Brand Storytelling: The art of conversation

They say great conversationalists are first really great listeners.

The communications master Dale Carnegie put it this way: “If you aspire to be a good conversationalist, be an attentive listener. To be interesting, be interested. Ask questions that other persons will enjoy answering. Encourage them to talk about themselves and their accomplishments. Remember that the people you are talking to are a hundred times more interested in themselves and their wants and problems than they are in you and your problems.”

Keep in mind that Mr. Carnegie wrote these words in the mid-1930s. This is not new material. The not-so-subtle jab at the general populace is this: we love to talk about ourselves. We love to talk about what we’ve done, who we’ve seen, the hurdles we’ve crossed and triumphs we’ve realized. If we’re not careful, we can talk about how amazing we are and leave our guest completely out of the discussion.

Brands do this all the time. Agencies do this all the time. All this chest thumping and self promoting leaves consumers and customers on the outside looking in … if they even stay around long enough to keep looking.

So how can brands master the art of conversation in their storytelling?

Stop talking about you

As a young copywriter I was taught to talk about the benefits of each product feature because the benefit is what the consumer/customer is actually looking for. It’s the solution provided by the feature.

But many companies want to talk about their accomplishments, size, scale, equipment … features. This is a TELL approach, as in, “let me tell you about me.” It almost makes sense. After months and years of product and brand development, people want to get credit for their hard work. The problem is that no one wants to listen to you talk about you.

Start listening to them

I have a friend named Karen who is amazing at this. Karen is the kind of person who circles a room meeting people and comes back within a few minutes knowing personal details on every single person. People open up to her and share their inner thoughts, goals, and challenges as if she’s the therapist they never knew they needed. It’s magical to see in person.

So what’s her secret? Karen asks great questions and doesn’t interject her own stories while other people are talking. People open up to her because she is genuinely interested in them. If the other person doesn’t ask about Karen, she’s fine to leave those details out.

Obviously brands can’t work a room in their daily communication. But they can spend a lot more time listening to the wants and needs of their customers. Those wants and needs often show up as frustrations.

In an earlier post I talked about Command™ Brand hanging solutions. The brand had tried for years to talk about the superiority of their technology over other options but consumers didn’t care. It was the better mousetrap no one wanted. But in research consumers talked about their frustrations with punching holes in walls and having to repair them, about not being able to move things around, about wanting to hang some things for the holidays and take them down later without making it a big deal. Those frustrations opened up new opportunities for the brand. By repositioning the brand as “Damage-Free Hanging Solutions” that can let you change the position of your hanging as quickly and easily as you change your mind, the Command™ Brand found audiences who couldn’t live without the brand.

Be nice. Be real.

You might think that being nice should be a given in brand storytelling, but it’s not. Brands should choose their tone of voice and brand personality with purpose, teach the fundamentals to everyone who interacts with customers, and reinforce the principles on a regular basis.

When helping organizations launch or rebrand, we spend a healthy amount of time on brand personality and how that will come to life in the marketplace. That may include call center scripts, ad copy guidelines, online content guidelines, etc. Everyone on the brand team must be clear how the brand communicates and what tone of voice is supported. Wendy’s might be able to get away with snarky tweets, but your brand might not. And you should know before you damage the brand.

Let them be the hero

Dale Carnegie said people “are a hundred times more interested in themselves and their wants and problems than they are in you and your problems.” Essentially, we’re all fascinated by ourselves. Think you’re different? Find a group photo you’re in and see who you look for first. Yup. You look for you first. We all do. Then we look at our friends and enemies (hoping they look horrible in the shot), and filter out everyone else as visual noise.

In the brand storytelling world, we must let the customer be the hero. The brand’s position is to help solve their issues and take their pain away. That means helping them be better cooks, better at lawn management, better at home repair, cleaning, office work, workouts, weight management, and many more.

Brands exist to help make the world a better place. They do that by enabling and empowering their customers to take on new challenges and be amazing in their efforts. That means the customer is the hero.

No, really, it’s all about them

We’re only focusing on four steps to brand conversations here because it shouldn’t be that complicated:

1. Stop talking about you

2. Start listening to them

3. Be nice. Be real.

4. Let them be the hero

There are times when brands need to cover details about themselves, but more often than not, the focus should be on the customers and how the brand can help solve their challenges.

If you’re in the market for storytelling help, let’s chat to see how we can support you.

What’s Your Dandelion Strategy?

Your brand should perform like a dandelion: resilient, resourceful, prolific in output, delivering impressive results year after year.

Every spring my yard and I do battle. When the snow melts and the grass starts to turn green again I have visions of a deep, thick, healthy lawn stretching to soak up the sun and welcoming in the warm air. Instead, I get about 20 different varieties of grass left over from the previous owner, clover and dandelions. Lots of dandelions. I hate dandelions. Or at least I did until I started studying up on my adversary.

Now I'm thinking maybe we could learn a few things from the lowly dandelion.

Resilience
Dandelions don't need perfect conditions to flourish. They don't mind if the soil is bad, the water inconsistent, or even if they have to go it alone against all odds ... like taking root in a small crack in concrete. They accept the conditions given and find a way to succeed.

Ever try to kill a dandelion by pulling it out of the ground? Go ahead, try. It'll be back tomorrow or the next day, or the next. That's because dandelions put down a taproot up to 10 inches long which allows it to flourish in some really nasty conditions. Even better, the taproot is brittle, so when you yank hard parts of the root break off and that last little bit left in the ground is all the dandelion needs to grow again. It's not going away until you make life impossible.

How resilient is your brand? Do you need the perfect environment to thrive, or can you take it on the chin and stand up again? What are you doing to give yourself a shot at success even against all odds?

Resourcefulness
Let's look at that taproot again. It hangs out in the ground all winter long and waits for the perfect time to emerge. By the time you see what's going on, the dandelion is way ahead of you. You don't stand a chance of winning this battle, and it knows.

But dandelions don't just look out for themselves. They bring up nutrients that help surrounding plants. They loosen and aerate the soil in some places and hold on to it in others to fight erosion. They even fertilize the ground around them ... and people rave about the iron and Vitamin A they add to salads.

How would you rate your brand on resourcefulness? How do you take advantage of the opportunities around you? What do you contribute to the community?

Prolific Output
Dandelions put on a show, no doubt about it. Legend has it that hundreds of years ago people yanked out the grass so the dandelions had more room to grow. But even with just a little room, each plant produces a handful of bright yellow flowers. Each flower may bear 100 or more seeds. Each seed is laser focused on taking root and thereby continuing the cycle. And since it can take just six to eight weeks to go from seed to maturity, dandelions do everything in their power to make sure their legacy continues.

How prolific is your brand output? What are you doing to spread the tribe and make sure more people have a chance to embrace your brand?

Deliver Impressive Results Year After Year
Producing seeds in spring and fall, sending down deep roots to endure the cold winter and murderous attempts of landscapers and gardeners, dandelions return each year to prosper, grow and share. They'll happily find a home in a new neighborhood with great conditions, or replenish the area in bad soil. How about your brand?

Are you building a brand that will last, one that has the ability to keep growing and changing each year, or are you consumed with the now? What should you do to change your trajectory and give you a better chance of survival?

We can spend time debating the merits of challenger brands versus leader brands, legacy versus start up, entrepreneurs versus intrapreneurs, etc. Or, we can simplify the conversation even further and ask: what's your dandelion strategy?

Is the ad agency model dead?

A year after launching a start-up agency built on filling the gap between in-house creative groups and traditional agencies, I get asked almost weekly if I think the traditional agency model is dying. The answer? Maybe. But the reasons are far simpler than people think.

1. Too expensive: This always has been an issue. Agencies that can't prove their value will die.

2. Too slow: I think this goes to responsiveness. Not everything can be done quickly. But much of it can. Time still equals money.

3. Too many people: Agencies still bring five people to meetings when two will do. And clients recognize that only two are actually doing the talking. Yet all five are billing $200 an hour. That's a logic problem.

4. Too full of themselves: The condescending, insular personalities who can't be bothered by the business challenge are just not relevant in a world that needs to find ways to solve problems faster and build better relationships.

5. Too much jargon: Can we give "proprietary processes" a rest? Many companies would be happy to forego the bloated process for faster, smarter work. Those processes are rarely proprietary, anyway.

In the end I think it's about solving problems efficiently and humbly.

What if hope actually is a strategy?

Over the last few years of working with executives to help establish their business foundations and reset their company cultures, I have heard the phrase "hope is not a strategy" enough to have a gag reflex.

People bring it up when we talk about missions and values, when we get to employer branding and company culture, and when we discuss marketing plans. It seems like a go-to drop the mike kind of phrase for people who want to kill a conversation.

One major issue is that hope is EXACTLY what's missing from many company cultures today.

Executives must lead from the front in uncertain times. They must prove that even when it's tough they, the leaders, have some idea of what a positive future looks like and are willing and able to help the company achieve success. They must give the people in the organization hope that tomorrow will be okay.

Great leaders get this innately. Weak leaders struggle with it and as a result their companies die from within.

Hope is not only a strategy. It is one of the key factors in resetting struggling companies, blending cultures in mergers and acquisitions, and bolstering healthy companies looking to take on greater challenges.

Regardless of what your company values say, people need hope.

Build Private Label Brands That Last

Private Label has come a long way since the 1970s!

In the US, private-label products have long carried a stigma of being the generics—the items people bought when they needed to compromise. Some point to the energy crisis of the 1970s as a boom-and-bust period for private-label products. Consumers were forced to trade down from their beloved brands to cheaper options because they simply couldn’t afford the items they really wanted. They bought a lot of private-label products, and—by most accounts—the experiences didn’t go all that well.

Two hard lessons were learned during this period:

1) Private label more often than not meant significantly lower quality and;

2) Consumers couldn’t wait to trade back up to brands and products they really wanted when their budgets allowed the switch.

Private-label advocates knew they had to find ways to build brand loyalty and gain credit for more than just being the lowest-cost option.

The good news is that private-label brands have made huge strides in the hearts and minds of American consumers. During the Great Recession of 2007–2009, as in the 1970s, large numbers of households were driven to private label. But one significant difference is that as the economy has shown signs of strengthening, consumers haven’t bailed from private label. A recent Nielsen report indicated that 71% of consumers say private-label quality has improved over time.

Can private-label brands hold on to their good fortune? We’ve identified five key principles that need to be in place for private label to hang on to and advance their share.

BUILD BRANDS INSTEAD OF COMPROMISES

Consumers always claim to want the lowest price, which is why so many private-label efforts follow a national-brand-equivalent (NBE) strategy. But when this happens, consumers are reminded that private label is the trade down from their desired choice. So private label gets no credit for brand or product innovation, nor loyalty based on its own equities. Consumers will trade up and out when possible.

Target’s Up & Up brand abandoned NBE lookalike branding, opting instead for clean, bright packaging and clear system architecture to communicate minimalism without sacrificing style. By building up its own brand, Up & Up created a recognizable, “cheap-chic” offering in line with Target’s master-brand positioning.

LIMIT YOUR LAYERS

Consumers have been trained to perceive three tiers in most retail environments: cheap stuff, expensive stuff and everything else. However, owned brands can fall prey to presenting too many layers. Some retailers have difficulty killing off weak products or collections that no longer match the brand and instead create sub-tiers and super-tiers. When consumers can’t distinguish the nuances, they apply the three-tier rule for simplicity.

Sainsbury’s evolution to private-label leadership began with a clear good/better/best strategy that provided separation within the tiers—“Basics,” “by Sainsbury’s” and “Taste the Difference.” Giving each brand a discrete (and complementary) job to do ensures products are organized in a smart, accessible way so consumers can quickly assess and know what they’re getting.

MATCH THE BRAND SCALE TO THE SITUATION

In today’s superstores, shopper mindsets shift from aisle to aisle. Know where private-label initiatives can succeed as large-scale systems crossing the entire store (such as Costco’s Kirkland Signature brand) or where they are more effective as smaller systems that leverage the unique emotional cues of specific categories (think Walgreens’ private-label-turned-national-brand Boots for high-end beauty). It’s important to match the needs of the brand, category and consumers.

MAKE EACH BRAND STAND FOR SOMETHING DISTINCT

People don’t buy what you make, they buy why you make it. Owned brands can become watered down over time by lack of clarity in the brand purpose or position in the marketplace. Building a purpose-driven brand empowers owned brands to use discretion when it comes to product assortment. And innovation against category white space can be a driving differentiator when tied to an established position.

Wegmans’ Simply from Nature pet line does this well. Driven by the insight that pets are family too, the line cuts out artificial colors, flavors and preservatives. Here, staking a claim to a considered brand experience—while still driving value—elevates product benefits to differentiators and positions for preference.

KNOW HOW GOOD IS GOOD ENOUGH

Consumers tend to shop retail categories in one of two ways as they move across the store: top-down quality assessments and bottom-up compromise. For top-down assessments, they’re concerned about failure, perception and replacement costs. Think about buying fresh meat, where the family meal is on the line. The typical household only buys a few types of fresh meat that they already know how to cook. This drives butchers crazy but it makes sense when you think about it. Because if mom screws up a London Broil she’s trying for the first time she ruins dinner and suddenly the family is doomed to cereal or pizza for the night. The family now has to pay twice for dinner ... and mom feels like she’s failed the family. That’s a lot of pressure riding on one cut of meat. Better just to stick with things she knows how to fix and look like a star at the dinner table. The same logic holds true for other categories as well, such as prestige cosmetics, where emotion and appearance count.

For bottom-up compromise, consumers look for products that deliver their desired level of performance, but at the lowest price possible. Think about buying commodity and high-use items like toilet paper, laundry care, dish care and paper goods. Sure, there are always consumers who want the best. National brands love and court that audience hourly. But not everyone wants to pay for a quicker picker upper. These consumers tend to start at the lower end of the selection set and find what works okay for their needs. For them, a paper towel that works okay is just fine. They’ll save money on paper towels and go buy more ground chuck.

While the faltering economy that drove the expansion of private label has improved, in its wake is a new class of value-minded consumers willing to keep purchasing private-label brands as long as they perceive continued quality and innovation. Brands that leverage these principles will be poised for both elevation and endurance.

It’s Spring. Time to Weed Your Brand.

Spring at my house means crazy combinations of things growing in my yard and flowerbeds. Some are flowers that somehow survived the winter, even though they are technically annuals and should have lived only one glorious year. Some are perennials that we expected to return. And others are a mélange of weeds and various sprouts.

These plants are not coordinated in any way and grow randomly and somewhat frustratingly wherever they like.

I find many brand portfolios resemble my yard in the spring: odd collections with a few purposeful placements, a few hangers-on, and a handful of items that randomly showed up over time. Why not use spring as the time to do some brand management?

Just because it grows doesn’t mean it fits

I’ve worked with a large number of brand managers who looked at their roles as two- to four-year engagements where they intended to make their mark and move up in the company. That meant launching new products and brands. It did NOT mean affecting anything that came before them. The typical result is a dysfunctional brand portfolio that makes things tough for consumers.

There are plenty of case studies on bad brand extensions like Coors Water, Colgate’s Kitchen Entrees, and Frito Lay Lemonade because it’s easy to spot the major offenders. But people forget that micro-extensions are just as dangerous: the shampoo in 30 varieties though only six sell with enough volume to justify the calories spent to get them to market. These are annuals that were beautiful for one season and should have died, but they showed up the next season and no one had the heart to get rid of them. If they’re no longer a match for the brand, or simply add color but no value, they need to go.

Build the plan but enjoy the surprise visitors

Admit it. Most of us really, really like the little things that blow in from nowhere and bloom into something pretty. Recently, Kohl’s found itself the unexpected beneficiaries of Candace Payne’s wildly popular Chewbacca Mask video. The brand took advantage of the positive vibes being given off by the video (some 152 Million views worldwide and counting) and rewarded Mrs. Payne with gift cards and gifts. Count that as a major win for the retailer and an excellent job of capitalizing on a sudden new flower. Now it’s back to the plan.

This is not to say that Kohl’s can’t continue the conversation involving “Chewbacca Mom” but it would be a mistake to change the whole program to reflect a mega-viral video.

Sometimes you just have to kill the weeds

Some companies make it hard to kill products that don’t work, or get rid of the ones that came in with an acquisition but no longer fit the brand. These are the weeds in the brand portfolio—and they have to go in order to let the good stuff shine through. Just like vines growing in the flowerbed, it can be easy to mistake weeds for healthy products, but they get in the way and choke the life out of the brand.

When Steve Jobs returned to Apple and began to turn the company around, among other things he killed off the weeds: laser printers, the Newton PDA and accessories. He simplified the portfolio so it could be amazing.

I hear plenty of people say they want their brand to be like Apple, but very few want to take the bold step of killing off products in the portfolio that seem to make money but actually drain the company of needed calories that could be better spent building something spectacular.

Be purposeful and enjoy the beautiful results

Every brand manager and company executive has a choice in what grows in the portfolio. But since there never seems to be a perfect time to reflect on what’s working and what isn’t, let this spring be the time you look things over. Have a plan. Weed accordingly. And be willing to trim some products that take on the appearance of good health but in reality suck the life out of the brand. In the end, you’ll have a stronger brand, build better brand tribes, and have the resources to continue your passion.

Could Your Brand Benefit From Personalization?

I work with a wide range of companies each year, from small mom and pops to Fortune 50s. A common thread, whether working on organizational health or brand strategy, is authenticity and humanity. Everybody wants it. Everybody talks about it. So why then do so few companies truly deliver in this area?

In many ways we can blame the convenience of email, which has done much to make communications simple, fast and easy, but has also added to the distance between people. Let’s face it, it’s often more convenient to send a quick email than to pick up the phone or even walk down the hall and have a conversation. I think we’ve lost more than we know by opting for convenience.

Before it’s B2B or B2C, it’s people to people

There are plenty of stories of famous people who wrote notes to those who touched them in some way, from Abraham Lincoln and Ronald Reagan, to John Lennon and William Faulkner. The common theme that makes the notes memorable is that the person writing the note was under no obligation to write it, and usually the person who received the note was pleasantly surprised or genuinely shocked to receive it.

I get surprised responses on the notes I write by hand. Why? Because so few people take the time any more.

 A friend asked me not long ago whether she should write a thank you note following a job interview, or simply send an email. My response was simple: write the note. I get many hundred email in any given week. I may get one handwritten note in a month, if that often. Which do you think I remember?

Personalization makes good business sense

I worked with a local triathlon shop for a few years to help them turn around their store after a particularly bad breakup between partners. The store’s reputation had taken a hit and they had virtually no money for traditional advertising and marketing. So we focused on the small things: we worked hard to rebuild positive comments on social media, we trained employees to improve the personal in-store experience and we added handwritten Thank You notes as a regular part of the process.

Notice that nothing in this list is particularly unique or difficult to execute. But the combination is rare enough these days.

In the triathlon world, new people enter the sport every week. From a retailer standpoint, that means people show up with the same questions and the same bewildered looks day after day. This can be frustrating for staff who are often seasoned athletes with years of competitive training and performance behind them. So we trained everyone in the store to think like a newbie—someone who isn’t in stellar shape, who doesn’t have all the right gear and who is probably intimidated by the thought of wearing compression gear in public.

This meant connecting on a human level and getting excited with the customer and for the customer. Most of us could use a few more people in our lives who share our interest and excitement in anything.

It also meant not focusing on the sale and, instead, focusing on the person in the store that day. We helped the staff see that by being genuine, accessible and willing to provide the right information for the right level of interest and energy, they could build relationships that far outweighed any one sale.

Finally, we implemented a simple policy of sending handwritten Thank You notes to everyone who bought a bike at the shop. Nothing complicated. Nothing convoluted. Just a note that said something like “thank you for choosing us to be your triathlon shop. We’re working on your bike to make it perfect for you. If you have any questions please don’t hesitate to call or stop by.”

Competitive triathlon bikes run from around $1,500 to beyond $10,000. And each bike is tweaked to uniquely fit each rider, which may add a week or two between the time of purchase to the time of delivery. When you’re the buyer, every day without your bike seems like an eternity. By sending handwritten notes after purchase, the store reminded each customer that the customer was important and the shop was working diligently on their expensive baby.

Personalized and growing

It’s always difficult to track the impact of soft skills like training in personal service and handwritten notes, but in the case of the triathlon shop, they saw a dramatic turnaround in positive feedback on social media, they grew their customer base in the ever-important newbie and avid athlete segments (who tend to purchase the most gear and ask the most questions), and saw a steady 20% annual growth for three straight years in an industry declining 10% annually over the same time period.

Anecdotally, the shop regularly heard back from customers who said they had never gotten a handwritten note from any store before—regardless of the size of the purchase. Those same customers said they had told several friends about their experience.

Think about that for a moment. In this day and age of antisocial media, consumers tend to tell two to five times as many people about negative experiences as compared to positive experiences. And yet this local shop had fans spreading the good news. Why? Because it was personal. It was human.

It really is the little thing that matters

I coach executives to keep things simple, especially in communications inside their organizations. Because most of us think the worst before we think anything positive. So a simple nod of thanks, looking someone in the eyes, using their name and talking about what matters to them not only breaks through the negative fog many companies are in, it helps employees and customers alike see the authenticity they so desperately crave.

Try it for yourself. Take a few minutes this week and hand write a note of thanks to someone around you. There are plenty of people worthy of your time, trust me on this. Chances are good that you’ll both be better off for the time you spend.