How do you break through the clutter in a world where each of us receives 3,000 to 5,000 commercial messages a day? Our brains are wired for paying attention to and remembering stories. So how do you build sticky brand stories around your organization, product or service?
2. Ten Pillar Descriptions
The Ten Pillars of Meaningful Marketing™
Understanding
What do your employees/customers/partners believe?
What do they want to believe? What do you want them
to believe about you or your product/service?
Engagement
Campaigns and communication - How, when, where the
story will be told in unexpected, breakthrough ways
Priority
Choosing first the ones who will choose you - Segmenting
customers and stack-ranking who is most valuable to you
Surprise
Unexpected value - emotional and functional – that
exceeds expectations and builds into a dependence that
they won’t be able to live without
Differentiation
Competitive strengths that set you apart- Finding the
core of who your organization is and why that is special
and unique in both emotional and functional benefit
categories
Dialog
The power of intimacy and the path to loyalty -
Interactive communications that lead to relationships
Alignment
Internal buy-in and readiness…are your people ready?
Helping your team see, understand, believe and live out
the vision
Empowerment
Incentive and opportunity to share the great experience
with others
Mythology
Your brand, your story that builds belief and inspires
action
Innovation
The next surprise - Feeding the addiction of being
delighted with new value
http://www.mythologymarketing.com/pillars/
6. Our Brains Love Stories
• Activates multiple areas of our
brains
• Our brains place us in the story –
we get involved
• We can plant ideas, thoughts and
emotions into the listeners’ brains
(“neural coupling”)
• Personal stories and gossip make
up 65% of our conversations.
7. Beginning Assumptions
• Customers freeze and avoid decisions
• Implication: Simplify and/or make it simpler
to choose
Too many choices/issues
becomes depressing
• Only about 4 are positively remembered
• Implication: “Sticky” messaging
The noise is
overwhelming - 3K – 5K
media messages a day
• About 7% trust advertising messages
• Implication: Empower advocates and foster
word-of-mouth
Nobody believes
your advertising
8. Beginning Assumptions
• Our brains are wired to involve emotion in
decision-making
• Implication: Publish a steady stream of emotion,
backed up with evidences and details as needed
People make emotional
decisions
• Word-of-mouth is the dominant influencer across
almost all product/service categories
• Implication: Empower your third-party fans
Word-of-mouth drives the
most influence
• By far the most preferred information source
across all age groups except most senior among us
• Implication: Web presence is the most central
marketing discipline
The web is the preferred
information platform
9. Benefits of Sticky Stories
• Spend less marketing budget to achieve
greater results
• Longer-term loyalty
• Greater word-of-mouth advocacy
• Easier to shape and integrate marketing
campaigns
– Print, TV, radio, social media, web, mobile
13. Building Your Mythology
• myth·ol·o·gy a set of stories, traditions, or
beliefs associated with a particular group or the
history of an event, arising naturally or
deliberately fostered
• What builds belief?
• Purpose of mythology - What human emotions
can you connect with?
• What should the structure of the story look like?
Of the three players in this picture, which is ultimately most powerful? The Rider – Intellect Value PropositionProduct/Service Information Ratings, ReportsThe Path Tools and Communications that Make it Easy to Learn, Buy, Consume and Share (Web Site, Displays, Packaging)The Elephant (Emotion)Brand Expressed Through Emotion-Driven Story-TellingAll three need to be addressed and be in alignment to be effective in creating change, but the emotion is the most powerful if engaged properly
Set up brand-building as “belief building.” What builds belief? Mythology – ongoing, powerful stories that attach in people’s minds and carry the meaning of the brand (just like in any given culture) Key point: Mythologies can develop on their own (arising naturally) or you can deliberately foster them (ie, proactively create and share them).
Every human has a set of emotional needs, or roles, that need fulfilled. Some personalities need certain roles filled more than others, but at various times we all have a need to feel certain ways – sometimes gentle, sometimes aggressive. Sometimes needy, sometimes independent. These archetypes are a kind of emotional map to human life.
The most powerful brands understand these emotional triggers and CLEARLY align themselves with the consistent fulfillment of one of them. If they veer off by trying to address other emotional needs, they confuse the consumer and dilute their power.
Lord Baden-Powell, was a lieutenant-general in the British Army, writer, founder of the Scout Movementand first Chief Scout of The Boy Scouts Association.With the migration of families from farms to cities, there were concerns among some people that young men were no longer learning patriotism and individualism. The YMCA was an early promoter of reforms for young men with a focus on social welfare and programs of mental, physical, social and religious development.[9]:72–82 In 1896, years before the Scouting movement was founded, Baden-Powell met the American born Chief of Scouts in British Africa, Frederick Russell Burnham, and learned from him the fundamentals of scouting, inspiring him and giving him the plan for the program and the code of honor of Scouting for Boys, and thus restoring the old traditions of American Youth.[10][11]110 million Americans have been members of the BSAresponsible citizenship, character development, and self-relianceScout Law Scoute Oath - "On my honor, I will do my best, to do my duty, to God and my country, and to obey the Scout Law, to help other people at all times, to keep myself physically strong, mentally awake, and morally straight."
So, trust is critical to brand building – But how do you build a trusthworthy message that cuts through the clutter and STICKS in the minds of consumers? Without awareness and remembrance of your brand, consumers can’t trust your brand. EXERCISE: Think of the most powerful images, ideas or stories that fit these criteria and best communicate the S&T value proposition that we developed earlier.