LM 65 - SCIENCES OF FASHION / SOCIOLOGICAL AND BEHAVIORAL NETWORKS
PAPER #3: Storytelling, brand storytelling and native advertising
The age of information products is over and the age of experience products is starting and blowing up more and more every day. Why? Today we have “free” access to so much information that the way you present your information is key for winning the race of success.
Today experience win against pure information because:
1 - captures the attention
2 - plays with emotions
3 - builds trust
How you sell, how you communicate is making the difference. This is why brand storytelling should be a major part of your online content. It’s all about the image you want your brand to present to the outside and all the stories that can help doing this.
e.g. We must sell a bag, can you think about all the stories that we can create to promote it? maybe one about the colors, the process of creation, how it was made, the artisans that worked on it, the origin of the name, the kind of stylish girl that can wear it, etc etc.
Storytelling is not speaking about your products or long endless lists of features and what you can do with them. It’s not one time content like a single article or a single blog post, a disconnected story about your business or a single about page. If you run a fashion blog and in the about page you explain that you love traveling, different cultures and habits, exploring traditions and trends all around the world you must spread this message in all your blog contents and in the way you write, the style you choose for the photos or videos. Life on web is dynamic, nothing is static. You always must update your informations and try to be, or to seem in any case, always in motion.
You don’t want to forget your products, but you must not focus on your side of them, but on the impact your brand and product can have on your customers and the experience that make. Brand storytelling is a more sophisticated way of marketing, it relates to the benefits of getting into a relationship with your brand and the universe that it brings rather than focusing on products (too commercial).
Brand storytelling is a type of storytelling, dedicated to a brand and to promote it. If you want to create an effective brand storytelling you must come to the origin of this tool and how to use it. Stories, to be loved and inspiring, must be creative and authentic. The same is about brand stories that can form a personal connection between the brand and the customers. You must consider brands, products as stories, you must learn to operate this change to be good storytellers. Storytelling is one of the most powerful ways to breathe life into brands and often called one of the main components of a content marketing approach. By giving your products and services an identity by capturing and sharing the stories they really are, you can take your target audience on a journey they yearn to experience.How a person feels about your brand typically determines whether they buy your product. A brand is a matter of perception. When you tell a story that embodies human challenges, you create an experience that resonates with your customers.
Storytelling is part of us. From the origin of the humans is the oldest form of passing knowledge and much of how we look at what we like to call facts is influenced by stories and how we interprete them. Passing knowledge is not inventing something, it’s searching in your life, in the one of your brands and find useful elements with which to build stories. Starting from the truth is always the best. Maybe sometimes make-up it a little, but be careful, don’t lie or you’re going to make an epic fail. You want to fulfil needs, respond to questions, engage on an emotional level, connect, find your voice and listen to voices in the intersection of brand and audience. And the ways you have developed solutions and a value proposition is all about stories. It’s even possible to turn an internal sales kit about solutions in a narrative book, telling stories people can relate with.
Brand stories, looking with the eyes of storytelling, are like fairy tales, and must have three acts that set up the situation, chronicle the conflict and offer a resolution. However, business stories are unique because they require a fourth element – a call to action, which is often indirect.The ultimate goal of marketing is to inspire, whether it motivates change, encourages the buying of a product or draws people into your store, regardless of the timeframe. Your desired outcome in the end drives the direction of the story.
Any medium can be used to tell a story, including blogs, film, print, social channels and multimedia. Each medium elicits a different reaction from your audience, so stories must be tailored to fit. The key to success is knowing which story to tell in which medium. Short, snappy messages work best on television and the Internet, while online conversations, conferences and seminars provide a personal connection.
e.g. Airbnb
Airbnb gives a voice to people using their service, telling stories about the experiences they make, travels the did and reasons for opening their homes to guests. Reading these stories, you are sucked into a new world. You do not get the feeling to read marketing content – but you are easily infested with the wanderlust syndrome and long to visit all these places and homes.Of course, there is much more to brand storytelling than customer stories. Every successful blogger or Instagramer tells a story. And these stories have a central role in the success of the blog or Instagram account.And while there may be a competition for attention for content out there, there still is a lot of room for some great stories!Just keep in mind that before you start you need to be fairly sure about the story you want to tell – and the emotions and experiences you want to relate.
Native advertising
Article by Joe Pulizzi, 26/08/2015, Content Marketing Institute
“Native advertising is not content marketing”
(notice in medias res the blogger style that involves the reader and calls into question directly, also using direct links and cal to actions)
When you see the phrase “native advertising,” what do you think? Do you think of content marketing?Well, a lot of people do … so much so, that I felt compelled to write an article about it.Before I go through the differences, let me explain why it’s essential to make the distinction. The words we use are important. From the moment I started in this industry over 15 years ago, everyone used different terms – customer media, branded content (please don’t!), custom publishing, custom content. The good news is that most people today call it content marketingcontent marketing. As I mentioned in a CMI newsletter last year, it’s key that we have moved on from defining content marketing to spending time figuring out how to do it:
Yes, I am personally vested in the term content marketing, but the important thing is that we have universal agreement on whatever term we, as an industry, have collectively decided to use. Now that we have this, we can continue to build our industry, warts and all, together.
For those same reasons it’s important to understand how other industry terms are related to content marketing. A few years ago, the term native advertising caught on (more on its meaning in a second). Too many marketers and agency executives erroneously use content marketing and native advertising interchangeably. When that happens, our industry takes a step backward, as native advertising is simply one way marketers can distribute content.
The point is that using the correct terminology is important. To me, to you, to the industry. If we can’t speak the language fluently, how can we expect others to understand content marketing or respect us as content marketers?
This is content marketing
Content marketing is a strategic marketing technique of creating and distributing valuable, relevant, and consistent content to attract and acquire a clearly defined audience – with the objective of driving profitable customer action by changing or enhancing consumer behavior.
Content marketing is an ongoing process that is best integrated into an overall marketing strategy. It focuses on owning media, not renting it.
In content marketing, the brand owns the media. It’s an asset.
This is native advertising
I’ve written a thorough overview of native advertising on LinkedIn, but let’s look at one example.
For most situations, longer-form native advertising (I’m not talking about Google or Twitter ads) is:
A directly paid opportunity – Native advertising is “pay to play.” Brands pay for the placement of content on platforms outside of their own media.
Usually information based – The content is useful, interesting, and highly targeted to a specific audience. In all likelihood, it’s not a traditional advertisement directly promoting the company’s product or service.
This is where native advertising looks a bit like content marketing. The information is usually highly targeted (hopefully) and positioned as valuable. But again, in native advertising, you are renting someone else’s content distribution platform (just like advertising), except that you aren’t pimping a product or service.
Delivered in stream. The user experience is not disrupted with native advertising because it is delivered in a way that does not impede the user’s normal behavior in that particular channel.
Brands want their native advertising to look as similar as possible to the third-party site’s content. Though the media company wants that too (because it’s easier to sell that way), it also has to put out a multitude of warning labels around the content to make sure the paid placement is 100% transparent.
To summarize, native advertising doesn’t disrupt the user experience and offers helpful information in a format similar to the other content on the site so users engage with it more than they would with, say, a banner ad. (This is good for advertisers, and if the content is truly useful, good for consumers.) In very simple terms, native advertising is one way content marketers can distribute their content.
A quick review
- If you pay for placement, it’s advertising.
- If you pay for placement of valuable, relevant content in a format similar to the third-party site, it’s native advertising.
- If you don’t pay for placement, the content is not advertising.
- If that content is valuable and relevant, designed to attract a clearly defined audience, and posted on your own or other unpaid platform, it’s content marketing. Now, this doesn’t mean you shouldn’t pay to promote your content as part of your content marketing strategy. If you don’t have an audience that is subscribed to receive your content, you should look into paid media as a way to reach a targeted audience.
- The next time someone uses content marketing or native advertising in the wrong scenario, please correct the person. Help us all speak the same language and be part of positive change for the world.
References - Books
Brooks Larry, Story Engineering, Paperback, 2011
Brooks Larry, Story Physics: Harnessing the Underlying Forces of Storytelling, Paperback, 2013
Brooks Larry, Story Fix: Transform Your Novel from Broken to Brilliant, Paperback, 2015
Simmons John, The Invisible Grail: How Brands Can Use Words to Engage with Audiences (Paperback)
References - Articles
Using storytelling to strengthen your brand
Native Advertising Is Not Content Marketing