How Does Love Make a Subaru?
It’s All About a Marketing Guy with Stories to Tell

I like brands that know how to optimize the customer experience with powerful storytelling. According to the Digital Marketing Institute “now more than ever, people strive to invest in a brand’s narrative or story.” I hate to admit how many lonely evenings I’ve spent trying to connect with a brand that can fill this hole of mine.
The smart brands get it. Stories stimulate. Real storytelling develops deep connections. If I know my brand cares and values me as a happy-go-lucky ne’er-do-well, then I’m going to make the emotional investment to see this relationship work.
Strategic marketing can be a tender love-sport. Enchant me, beguile me if you must.
I’m an emotional animal with 21st century needs. Powerpoints and bullet points leave me cold. Save your logical arguments for Pythagoras. I’m here for the stories that flood my precious neurotransmitters with hormones and endorphins. I consider that a small cost of doing business with me.
There’s a story circulating in 47 marketing books that storytelling began with early man, maybe 200,000 years ago. Anthropologists consider that the advent of marketing — it’s our oldest profession. Early stories were pretty good and they only flourished as words were invented. It’s been a remarkable evolutionary ride that sets us apart from our Bonobo cousins. Powerful storytelling takes us back to our happy caveman times.
One marketing expert said: “If you can be a good storyteller there’s no limit to what you can do. Stories break down walls, build trust and influence people to act.” That makes good sense to me. That’s why we all turned out when the storyteller came to town and spent two-bits on his magical elixir.
Reading great literature enlarges and improves us as human beings. It makes us better able to understand other people and see the world from their perspective. Keep those blogs coming for humanity’s sake, if not for the 20% increase in value of your product or services.
Words matter. Brain scans reveal what happens in our heads when we read a detailed description or an evocative metaphor. Words like “lavender,” “cinnamon” and “baby diarrhea,” for example, elicit a response not only from the language-processing areas of our brains, but the parts devoted to smells too!
If a brand knows how to make me smell something rotting in my backpack will I shop for a new one? You do the math.
Just don’t terrify me, especially if you’re selling a home security system or pants.
If you hope to give your readers a good slaunchwise feeling, pepper your stories with fun words like “robust,” “total solution” and “price-performance.” Everyone will gyre and gimble in the wabe and sales will be frumious! Lewis Carroll is handy for further inspiration.
Here’s a good story if you’re selling a total broadband solution: A friendly alien came to visit us here on Earth. He was happy to share some deep insights he had from across the galaxy. But he had his differences, naturally. He could only communicate by tap dancing and farting. Unfortunately, right after he landed he saw a house on fire and excitedly tried to warn everybody about the terrible danger they were in. His presentation caught them by surprise. I think they killed him.
Now you see why communications are so important to your enterprise? You can use that story for a travel app too. I’m sure Kurt Vonnegut wouldn’t mind. He was a PR guy for a while.
One more story: For years Subaru’s brand was stuck in the mud. They tried one failed rational approach after another. But bonobos are the rational ones. Humans, it was discovered, come to Subaru for love. So the savvy folks at Carmichael Lynch hijacked the conversation and told the stories of love.
Boring campaigns were replaced by bawdy bodice-rippers and tender erotica probably. A new dating app followed and test drives became fun again. Love, it’s what makes a Subaru so titillating.
Don’t forget. Stories stimulate imaginations and passions and create a sense of community. If J.K. Rowling can do it your brand should too. But if that doesn’t work, keep in mind that Facebook’s randy Artificial Intelligence has a sweet high-bandwidth connection to the cerebral cortex of 2 billion of us who haven’t a clue. That’s another good story!