By: Sarah Siddiqui

Why It Works and Creates a Lasting Bond With Its Consumers

Marketing is all about making the brand shine and eventually selling a product. In the process, marketers learn a lot about consumers and their interests and tie it all into a marketing campaign, hoping to garner interest in consumers and eventually make them loyal customers. Marketing and reaching out to consumers have evolved in the last two decades. It’s gone from essential infographic elements, necessary for a consumer to decide whether to buy the product or not, to leveraging the insights and aiming to make a lasting impact. The information bit is still relevant, especially in the low involvement categories of CPG industry. However, it might not create a lasting connection a brand is wanting to make. It might lead to a transaction, but it will not lead to loyalty, preference or recognition of the brand. That is why marketers lean towards forming an emotional connection through the brand with its consumers.

The Art of Storytelling in Marketing

Storytelling is an art. Especially when you are restrained by time, attention, and focus. It’s about crafting a coherent narrative that flows well and has a punchline. All these traits are definitely what a marketer strives to achieve in a campaign. It is also one of the hardest to master! Campaigns that evoke emotion and build memories are 99% routed toward the storytelling approach. Marketers have also always taught the art of “empathy.” If you empathize with your consumers, you will understand their problems and the solutions they are looking for. This is true even when it comes to emotions. We are more fearless during any sporting event where our country is participating. Vulnerable when talking about family etc. The challenge is to bring these emotions to life through an eye of empathy and connecting it to how and what it has to do with the brand. In Marketing, insight mining involves thoroughly understanding the target group and sifting through large amounts of data. This really is art. It then results in lasting character building, nostalgic stories and arousing emotions, ultimately leading consumers to feel and think that the brand is genuine and relatable.

Activating Emotional Bond via Marketing

Instilling emotions is the primary reason why a brand chooses a more difficult path to engage its consumers. It converts the audience from passive to active recipients of the message. Brands strive to craft a narrative that moves past the transactional interaction and adds a more human-like persona to a brand. That, in turn, triggers a bond and a voice that consumers are willing to hear and listen to. Research shows that Gen Z relates more to a brand that has a voice and purpose and is willing to listen to what its consumers say. Hence, this is the perfect era to indulge in creating a lasting bond by triggering the emotions that Gen Z cares about. This is not just to relate with the target audience but also to build brand presence, noticeability, loyalty, and advocacy.

Example of Brands Doing Great Storytelling

Globally there are numerous examples of brands doing fabulous storytelling. The concept is not new but not many brands have mastered it even now. Dove and Coke are prime examples of brands that not only embedded storytelling in their narrative but also used it to create its purpose. Dove stands for “real beauty” and through the years it has shown real life examples of what real beauty means and why girls should be confident in who they are. The campaign has addressed multiple cultural norms, beliefs, and point of views in its narrative. It has stayed true to the “right” thing. It also challenged the common idea of altered beauty as real beauty. Whether it was an age-old concept of photoshopping models for that perfect image for an outdoor key visual or relying on filters in its recent campaign of “Turn your back”, it has always stood for reflecting the vulnerable side of women as the most beautiful. No wonder the brand is the strongest personal care globally in terms of equity and market leadership.

Coke on the other hand has always stood for “Happiness”. It has harnessed the message through multiple distinctive brand assets which have stayed consistent over time, countries and cultures. Whether it is bringing families together over a meal or reflecting a strong bond in terms of friendship, it has stayed true to the shared feeling of happiness. “Share a coke” was the prime example of such a campaign where it brought the essence of the brand to life across regions.

Safe to say all these campaigns led to some great brand recognition, memorability and sales for the brand. All this along with having a solid brand equity that it enjoys. Only because the insight was captured well enough to make the brand look and sound more human.

Storytelling must not Exploit the Vulnerable

Storytelling, even though an effective technique to encourage engagement, also has its pitfalls.  Approximately only 10% of all branded campaigns are successful in making an impact when its comes to good storytelling. Couple of reasons why this could happen is when emotion triggered does not look or sound authentic, or that it is too provocative or that maybe the emotion or insight is spot on but it has no connection with the brand. All these reasons could alienate a consumer completely and can result in an opposite outcome of what the brand teams would have expected to get out of it. Sometimes the campaigns seem like the brief was only to trigger a heightened sense of emotion. This, in my marketing dictionary, is called the “exploiting the emotion” syndrome. In some ways it does seem a little unethical because it is capitalizing on the consumers’ vulnerabilities. There is a fine line explaining the difference but brand teams for sure should be mindful of not “cashing” on people’s emotions.  

Photo Courtesy: Sarah Siddiqui

The Verdict: Storytelling Must be done tastefully

It is true that storytelling and triggering an emotional connect with consumers will benefit the brand in the long term. However, marketers need to remember that it needs to be done in a manner which resonates with the brand. It shouldn’t be to stand out or fit in. It should come from a need to address. It should serve a purpose and ideally should be entrenched in the roots of the brand. It’s funny how some brands tend to adopt multiple emotional touchpoints but never really own any. It might serve the purpose in the short term but can be hazardous for brand’s equity as it may make the brand tonality inconsistent. Marketers should be careful in choosing that emotional voice and learn to deliver that story in a manner that’s here to stay!

Published By: Aize Perez