by Dave Sutton
Align marketing technology across functions—Transformative marketers use their understanding of cutting-edge Marketing Technology (“MarTech”) to assess how it relates to the distinct needs of the organization. MarTech stacks should integrate across departments to create a comprehensive customer view. With over 5,000 vendor solutions in the market today, keeping up with “MarTech” has become a daunting task for any marketer. Does the software align and connect to your existing systems? Does it integrate seamlessly with other business applica- tions? Does it effectively drive customer awareness and engagement?
“There is a debate at the moment that we’ve perhaps tilted the field too much into the swampland of all the mechanics of the technology, that we have lost a bit of that grand vision of what the Story is, to actually guide how we use the technology.”
— Scott Brinker, VP, Ecosystems at HubSpot
Leaders leading change—In order to lead organizational change, the CMO and the marketing team must be able—not just willing—to work with multiple stakeholders,
managers, and employees. From partnering with HR on Employer Branding to working with customer service to QA testing new products/services to compiling and analyzing data, transformative marketers work closely with other departments. They have authentic and frequent interactions with IT, HR, and Finance leaders to ensure the enterprise is creating a seamless and valuable customer experience.
Master customer behavior and journey mapping—Transformative market- ers go beyond just crunching the data; they actually talk to the customer and perform customer journey mapping. They ask, “What, if anything, could we do better?” These marketers look beyond the traditional marketing metrics (e.g. brand awareness, familiarity, appeal, etc.) and analyze how the entire enterprise is engaging the customer. By developing a deep understanding of pain points and the overall customer journey, transformative marketers are able to create a simple and compelling brand story that makes customers want to engage.
Own insight to action and drive growth—In marketing circles, it’s well known that it’s much easier and less complicated to cut costs than it is to drive topline growth. It’s not uncommon that the first “strategic” move of a new CMO is to conduct a review of the company’s advertising agency.
The stated goal, of course, is to inventory marketing investments, assess per- formance and audit the agency. However, more often than not, it is just a struc- tured process to drive out costs by introducing competition. So, why don’t they start with converting market and customer insights into specific, actionable plays to grow the business? Because driving organic growth is tough.
Transformational marketing requires a little hutzpah and a fair bit of political capital to be expended. Failure will incur a reprimand or worse a pink slip and a trip to the unemployment office. With success, a promotion to the corner office will likely follow.
Transformative marketers are well informed risk-takers. They are the people in the company who get invited to the boardroom, they have a seat at the table and they are often being groomed for leadership. Why? Because they are per- ceived as owning the insight to action process and they can demonstrate a clear linkage between marketing investments, innovation and organic growth.
Based on our collective experiences helping brands move to the TopRight corner of the market over the past ten years, we’ve had the privilege of working side-by-side with many transformational marketing “heroes”. In concluding this chapter, we thought it would be helpful to share tips from a few of our heroes to help inspire you to transform marketing for your organization:
“In transformational change, the key is to drive simplicity, clarity, and alignment in the story of why this really matters, and what it is specifically that is changing.”
— Lidia Frayne, Director of Marketing Operations at Dell Technologies
“Define the vision — the future-state your company is looking towards — and understand the path to get there. Get everyone focused and aligned around that simple, clear, and compelling Story.”
— Scott Klinger, VP Global eCommerce at First Data
“Get the team on board. They are interfacing with customers; they are the ones that can identify the exact problems customers are facing. The team needs to be on board to help drive change and transformation within the organization first to be able to successfully drive change externally.”
— Jim Brady, President and CEO of Brady Trane / Building Clarity
“The most important activity is identifying and creating the Brand Narrative, at the very top level. We have a clear idea of what the Story is for the company, that’s been the key touchstone to translate down for other elements were doing as a Marketing Team.”
— Scott Barton, Institute for Humane Studies (IHS) at George Mason University
“My mantra is: always get the right message, at the right time, with the right audience, via the right platform.”
— Andrea Koslow, Senior Director, Brand Strategy at Public Broadcasting Service (PBS)
“Transformational Marketing requires you to walk in the shoes of the customer, experiencing the landscape from the customer’s point of view.”
— Kelly Chmielewski, VP, PBS Creative Lab
Chapter 3
Telling a Simple, Yet Remarkable Brand Story
R4HR—it couldn’t be simpler—tweet using #HR4HR to help our friends in Puerto Rico, Texas and Florida. T-Mobile’s Home Runs for Hurricane Recovery effort donated $10,000 for every home run hit during the 2017 Major League Baseball Playoffs and $20,000 per home run during the World Series. To directly engage customers, T-Mobile also agreed to donate $1 for every tweet that includes the #HR4HR hashtag—and doubled-down for the World Series raising the donation to $2 per tweet up to $500,000 on top of the home run total. And the Major League players certainly delivered! They set the all-time record for home runs in a postseason at 103 home runs—resulting in over $2.4M
in donations to hurricane relief.
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“We’re using our platform on baseball’s biggest stage to up our game and raise awareness for those hit hardest this hurricane season,”
—John Legere, T-Mobile CEO
The brand also directly engaged MLB players like Evan Longoria, Miguel Sano and Nelson Cruz to tweet to their followers to raise awareness. Players with ties to Florida, Houston and Puerto Rico, communities devastated by hurricanes in 2017, made #HR4HR a part of their personal story and became advocates for T-Mobile in the process.
T-Mobile gets it. Their marketing is all about storytelling—the story of their brand, its purpose and its impact. The advertising images and corresponding copy may be part of it, but the heart of the story is the brand, the service, and the people. If you can stir emotion in customers and they begin to make your story a part of their lives, then you’ve really created something special.
As customers, we certainly don’t know the whole truth about the things we buy, recommend, and use. What we do know, and what we talk about, is our story: our story about why we choose a brand, complain about it, or advocate for it; our story about the origin of our buying decision, the personal utility gained, and the emotional impact of our purchase.
“Marketing is no longer about the stuff you make, but about the stories you tell.”
— Seth Godin, Author of All Marketers are Liars
The best brand stories, the most remarkable ones, don’t focus on what a com- pany does or the products or services it sells. For example, everyone knows that T-Mobile is a wireless carrier. But that’s not their brand story. In fact, they are the “Un-carrier”. They are redefining the way people use wireless devices to connect and make a difference in other people’s lives. With #HR4HR, T-Mobile rallied people around our national pastime and celebrated every home run with a dona- tion to disaster relief. If you tweeted about it, you could be a hero too. The most effective brand story clearly answers the question, “Why?”—why you do what you do—and why it should matter to the customer.
If you have trouble capturing very clearly and directly the essence of why you do what you do and how you do it, then you can bet your customers will, too. It is not unusual for a large company or organization to offer numerous products or services, scattered across markets and targeting different decision-makers with distinct responsibilities, challenges, and desired outcomes. How can you possibly bring simplicity to all of that?
Simplicity in Story
A simple story is not at all about being simplistic. It is the opposite. It’s about distilling the true purpose and value of what you offer to customers. Rather than thinking literally about your products, services, and so on, think about what these things represent in the mind of your customer. To achieve simplicity in your story, begin by asking “Why”; and keep asking why until you identify the one thing—the essence—of why you matter.
Think and Feel Like the Customer
Simplicity is important—but only in so far as it relates to your customers. Your “Why” informs how your customers think and feel about you. It defines your position in their minds. Compelling stories resonate when the audience can put itself into the story. Compelling brand stories connect with customers when the customer understands that that story really is about them and their lives. They are not simply being sold to. In other words, the customer is the hero and the story belongs to them, it’s about their journey. You are the guide to help them navigate that journey successfully because of what you do for them.
How then do you tell a Brand Story that captures the full intent of your Brand, that gives your customers a reason to listen, a reason to care, a reason to consider, and a reason to buy?
In the early days of advertising, brand storytelling fueled many great cam- paigns that had the luxury of time to tell a story (on TV, radio, and in print) that spoke to, and resonated with, the audience. In those days, the story was often
“long form,” complete, and left the readers or viewers with a richer understanding of the brand heritage and the promise of what that brand could mean to them.
With the arrival of the Internet in the mid-1990s, digital storytelling initially fol- lowed much of that same pattern (as that is what marketers knew how to do) but in new formats and with new levels of interactivity. Then marketing started to become more of a conversation with the audience than a communication to the audience.
At least that is what we all thought was happening.
However, as our digital lives have become massively cluttered through the explosion of always-on mobile devices and always-on social media, the time for telling our marketing story has shrunk—dramatically. Long-form stories kept shrinking in the online marketing world and there was very little time for reflec- tion or building up to a response. Considering the way digital media is viewed and consumed, and the overwhelming volume of content coming at us every day, what does that shrunken timeframe to tell your story look like?
Telling your Story in 6-seconds
Yes, the timeframe is 6 seconds. You have about a 6-second window for making a connection. Six seconds to give your customers, your audience, a reason to care…a reason to want to learn more. And if that connection is lost in those first few seconds, then it is really lost, and they are most likely not coming back.
This is not an exaggeration.
Think about how you consume information or messages today. If someone has not captured your interest in 6 seconds, you are most likely moving on. In that window of time, the storytelling must be simple, clear, and aligned with your customer’s needs and wants.
It must make a bold statement. It must encourage exploration. And it must lead the customer and audience to a question: “How do they do what they say they do?” Or to a pause: “I actually think I need to know more about this.” In today’s fast-paced environment your Brand Story must:
• Simplify complexity. Your brand assumes the role of a guide or Sherpa who helps them identify their challenges and solve their problems.
• Stir emotion. People buy on emotion and then rationalize their decision with facts.
• Be memorable. Strike a chord that prompts an internal question or reflection. People can more readily relate to a story than fact-laden state- ments about the wonders of a product.
• Make your customers the hero. Their story (not your brand) is the basis for making the correct decision to use your product or service to fulfill their needs.
And your brand story must do all of this in about 6 seconds. Because that is all the time you will get as they quickly move on to the next site, receive the next message, and experience the next interruption.
Creating a 6-Second Story Isn’t Easy
While the length of time you have to tell your brand story has changed, the work required to develop the brand story has not. No matter how short the message, never short-change the depth, complexity, and richness of the story. Creating a 6-second brand story is challenging because it requires a diverse set of scientific skills and an artistic eye to master. In many instances, due to no fault of its own, a company will focus too much attention on either the “science” of gathering actionable insight or the “art” of the story rather than striking the right balance.
Transformational marketing is a collaborative effort balancing rigorous anal- ysis to drive out actionable audience insights along with the creative ideation and the artistic expression of a storyteller. It’s a collaboration. One in which you
completely, fully and deeply delve into understanding your target buyer personas and the journey they are on to make a buying decision.
If you understand the customer journey, you can activate your story through an integrated marketing strategy based on what really drives your customers to care, engage, and purchase. This strategy builds your story in a compelling way, resulting in a productive and profitable customer experience where your custom- ers become your advocates.
We’ve all experienced bad storytelling at some point in our lives: the key- note speaker who reads every word on their PowerPoint slides, the annoying colleague who forgets the punchline to the joke, the pushy salesman who goes off on tangents until he loses his point completely. We roll our eyes, crack our knuckles and just hope that the story comes to a quick and painless ending.
Storytelling, like marketing, is both an art and a science. There are capabilities that are inherently in you as a marketer—like copywriting and creativity—that can be fostered and sharpened, but not necessarily taught. Unfortunately, that art is lost unless you bring a little scientific rigor to your marketing communication planning and execution.
“Is your story so compelling that it can transform your customer into a six- second storyteller on your behalf?”
You’ll know you’ve successfully transformed marketing when your customer not only understands your story but also wants to be a part of it; when your story becomes their story. At that point, your customer’s experience transforms from engaging with you in a transaction to becoming part of your community and ultimately an advocate for your brand.
Why? Because they have adopted your story—why you do what you do; what it is that you do; and how you do it—as their own.
“Storytelling, like marketing, is both an art and a science.”
As all good marketers know, great copy and engaging creative don’t happen by accident. Likewise, great storytelling can’t be left to the whims of a “creative genius.” You need to inject a level of scientific rigor into the storytelling process
that infuses the perspective of your customer into your story. So, there are a few key questions you must answer to make sure you are effectively communicating your story from the customer’s point of view:
Why should I care or even listen?
At the core of getting your story right—creating a compelling narrative with pur- pose and guiding the brand positioning—is the question: “Why do you do what you do?” This sounds
easy. As we all know, particularly those of us who have gone through this process, it isn’t. It forces you to focus on the difference you actually make for your customers as your guiding principle. For a customer, it requires answering the “so what” question.
Why should a customer care? Why should they listen to your story? Wrestling this question to the ground from the customer point of view requires getting out of the comfort zone of purely marketing a product’s features and benefits. This is frequently the default mode for marketers. You must go to a deeper and emo- tional level of engagement with your customers. You have to distill the company’s “why we do what we do?” into a “Why” that captures the customer’s imagination.
Unfortunately, most customers have neither the time nor the inclination to figure this out on their own. This is why this question needs to be answered through the simplicity of a great story. For customers, the “Why” must speak to the true impact and purpose that you deliver. This “Why” must resonate with them in such a way that it represents something of which they want to be a part. By simplifying your “Why” and aligning it with your target customers, they will want to learn more about the rest of the story.
