In the 1920s there was a boxer, called Billy Miske. He had a record of 72-15-14 and 33 knockouts. The losses he had against the biggest names at times, one was a first round KO against the legendary Jack Dempsey. He was a husband, a father, a successful fighter and and unbreakable athlete with a strong will. On one day his doctor said to him that he had only 5 years left from his life, as he had a serious kidney disease. He kept his illness a secret, even his wife did not know about it. After the mentioned Dempsey-fight he retired, but in 11 months he was again in the ring. Miske's family depended on him financially, fighting for survival, slowly sliding deeper in debts. They had to sell their furnitures, cut down costs, until the day, he decided to return. Billy and his promotors organized a last, big fight. Because of his sickness, he was barely able to walk, therefore he did not train for the fight. He was ill, he was weak, but he could not be beaten. In fact, he won with a KO in the 4th round against a much younger boxer. He earned 2400 dollars, bought back the family furniture, bought his kids toys for Christmas and a piano for his wife.
Did you pay attention? Of course you did! Why? Because it was a great story: authentic, true, it had a conflict and a hero, it was personal, touched a pain-point and most importantly it was full of emotions. These are some of the elements of every great story told.
According to researches, we meet everyday around 100.500 words and 5.000 marketing messages. If you do not have a memorable and emotional story to share, your brand's messages would be lost in this vast marketing noise. To avoid this, you have to learn again what you have experienced many times in your childhood. Tell a tale!
If you look back to your young ages, you remember how eager you were to stay up late and even when your eyes were closing by themselves, you wanted to hear another story of your parents or grandparents. Well, the same as with adults, we are not much different either. If we could choose from to listening to facts and see charts, or hear a good non-fiction tale, I guess we agree that we all would choose the second. By age, the time what we are able to concentrate and pay attention on certain things, is growing. To keep the attention of a 2-year-old is possible only for a few minutes, audience from the Y-generation (in their 20s nowadays) is around 20 minutes, X-generation (between 30 and 40) 30 minutes and Baby Boomers (from 50 years up) around 45 minutes. But of course these numbers vary individually and in the age of instant information they quickly decrease. If a story is backed up with images, infography, interactive solutions, video or other multimedia, it adds up another 10 minutes of attention to any presentation or longer speech.
But catching attention is not the only important feature of stories. The other is to be remembered. Stanford's marketing professor, Jennifer Aaker has made a study about this. She asked her students to give 1-minute elevator pitches. 1 out of 10 used only stories. The result: 5% of the students remembered the statistics, but 63% was able to call back the story. It seems that our brain is wired to listen and remember stories. Especially if it moves our emotions too. A long list of facts and numbers would more likely to get lost in the informational and marketing noise, than a story. So, when you talk about your business or your product, concentrate not on what you do, what your product does better, but rather explain who you are and why you do what you are doing. People are interested in your motivation, what moves you, what is your background, why your brand and product is unique. So, prepare a story! But what kind of story?
1.) Genuine/authentic: don't lie, tell the truth. You can colour your tale, you can add personal features, spice and taste. But never lie! Your story has to be yours, if it is too generic, nobody will care, as 78% of consumers think that if your content is custom, you are more trustworthy. Also 91% of them expect authenticity from a brand they want to buy from. In your story you can use real people and real life situations, it creates trust. For example if you use stories of employees, with name, title, or even photos, it increases the trust in your story and also build your employer branding. Information about satisfied and proud employees would spread much faster, because people are so much more embedded in society (and also social media) than brands and companies.
2.) Relevant: ask yourself questions: Is my story somewhat important for my audience? Does it solve a problem for them? Motivates? Gives inspiration? Shows examples on to do or to avoid? Why should they care? If you have answered any of these questions, you most likely to have a relevant story for your audience. Keep in mind, everybody is busy and nobody has time. Share always information what is worthy to know, valid and important. One more thing, it has to be relevant not for you, but for your audience. Researches show that 45% of customers would unfollow brands on social media if all is about self-promotion, rather than true problem-solving. 71% of buyers, who see that a product or service has a value for them, will purchase and 68% of them would even pay a higher price if that is relevant for them personally.
3.) Have a conflict and a hero: let's start with the conflict. It does not need to be a conflict between two persons, it can be a tough life situation, a challenge you faced with personally or during the development of your product or service. Show how difficult it was to overcome and then introduce your hero to your audience. Your hero can be you while looking for the perfect solution on your problem, tackling down a challenge, it can be your ancestor, who founded the company you own, an employee whose life somehow changed after you helped him/her. But it can be your product/service, what ultimately brought ease to a pain-poin. Build your story like a dramaturg and let the characters speak for themselves.
4.) Emotional: when you have a conflict and a winning hero, you must create an emotional resonance with your audience. You have to know your listeners, to tailor your speech to their needs and their characteristics as a group. You have to know what emotions moves them and share your story accordingly. If your story triggers their emotion, it automatically grabs their attention and increases their span of focusing on your story. Of course, emotions counts during sales too, most customers make buying decisions based on feelings rather than logic, facts and data. Think about yourself, why you bought your last sports equipment. Because of what it does better than the last gear you had or because it looks better, it feels better or because the brand cares for something you do too and your favourite athlete uses this gear too?
5.) Short and simple: as researches show, 79% of people scan read, which means that they do not read word by word, they only check the highlights, follow structure with their eyes and summarize the information while reading. If you write a story, keep this in mind. If you speak, keep your story short, simmer it down to be simple, understandable and memorable. 51% of professionals are spending time on managing information and not acting on it. So, if you save them this time with structuring your story, building up a hierarchy and at the end summarize what you said, you most likely gained the time for an action on their side. Keep in mind also the platform you use to share your story. Tailor the tale to that platform. If you have a blog, you can be longer, but disrupt the text with images and videos. If you are having a social media campaign, keep the wording short and the visuals long.
6.) Have an own style, have an own tone: while telling a story, always be yourself and be recognizable, have your own ways of expressions, words that are remarkable, develop a tone what not only describes you, but also speaks to your audience. You can be funny, you can be talkative, you can be informative, just be somehow unique!
A product or service can be innovative, groudbreaking, problem-solving, perfectly designed, but if it is not paired with a story that disrupts from the marketing and media noise that surrounds us, will be easily not heard or quickly forgotten. Do you still remember the boxer we mentioned at the beginning? Yes! Then, it was a great story!