This is class material from the 3rd session about understanding the importance of audience and storytelling, for KKI UI.

1. PR Media Production
Session 3: Understanding the Audience &
The Importance of Storytelling

2. Why social media?
• You can reach your buyers directly
• Considerably lower expense
• Ability to craft customized message for
different audience

3. Keep in mind
• Let the world know about your expertise
• Develop information your buyers want to
consume

4. Buyer personas
In order to appeal to customers, we have to
understand their needs.
Buyer persona: a representative of a type of
buyer that you have identified as having a
specific interest in your organization or
product or having a market problem that
your product or service solves.

5. Profiling buyer persona
• What are their goals and aspirations?
• What are their problems?
• What media do they rely on for answers to
problems?
• Where do we find them?
• How can we reach them?
• What phrases do they use?
• What sort of images and multimedia appeal
to them?

6. What it does...
• Enable us to truly empathize
• Step our of our role as someone who
wants to promote a product
• See through the buyer’s eyes

9. Let’s do some profiling!

10. Think about:
• Habits
• Reading
• Hangout places
• Eating place
• Free time activities
• Interests / hobbies
• Attitudes toward certain issues

11. The law of the party

12. Everyone has a story to tell
WHAT’S YOURS?

17. Stories bring your company to life
• Story, real story, creates emotional
connection with people.
• PR is about building that connection, even
more powerful one, to your customers,
prospects, clients, and the world.

18. Andrew weiss
“People love hearing stories. It goes back to
primitive tribal times when we used to sit
around the campfire. With social media,
consumers are in full control the whole time.
If you’re not captivating, you can lose them
at anytime.”

19. If you have one story to tell...
WHAT WOULD IT BE?

20. How to get the stories?
• How did your company get started?
• How did you survive the toughest of times?
• Who are some key customers you’ve had?
• What kinds of funny or interesting things have
happened involving customers or staff over the
years?
• What employees’ lives have been changed as a
result of working for you?
• What charitable organizations has your company or
its staff supported?

21. About stories
• They humanize brands and make them
talkable, online and offline
• They can be told with text but are often
best told through pictures and videos.
• They can be told by customers,
employees, or management – they just
need to be authentic.

22. How you started
No matter how large it is now, when it started, it
was just the founder(s) with a dream and a plan.
• Connect through real, humble stories
• Keep people from seeing the company as a
faceless giant.

23. What you do for your customers
• Less about you, more about your customers
– Emotional experiences
– Benefits
– Growth
– Meaningful relationships
– Inspiring experiences
• Whatever your company does or sells, it solves
people’s problems

24. The key staff
• Bring out the faces behind your company’s
success
– Senior management team
– Aspiring staff
– Staff who juggles works
– Staff who always smiles no matter what
• Pictures say a thousand words (and
videos even more!)

25. What if I still don’t have any story?
• E.g. highly regulated industry (financial or
pharmaceutical)
• Highly sensitive & confidential industry
(national research, security)
Talk about your activities & partnerships that
are core to the customer experience.

26. Case study: jp morgan chase

27. Chase community giving

28. Harness the power of inspiration
• There’s nothing new about the power of
inspiration except the channel.
• Social media just allows those stories to
spread faster and farther than ever before.

29. Building word of mouth
• Have a “WOW” factor in your product first
– WOW good(s)
– WOW service
• Find the customers you inspire the most
and give them the tools to share
– Not the largest subset of your customers, but
the most passionate
– People sharing stories will inspire others

30. Building word of mouth
• Recognition inspires stories
– Fan of the week
– Mom of the month
– Baby featured in magazine every month
• Prizes can inspire stories too!
• Emotions get your customers to share
their stories

31. Amazon customer service

33. Coin a chance

34. Telling stories offline
• Company profiles
• Brochures
• Booklets
• Newsletters

35. Reading Assignments
• Brand Performances in Social Media
(Singh & Sonnenberg, 2012)
• Managing Brands in the Social Media
Environment (Genzler, et. al, 2013)