2. 2
Brands Participating in Personal Narratives Increase Consumer Engagement.
- Dirk Shaw, Trade
We believe brands that actively participate in helping people find, express
and shape their personal narrative will be more relevant and ultimately more
valuable to consumers over time.
Personal narratives
are forward looking –
they draw us out of
the past and into the
present and focus us
on the opportunities
ahead. They typically
define a domain where
we aspire to have
greater impact over
time and give us an
ability to prioritize all
those short-term calls
for our attention.
“ ”
Each interaction people have with your brand has the potential to make their
personal narrative richer. What can a brand do to help people develop, share
and craft their personal narrative?
Every day, people engage in the story and narrative called their life. It’s
personal. And when things are personal, people pay attention. They are
more passionate and committed, and they naturally gravitate toward
places where other people, living similar personal narratives, gather.
Passionate people, your consumers, are more engaged, especially if a
brand has provided the means to participate.
why aligning to a personal narrative matters
In the past, personal narrative was influenced by limited one-way
inputs, such as proximity, socioeconomics, and one-way channels such
as television. However, the last 15 years have radically transformed
the way a person curates, shares and actively develops their personal
narrative. People are asking others to participate in their personal
narrative - one experience, tweet and share at a time. Brands that
think of interaction as making a choice to participate changes
possibilities. A brand can have a meaningful role in personal narratives
by aligning products to peoples’ experiences and the stories they share
online.
what’s different?
Look at the energy drink category. Some may be interested in the drink
product, but in reality most people care about the adjacent activities
with which these brands have aligned. They are interested in other
people who participate in similar activities, or those elite athletes they
aspire to be – everyone from a basketball superstar to motocross racer
to a skateboarder. These stories of aspiration and affinity shape the
personal narrative of people. And the brand that provides the means in
which to share these stories is well-rewarded.
JOHN HAGEL
3. 3
Brands Participating in Personal Narratives Increase Consumer Engagement.
- Dirk Shaw, Trade
This seismic change has caused media budgets to shift to digital delivery platforms, with a large part of
these investments falling into the practice of content marketing. Nearly 40% of marketing, advertising
and communications budgets will be dedicated to some form of content marketing this year. The
realignment of investment has spawned an entire cottage industry of platforms and content providers,
each with their own business-driven needs.
It’s no surprise that
61% of consumers
say they feel better
about a company
that delivers relevant
content and are more
likely to buy from
that company versus
their competitors.
Nearly 40% of marketing, advertising and
communications budgets will be dedicated
to some form of content marketing this year.
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the big challenge for marketers
People don’t exist to consume brand stories. They seek meaning
through experiences in life. People live their lives in multiple
personal narratives, such as parenthood, love, creation, family,
friendship and leisure. It is within each of these personal
narratives that stories are told, shared and sought after. And it is
these stories that advertently or inadvertently change behavior.
This is essential to understand in order to help shape your
consumers’ narratives.
It is also essential for a brand’s own narrative to connect with
consumers. In today’s fragmented world, these stories are
consumed as bite-sized pieces of digital content, which means
that consumer opinion of a brand’s created narrative is time
dependent. It is shaped over time by the stories brands tell AND
the stories other people tell of them.
Brands can no longer deliver a self-serving inward-focused
narrative, especially through interruptions in media. Most
CMOs realize stories influence opinion, consideration and
ultimately a purchase, which is why 79% of marketers report
their organizations are shifting their brands to a content-driven
approach.
How do corporate marketers and communicators, as well as their agencies, place a rigorous focus on
aligning stories to consumer personal narrative? There’s a lot to overcome. Here are ways to think about it.
4. 4
Brands Participating in Personal Narratives Increase Consumer Engagement.
- Dirk Shaw, Trade
marketing that works
What’s missing in the current content marketing environment
is the use of personal narrative as the layer to connect brand,
marketing and direct response communications. Adding this
personal layer knits together new platforms, content providers
and brand communications by relevant story themes that
motivate people toward business goals.
Connecting content marketing with established marketing
infrastructure through personal narratives across an enterprise
allows a brand to look forward. It can begin to predict which
themes will resonate for participation, the places it makes sense
to publish these stories, and the types of content to create –
which can be based on audience/story archetype models.
This predictive capability will increase story utility and
effectiveness towards a business goal. Overall, it can reduce
waste in any publishing process by focusing creative, operational
and financial resources on things that work.
organizational chaos from content explosion
Not having an infrastructure that allows connecting with customers is one part of the equation. The
rapid growth in branded content creation combined with the hundreds of platforms for managing and
publishing, makes it difficult for any one person to have a single view on how a multi-platform story is
being told to the measureable benefit of a business. And organizational complexities grow with the size
of the company. Those with 10,000 or more employees may use 18 different content marketing tactics.
Marketers need guiding principles to align stories, platforms and data to achieve measurable results.
Solution: Personal narratives are the organizing principle for content.
Today’s highly
fragmented digital
landscape means that
people participate
in stories fluidly
across platforms and
screens, which means
every story we tell
needs to be multiplied
by the number of
channels we want to
connect through.
“ ”
KEVIN KELLER
GE CAPITAL
5. 5
Brands Participating in Personal Narratives Increase Consumer Engagement.
- Dirk Shaw, Trade
Trade employs a story-centric team model and uses editorial planning principles to guide which stories are told,
who we are telling them to, and where they are going. Trade’s Six-Step approach is scalable for everything from
a multiplatform global editorial plan that operates like a newsroom to a story-centric content campaign. Trade
reviews a brand’s current communications, using the six behaviors of a story-sharing framework, to understand
what types of stories the brand is telling today, who they are reaching, and how well they are performing. We
couple these insights with the organization’s alignment around storytelling and the platforms used for editorial
management, publishing and analytics. This assessment provides a high-level roadmap of new opportunities to
improve how a brand can better align to its consumers’ personal narratives, while ultimately impacting market
performance.
TRADE’S SIX-STEP APPROACH
Storytelling teams must posses an innate understanding of personal narratives
and how people participate and consume stories on various platforms.
Teams must simultaneously design the story journey, which allows people to
participate at varying levels over varying periods of time.
6. 6
Brands Participating in Personal Narratives Increase Consumer Engagement.
- Dirk Shaw, Trade
Understanding personal narratives is about mining third party research documents, search
behavior, social media conversations and personal interviews on topics that are directly relevant
to the audience. Moreover, understanding comes from looking at equally important adjacent
areas in which a brand should be associated with or play a role. This exploration provides insight
on how existing storytelling aligns to these themes and topics, and how it aligns with peoples’
personal narratives. It also provides information on the competition. These insights are essential
to informing the stories a brand tells and shares, as well as finding new ways to play a role within
someone’s personal narrative.
This exploration identifies whitespace opportunities that are key personal narrative insights for
each audience type, archetype models based on behaviors, and high-level themes aligned to those
archetypes.
Insights from personal narrative exploration and story mining offer editorial and creative teams
fuel for ideation that propels theme development. Over time, these themes are then expressed
and aligned to each phase of a known customer’s journey.
The personal narrative architecture and design provides overarching theme concepts, a multi-
platform content strategy, detailed themes and approaches, editorial direction, and a high level
tone/voice.
1
2
PERSONAL NARRATIVE MOSAIC
PERSONAL NARRATIVE ARCHITECTURE
identify direct and adjacent personal narratives in which to credibly
participate.
define the thematic structure and tempo of storytelling.
7. 7
Brands Participating in Personal Narratives Increase Consumer Engagement.
- Dirk Shaw, Trade
Participating in personal narratives is where stories come to life across channels and media
types, and where people begin to include brands as part of their story. Our blended team model
allows us to tailor each story to the platform on which it is being published, pitched or bought in
a highly agile manner. The act of publishing is just the beginning. Providing consumers meaningful
ways to participate with the brand is a long-term commitment. Creating purposeful stories
allows production and publishing to be measured by the number of customers participating in
the narrative. Each story or content asset can be tagged by theme, customer archetype, journey
point, media channel and timing for measurement and refinement.
Consumers can participate in personal narratives via an abundance of interactive experiences,
such as digital assets (video, photography, visuals), social content, media relations and paid media
assets.
4 PARTICIPATE IN PERSONAL NARRATIVES
bring stories to life across digital platforms with engaging content.
Trade’s planning model takes a complete view of people’s brand touch-points across paid, earned
and owned media. We have a deep understanding of the context in which people participate in
stories in both physical and digital life. Our model allows us to design story experiences over media
channels and time that gets attention and participation.
Reviewing the multi-platform story experience will help provide a model for aligning stories to the
purchase funnel, customer journey mapping, and the role each platform will play.
3 STORY EXPERIENCE DESIGN
design a blueprint for how people will participate across channels.
8. 8
Brands Participating in Personal Narratives Increase Consumer Engagement.
- Dirk Shaw, Trade
Trade can break down which audiences have the highest levels of participation, which theme is
performing best and what type of content on which platforms are moving people to convert. This
is how we mine and measures data, because participation equals engagement and engagement
leads to down stream activity that has real measurable value.
Our Story Performance model aligns content within a story hierarchy targeted to specific
archetypes. Unique attributes such as stage of purchase, targeted keywords and narrative type
are given to each story to better understand which story types perform best. All of this is overlaid
with an attribution model that’s tied to business objectives like lead generation, acquisition or
brand awareness. This complete view allows us to pinpoint exactly which archetypes, themes,
channels and content types are working. These insights will then inform where bets are placed
for future stories and the channels. Trade’s Story Performance model provides business goal
definition, toolset recommendations, report design and a baseline analysis against this new
model.
6 STORY PERFORMANCE
measure your results
We are not just storytellers – we are also technologists who understand how to organize people
around content-centric solutions. Trade’s work with the most regulated industries has given us
an understanding of how to scale and guide a brand’s operation as a storytelling entity. Trade’s
detailed editorial and calendar planning includes, asset type, publishing frequency, approval
criteria and guidance, editorial board roles/functions, documentation and adverse situation policy.
Trade has developed recommended technology stacks that combine tools ranging from editorial
management, multi-platform publishing to analytics that integrates with most enterprise
publishing and analytic solutions. This allows teams to see more and do more, faster. From all this,
Trade provides a brand playbook that outlines organizational changes, governance models and
technology platforms.
5 STORYTELLING ORGANIZATION
build a storytelling entity that allows brands to continuously engage in
personal narratives.
9. The proliferation of brand “storytelling” has at the same time given brands entirely new opportunities
to connect with consumers and made it 1000x harder to create true meaning. Story for story’s sake is
an approach that misses the mark entirely and is much too common in our media landscape. Personal
narratives provide the alignment that stretch across products, platforms, divisions, disciplines, individuals,
messages, and yes, even stories. At the end of the day the goal of a CMO is to thread all these pieces
together to drive revenue efficiently for the brand. Understanding where your brand fits in the personal
narratives of the people that matter most to your company’s success is the BIG IDEA.
Looking at everything through this lens helps the organization come to the realization that the brand is
just a medium consumers will use to continue their narrative – the means to some end, big or small, at
some point in time. Nothing more. The best brands will embrace this and work hard to become a part of
the life-long personal journey as it unfolds versus becoming the story itself.
THE BIG IDEA IS NOT THE IDEA ITSELF
