Finding Consumer Common Ground, Part I: Storytelling
The same old ways of segmenting consumer markets have not worked for a while, but many a marketer has continued to default to the easy way out (and then wondered why the effort didn’t quite connect with consumers). But, maybe – just maybe – this economic downturn has forced the issue for a lot more folks in marketing departments the world over.
Let’s get one thing straight: There is nothing “typical” or easy about defining your core customer.
If you really want to tap the power of consumer common ground – you’ve got to sever from your emotional attachment to the same-old demographics orientation and instead seek out the similarities among the humans you serve – men and women. One way is using stories, which I’ll go into below, and another is considering your market from a psychographic perspective, which I will cover in a Part II post to follow.
Storytelling: In both a recent web-radio interview and a private corporate presentation last week, I brought up storytelling as an incredible method of making linear bullet points into rich, resonant brand messages. In those discussions, my point was that it wasn’t about marketing to women per se, so much as it was about marketing to humans leveraging what has traditionally been considered a “woman’s way.” Stuart Elliott just wrote about Epoch Films, partner Kirt Gunn, and their new approach to brand storytelling under the company name of Dandelion (seeds that spread.. get it?). Here’s an excerpt:
Selling by telling also has benefits in an economic downturn, to hear the executives of Dandelion tell it.
“We’re in a time when brands have to be more efficient with money,” Mr. Gunn said, “and more considerate of people’s time.”
That means marketers telling sponsored stories must be more careful not to breach the fine line between content and commercialism, he added, because “if we just stick products into content, that has the same feeling to consumers as driving down the road and seeing a billboard.”
Brand or product messages made into stories, or integrated into existing story lines, appeal to a mindset, not a specific, traditional demographic. Stories get to the universally human Truth (with a capital “T”") in life, as famed screenwriter/storyteller Robert McKee might put it, much beyond what is visible or factual.
Humans see more benefit to identifyng and sharing such common ground than marketers may have previously given them credit for – and it goes beyond regions, age ranges, gender, income, education and the like. Even a bit before things reached such an economic low, consumers were already starting a movement toward cozy, comfortable and home-like. I see storytelling – picture a family around the fire – as an obvious way to align your marketing efforts with that sensibility.
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Part II of Finding Consumer Common Ground – Psychographics is to come…
In the meantime, here are two must-have resources on storytelling: Robert McKee’s Story and Annette Simmons’, The Story Factor.
