Trade_perspectives

BRANDS PARTICIPATING IN PERSONAL NARRATIVES INCREASE CONSUMER

ENGAGEMENT

by DIRK SHAWPrinciple, Trade

2Brands Participating in Personal Narratives Increase Consumer Engagement.

- Dirk Shaw, Trade

We believe brands that actively participate in helping people find, express and shape their personal narrative will be more relevant and ultimately more valuable to consumers over time.

Personal narratives are forward looking – they draw us out of

the past and into the present and focus us on the opportunities ahead. They typically

define a domain where we aspire to have

greater impact over time and give us an

ability to prioritize all those short-term calls

for our attention.

“ ”

Each interaction people have with your brand has the potential to make their personal narrative richer. What can a brand do to help people develop, share and craft their personal narrative?

Every day, people engage in the story and narrative called their life. It’s personal. And when things are personal, people pay attention. They are more passionate and committed, and they naturally gravitate toward places where other people, living similar personal narratives, gather. Passionate people, your consumers, are more engaged, especially if a brand has provided the means to participate.

why aligning to a personal narrative matters

In the past, personal narrative was influenced by limited one-way inputs, such as proximity, socioeconomics, and one-way channels such as television. However, the last 15 years have radically transformed the way a person curates, shares and actively develops their personal narrative. People are asking others to participate in their personal narrative - one experience, tweet and share at a time. Brands that think of interaction as making a choice to participate changes possibilities. A brand can have a meaningful role in personal narratives by aligning products to peoples’ experiences and the stories they share online.

what’s different?

Look at the energy drink category. Some may be interested in the drink product, but in reality most people care about the adjacent activities with which these brands have aligned. They are interested in other people who participate in similar activities, or those elite athletes they aspire to be – everyone from a basketball superstar to motocross racer to a skateboarder. These stories of aspiration and affinity shape the personal narrative of people. And the brand that provides the means in which to share these stories is well-rewarded.

JOHN HAGEL


- Dirk Shaw, Trade

This seismic change has caused media budgets to shift to digital delivery platforms, with a large part of these investments falling into the practice of content marketing. Nearly 40% of marketing, advertising and communications budgets will be dedicated to some form of content marketing this year. The realignment of investment has spawned an entire cottage industry of platforms and content providers, each with their own business-driven needs.

It’s no surprise that 61% of consumers say they feel better about a company

that delivers relevant content and are more

likely to buy from that company versus their competitors.

Nearly 40% of marketing, advertising and communications budgets will be dedicated

to some form of content marketing this year.

+

+

+ +

the big challenge for marketers

People don’t exist to consume brand stories. They seek meaning through experiences in life. People live their lives in multiple personal narratives, such as parenthood, love, creation, family, friendship and leisure. It is within each of these personal narratives that stories are told, shared and sought after. And it is these stories that advertently or inadvertently change behavior. This is essential to understand in order to help shape your consumers’ narratives.

It is also essential for a brand’s own narrative to connect with consumers. In today’s fragmented world, these stories are consumed as bite-sized pieces of digital content, which means that consumer opinion of a brand’s created narrative is time dependent. It is shaped over time by the stories brands tell AND the stories other people tell of them.

Brands can no longer deliver a self-serving inward-focused narrative, especially through interruptions in media. Most CMOs realize stories influence opinion, consideration and ultimately a purchase, which is why 79% of marketers report their organizations are shifting their brands to a content-driven approach.

How do corporate marketers and communicators, as well as their agencies, place a rigorous focus on aligning stories to consumer personal narrative? There’s a lot to overcome. Here are ways to think about it.


- Dirk Shaw, Trade

marketing that works

What’s missing in the current content marketing environment is the use of personal narrative as the layer to connect brand, marketing and direct response communications. Adding this personal layer knits together new platforms, content providers and brand communications by relevant story themes that motivate people toward business goals.

Connecting content marketing with established marketing infrastructure through personal narratives across an enterprise allows a brand to look forward. It can begin to predict which themes will resonate for participation, the places it makes sense to publish these stories, and the types of content to create – which can be based on audience/story archetype models.

This predictive capability will increase story utility and effectiveness towards a business goal. Overall, it can reduce waste in any publishing process by focusing creative, operational and financial resources on things that work.

organizational chaos from content explosion

Not having an infrastructure that allows connecting with customers is one part of the equation. The rapid growth in branded content creation combined with the hundreds of platforms for managing and publishing, makes it difficult for any one person to have a single view on how a multi-platform story is being told to the measureable benefit of a business. And organizational complexities grow with the size of the company. Those with 10,000 or more employees may use 18 different content marketing tactics. Marketers need guiding principles to align stories, platforms and data to achieve measurable results.

Solution: Personal narratives are the organizing principle for content.

Today’s highly fragmented digital

landscape means that people participate

in stories fluidly across platforms and screens, which means

every story we tell needs to be multiplied

by the number of channels we want to

connect through.

“ ”

KEVIN KELLERGE CAPITAL


- Dirk Shaw, Trade

Trade employs a story-centric team model and uses editorial planning principles to guide which stories are told, who we are telling them to, and where they are going. Trade’s Six-Step approach is scalable for everything from a multiplatform global editorial plan that operates like a newsroom to a story-centric content campaign. Trade reviews a brand’s current communications, using the six behaviors of a story-sharing framework, to understand what types of stories the brand is telling today, who they are reaching, and how well they are performing. We couple these insights with the organization’s alignment around storytelling and the platforms used for editorial management, publishing and analytics. This assessment provides a high-level roadmap of new opportunities to improve how a brand can better align to its consumers’ personal narratives, while ultimately impacting market performance.

TRADE’S SIX-STEP APPROACH

Storytelling teams must posses an innate understanding of personal narratives and how people participate and consume stories on various platforms. Teams must simultaneously design the story journey, which allows people to participate at varying levels over varying periods of time.


- Dirk Shaw, Trade

Understanding personal narratives is about mining third party research documents, search behavior, social media conversations and personal interviews on topics that are directly relevant to the audience. Moreover, understanding comes from looking at equally important adjacent areas in which a brand should be associated with or play a role. This exploration provides insight on how existing storytelling aligns to these themes and topics, and how it aligns with peoples’ personal narratives. It also provides information on the competition. These insights are essential to informing the stories a brand tells and shares, as well as finding new ways to play a role within someone’s personal narrative.

This exploration identifies whitespace opportunities that are key personal narrative insights for each audience type, archetype models based on behaviors, and high-level themes aligned to those archetypes.

Insights from personal narrative exploration and story mining offer editorial and creative teams fuel for ideation that propels theme development. Over time, these themes are then expressed and aligned to each phase of a known customer’s journey.

The personal narrative architecture and design provides overarching theme concepts, a multi-platform content strategy, detailed themes and approaches, editorial direction, and a high level tone/voice.

1

2

PERSONAL NARRATIVE MOSAIC

PERSONAL NARRATIVE ARCHITECTURE

identify direct and adjacent personal narratives in which to credibly participate.

define the thematic structure and tempo of storytelling.


- Dirk Shaw, Trade

Participating in personal narratives is where stories come to life across channels and media types, and where people begin to include brands as part of their story. Our blended team model allows us to tailor each story to the platform on which it is being published, pitched or bought in a highly agile manner. The act of publishing is just the beginning. Providing consumers meaningful ways to participate with the brand is a long-term commitment. Creating purposeful stories allows production and publishing to be measured by the number of customers participating in the narrative. Each story or content asset can be tagged by theme, customer archetype, journey point, media channel and timing for measurement and refinement.

Consumers can participate in personal narratives via an abundance of interactive experiences, such as digital assets (video, photography, visuals), social content, media relations and paid media assets.

4 PARTICIPATE IN PERSONAL NARRATIVESbring stories to life across digital platforms with engaging content.

Trade’s planning model takes a complete view of people’s brand touch-points across paid, earned and owned media. We have a deep understanding of the context in which people participate in stories in both physical and digital life. Our model allows us to design story experiences over media channels and time that gets attention and participation.

Reviewing the multi-platform story experience will help provide a model for aligning stories to the purchase funnel, customer journey mapping, and the role each platform will play.

3 STORY EXPERIENCE DESIGNdesign a blueprint for how people will participate across channels.


- Dirk Shaw, Trade

Trade can break down which audiences have the highest levels of participation, which theme is performing best and what type of content on which platforms are moving people to convert. This is how we mine and measures data, because participation equals engagement and engagement leads to down stream activity that has real measurable value.

Our Story Performance model aligns content within a story hierarchy targeted to specific archetypes. Unique attributes such as stage of purchase, targeted keywords and narrative type are given to each story to better understand which story types perform best. All of this is overlaid with an attribution model that’s tied to business objectives like lead generation, acquisition or brand awareness. This complete view allows us to pinpoint exactly which archetypes, themes, channels and content types are working. These insights will then inform where bets are placed for future stories and the channels. Trade’s Story Performance model provides business goal definition, toolset recommendations, report design and a baseline analysis against this new model.

6 STORY PERFORMANCEmeasure your results

We are not just storytellers – we are also technologists who understand how to organize people around content-centric solutions. Trade’s work with the most regulated industries has given us an understanding of how to scale and guide a brand’s operation as a storytelling entity. Trade’s detailed editorial and calendar planning includes, asset type, publishing frequency, approval criteria and guidance, editorial board roles/functions, documentation and adverse situation policy. Trade has developed recommended technology stacks that combine tools ranging from editorial management, multi-platform publishing to analytics that integrates with most enterprise publishing and analytic solutions. This allows teams to see more and do more, faster. From all this, Trade provides a brand playbook that outlines organizational changes, governance models and technology platforms.

5 STORYTELLING ORGANIZATIONbuild a storytelling entity that allows brands to continuously engage in personal narratives.

The proliferation of brand “storytelling” has at the same time given brands entirely new opportunities to connect with consumers and made it 1000x harder to create true meaning. Story for story’s sake is an approach that misses the mark entirely and is much too common in our media landscape. Personal narratives provide the alignment that stretch across products, platforms, divisions, disciplines, individuals, messages, and yes, even stories. At the end of the day the goal of a CMO is to thread all these pieces together to drive revenue efficiently for the brand. Understanding where your brand fits in the personal narratives of the people that matter most to your company’s success is the BIG IDEA.

Looking at everything through this lens helps the organization come to the realization that the brand is just a medium consumers will use to continue their narrative – the means to some end, big or small, at some point in time. Nothing more. The best brands will embrace this and work hard to become a part of the life-long personal journey as it unfolds versus becoming the story itself.

THE BIG IDEA IS NOT THE IDEA ITSELF

Documents

Trade_perspectives