Public Relations & Social Marketing Insight

...But while brand storytelling may be dominating the trade conference stages, it’s not enough on its own for brands aiming to add meaningful value to their customers over the long term.

Strategies for Retention: Own Every Consumer Touch Point

Most content marketers know this particular statistic: 70 percent of consumers prefer getting to know a company via content over ads. To deliver this type of lasting, comprehensive value to their audiences, brands must build their content strategy around three core areas of focus:

Foundational content

Engagement content

Social content...

Lippincott, a brand strategy and design firm, and Hill Holliday, a full-service advertising and marketing agency, released “Welcome to the Human Era,” a report that examines the fundamental decline of consumer trust and the subsequent shift in how brands need to act to garner lasting connections with their customers. The report highlights key characteristics of Human Era brands and defines the behaviors of companies both big and small that are able to break through in this new environment. The full report can be accessed here.

The report asserts that brand-building today can no longer be led by messaging and advertising alone, but rather requires both “story” and “experience” to work together to drive brand favorability. Key characteristics among Human Era brand leaders are that they: have a deep cultural trait of customer empathy; talk and act like people; are open, real, and even flawed; aren’t boring; care intensely about the little things; and empower individuals to be the brand....

... When most people think about the word story, they think about a narrative like “ Jack and Jill went up the hill.” Most of us have been taught that there are two basic kinds of story: fiction and nonfiction.

Metastory is actually a third kind of story. Metastory is story that is told through action. It is not a story that you say, it’s a story that you do. Every individual has one. And every company has one too.

The reason this is so important is that people are already innate storydoers themselves. They use the story of your brand or business to tell part of their own personal metastory. Put another way, people don’t buy products; they take actions that help advance their own personal metastory. As we grow up, all of us learn to manage our own metastory through our actions — the car we drive, the clothes we wear. All of these choices are components that we know people around us will use to piece our metastory together....