Summary: Story telling is becoming an important way to communicate with customers, to make your brand more real, more personal and more involving.
As a kid, I was always asking mom to read me just one more chapter before bedtime. I just had to know what happened next. Stories always intrigued me. I found them more real than a lot of boring stuff we were doing in school. I always cared more about Anne of Green Gables than most of the kids at school.
I've been reading a lot on story telling in the past few days. Tom Peters has a post on the way Richard Branson collects stories. CMO Magazine has an article What is an Iconic Brand, based on the new book by Douglas Holt. Holt believes that brands are esentially the sum of people's experiences with a brand. Overtime, these experiences are influenced by brand users, employees and the overall public opinion of the brand. In the end though, a brand is the sum of a series of stories about it. Holt claims that these stories are often about cultural conflicts, and are often rooted in mythology.
I've also been hearing about story telling as a method of communicating with customers in email from Blue Penguin Development. He believes that personal stories help people connect with a big topic. He also believes that personal stories entertain and involve people.
Perhaps this is why testimonials and case studies are so important to personal services firms. They help people connect and visualize how the service might work for them. They identify with the person's problem, and the resolution of their story.
I think I get what these guys are trying to say. I related to Anne of Green Gables, because I wanted to be like that plucky orphan. I love stories because they are symbolic of larger conflicts but they make those conflicts real and personal to me.
Lesson Learned: If, as Tom Peters says, every person has a story, I guess I need to learn more about their stories.
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