The Power of Storytelling in Sales
TLDR; Storytelling and its role in marketing, 2018 college ROI, physicists hanging with biologists, and stopping the spread of “fake news.”
Dear Reader,
The following is a cross-post from our Marketing Trends newsletter written by producer Ben Wilson. If you enjoy today’s letter, subscribe to his weekly newsletter at MarketingTrends.com.
“Are our blades good?”
“No. Our blades are f***ing great,” Michael Dubin confidently declared to the camera.
The team laughed as they watched the video starring their CEO marching through their warehouse advertising the company.
Eight years of acting and comedic training had finally paid off, Dubin thought to himself as he sat with his employees watching the final cut of their first (and absolutely absurd) commercial. It featured a toddler shaving a man’s head, tennis jokes, a machete, a bear, and a “make it rain” scene… it embodied their company culture and what they knew their product could do.
Of course, the video was hilarious. But Dubin knew it had another secret recipe as well, one that was potentially even more important: The video told a story. It tracked Dubin as he walked around the company warehouse and told the story of the company’s origin.
His hope was that the video would not only make consumers laugh, but pull them into Dollar Shave Club’s company narrative and help them buy-in.
“Ready to publish?” his Marketing Director asked.
“As ready as it’ll ever be,” Dubin responded with a nervous smile.
Within 48 hours of going live, the video went viral. It was shared and viewed millions of times across the internet. Even more importantly, people bought into the company’s narrative. Many funny online videos have gone viral without selling any product, but Dollar Shave Club received more than 12,000 orders in the two days after posting the video.
Today, Dollar Shave Club’s legendary launch video has been viewed over 26 million times and in 2016, the company was acquired for 1.1 billion dollars.
Their keys to success? Great content. Great storytelling. And f***ing great razors.
The Takeaway: Storytelling is the ultimate growth hack.
Getting It Down to a Science
Today, data is hidden all around us, and this begs the question: Is storytelling still important during a time when analytics reign supreme?
Great analytics inform your storytelling; they point it in the right direction. But the data won’t do the storytelling for you. The fact that marketers can now measure in more detail than ever before won’t eliminate storytelling; it will improve it.
Great data, great analytics, and great storytelling go hand in hand.
When we talk about these two fields, many refer to “the art of story” and “data science.” But the reverse is also true: There is an art to analytics and a science to storytelling.
We learned more about the science of storytelling when we talked to Clay Hausmann. Clay has an interesting background, one that gives him an especially strong insight into the underlying scientific structure of storytelling.
Clay is currently the CMO of Aktana, a company that uses AI to provide decision support to life science sales and marketing teams. He has also worked in the past as a screenwriter and owns a consultancy, Treatment, that applies the storytelling tools of screenwriting to help brands communicate and market themselves.
According to Clay, there is an underlying structure to stories, and it’s important to apply design thinking to that structure.
“Storytelling is blueprinting. You have to stay within certain boundaries. If you take a story development approach to strategy, then you have to remove that softer side. It’s not telling a story around a campfire, it’s a design process. It’s a rigorous process.”
But if a story is a blueprint, then what are the elements of that blueprint. What are the elements of an effective story?
The Elements of Story
What makes a great story is something people spend lifetimes studying. It’s far too big a subject to cover exhaustively in this newsletter. But here are a few key elements that marketers should pay more attention to:
The inciting incident: Every great story has an event that triggers everything else that happens in the story. Think about what the inciting incident is for your company. Clay said that an inciting incident is “essential.” Why?
“That thing that motivated you to do it in the first place should remain the core of what you’re doing and what you’re making.”
The protagonist: In a previous episode of Marketing Trends, we interviewed Benton Crane, CEO of Harmon Brothers. On it, Benton talked about how his company uses the Hero’s Journey framework to tell their stories.
The mistake that many brands make, according to Benton, is that they think of themselves as the heroes, rather than their customers:
“As a brand, we tend to fall into the same patterns that we do as individuals. We see our company as the hero swooping in to save our clients and solve their problems, and we see our company goals as being the quest. We say things like, ‘We drove massive success,’ instead of ‘We helped our client drive massive success.’”
Remember, your story needs a protagonist, and it’s not you. It’s your customer.
The controlling idea: The controlling idea is similar to a mission statement. It describes the purpose of your brand. However, too many mission statements are “self-serving corporate-speak,” according to Clay Hausmann. A controlling idea is a good replacement. So what is it?
“A controlling idea answers the questions: ‘What is the point you’re trying to make?’ and ‘What is your message?’ It says how you will make your audience’s life better from before they had your product or brand to after.”
The controlling idea will focus your marketing toward the audience and help them understand why your brand will be valuable to them.
Conclusion
Of course, there are many more elements of a great story. For those who would like to dive deeper, Clay recommended reading Story by Robert McKee. Of course, another great place to start is listening to our full interview with Clay Hausmann.
To return to the original question: Is storytelling still important during a time when analytics reign supreme? The answer is yes. Marketers like Clay and Benton have achieved massive success from mastering storytelling, and any marketer who follows in their footsteps will find they are able to exponentially increase their results.
The Takeaway: Those who master the art and science of storytelling design will find the effectiveness of their marketing increases exponentially.
Hot Off the Press 🔥
New on Mission Daily. “Fake news” has massively affected journalists and hijacked media platforms around the world. More appropriately named “disinformation campaigns,” these stories have key similarities that, if identified quickly, can help platforms stop the narrative before it is spread.
Today, we are joined by Dan Keyserling, COO of Jigsaw, a unit within Alphabet that uses technology to make the world safer. Dan shares what is being done today to identify disinformation campaigns online and how they are thinking about building solutions.
Fresh from Marketing Trends. If it wasn’t for a part-time job during her P.h.D studies, Paige probably wouldn’t be where she’s at today. Thankfully, Paige O’Neill never looked back. She’s currently the CMO at Sitecore, a company that creates human connections between brands and their customers with end-to-end content, seamless commerce, and personalization.
On this episode, Paige sits down to with Ian Faison and Lauren Vaccarello to discuss how she got into marketing, Sitecore, the future of digital experience, lessons learned from a career in marketing, and much more!
Mission News 🗞
This section features the best of what the team at The Mission HQ is reading, watching, listening to, playing, doing, and meditating on. 🤗
Reading 📚
👂 What’s the #1 way to have better conversations and make deeper connections? Listen. Really listen.
“When you connect with others through mindful conversations, you have the power to make strong, lasting relationships in every area of your life.
If you’re not listening, you can miss out on details that create a connection.
The ability to make others feel heard and validated can be more impactful than what you communicate through any brand, product, or service.”
Watching 🎬
🌍 If you are looking for a heavy-duty, mind-opening watch, check out The Most Unknown documentary on Netflix.
“Traversing disciplines from physics to psychology, nine scientists share ideas and seek common ground by delving into deep existential questions.”
With an interesting set up of having different kinds of scientists interview each other (i.e. a biologist interview a physicist, or a geologist interview a micro-biologist), this show does an amazing job bridging big scientific questions across disciplines.
Food For Thought 📈
🎓 Reddit is at it again with more thought-provoking graphs:
Giveaway Time ⏰
The hardest part of transforming yourself is being accountable. It’s easy to convince yourself that your body hasn’t changed ‘that much’ over the years. But small little lies become harsh truths, and the harsh truth is if you don’t actively control your health, you will lose it.
The Withings Body+ Wi-Fi Smart Scale makes it easy to control your health. It records and tracks all of your critical measures in a simple app. No more logging information, no more lost accountability. Just step on and record.
Want a Withings scale for free? In partnership with b8ta, we are giving away three! Start being more accountable today, sign up here.
Sign Off ✌️
It’s Mini-Friday! One more day until the weekend. 🥳
Remember, today’s newsletter was a crosspost from the Marketing Trends newsletter. If you enjoyed it, be sure to subscribe at MarketingTrends.com!
This was the August 29th edition of the Mission Daily newsletter. If you like what you read, join us on our mission.
