies. So if we take the farm shop now, you're actually Sainsbury's once upon a time, they were a vegetable, store, the story of that vegetable store would be very, very different to the story your Sainsbury's now. And if you say, well, wait a minute, I can no longer align with that story. hen you can understand what we must have a new story. Otherwise,
do we have a new story or do we just continue the journey
well you've outgrown that story.
But I feel with Google the moment they outgrew the do no evil and got rid of the strap line, I was rather disappointed in them. I think you need to stay true to your roots.
I don't know if you have to stay true to your roots. But you have to accept that if you change your story, that a lot of people who were invested in the original story may no longer want to stay invested in you as a company, you gotta be pretty sure that you've got enough new people who are going to buy into the new story.
And that's not to say that that original story can't be incorporated as an origin story, but that's no longer your current story.
I hope that we've explained how a story can help you and how to find your story and how to use your story to help you with your marketing. Have other people talk about you because they are staff and joining the story.
Help other people understand you as a business. That's the real core, because if you’re choosing between 15 different guttering companies, it's the one that's got.
A story
Well, it's the one that you can associate with and feel confident about.
A connection with, so on the flip side of that, if your story was actually just a dream, you'll lose people very quickly. You mustn't let them down.
I actually think, and my father used to say it if the product's no good marketing only helps so far, which is if you can't deliver what you promise while marketing can get you some initial sales. You'll never get the repeat business. If I look at any service that I use, every single one of those selected because of their customer service internet is internet I can't go, Oh, my internet is somehow better than anybody. Else's internet. I mean, it's just. Bits and bytes or the gas that comes out of my gas supplier is no different to the gas that come without someone else's the actual product is indistinguishable. And therefore the only thing that you can really distinguish with those things are customer service.
I just want to quickly end on bits and bytes. I learnt just the other day. Yeah. Bits and bytes not just the American English where talking about bytes is a bit of a byte and you have eight.
Oh, I've got 20 megabits and you go, that's great. You've got that's. That's absolutely fine. You've got like four megabytes.
Yes. But speed is measured in bits. Isn't it?
Yes.
We better go on that. Good to speak to you and you, speak to you next week. Okay. Bye.
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Dan & Abi work, talk & dream in tech. If you would like to discuss any speaking opportunity contact us.