Watch -and listen to!- the beautiful story of photo journalist Dianne Whelan.

“Uit een kwalitatief marktonderzoek van het New Yorkse onderzoeksbureau 3DAccountability, in samenwerking met CoolBrands blijkt dat storytelling de koopintentie verdubbelt.”

Bron: Marketingonline.nl

Consumenten kopen dus niet je product, dienst of idee, maar zijn primair geïnteresseerd in het verhaal dat eraan vastzit. Zo concluderen alvast de onderzoekers.

In een ‘laboratoriumsetting’ werden onder meer de merken OMO (Unilever), DSM en KLM onderzocht ten opzichte van hun concurrenten, door deze merken te presenteren door storytelling. In alle gevallen was een positief effect waar te nemen.

De belangrijkste feiten op een rij:

- De netpromotorscore (NPS, zou je het merk aanraden aan anderen) voor OMO steeg met 33 procent.
- De koopintentie van Pepsi verdubbelde.
- Het merkattribuut ‘Ik wil werken voor DSM’ steeg met 20 procent.
- Het merkattribuut ‘is relevant voor onze maatschappij’ steeg voor KLM met 76 procent.

Gedragsverandering
Maarten Schäfer van CoolBrands over de resultaten:

‘We wisten al dat informatie door de linker hersenhelft, de rationele kant, wordt verwerkt. Dit onderzoek heeft duidelijk gemaakt dat informatie die is verpakt tot verhalende content, de emotie triggert en dus wordt verwerkt door de rechter hersenhelft. Duidelijk is vervolgens geworden dat emoties kunnen leiden tot gedragsverandering, terwijl de ratio doorgaans alleen tot attitudeverandering leidt.’

Anouk Papers van CoolBrands voegt daaraan toe:

‘Storytelling beïnvloedt niet alleen de merkperceptie van de persoon die het verhaal uit de eerste hand hoort of leest. Verhalen reizen vervolgens ook verder. Dus de invloed van het vertellen van een goed verhaal gaat veel verder dan de merkperceptie van het individu aan wie het verhaal verteld wordt. Dat biedt kansen voor merken in een tijd waarin klassieke communicatie, zoals reclame, steeds minder goed werkt.’

Stephanie Lopez van 3DAccountability: ‘Koopgedrag wordt zwaar beïnvloed door peer-to-peer communicatie, 70 procent van alle aankoopbeslissingen wordt gebaseerd op peer-to-peer invloed. Dit onderzoek laat zien dat het loont om te investeren in storytelling, omdat dit de driver is voor word of mouth.’

Methodiek
In een experimenteel onderzoeksontwerp werden door middel van kwalitatief marktonderzoek 5 sets van 2 merken getest. Daarbij ging het steeds om een test van een merk en daar tegenover een concurrerend controlemerk. De pretest vroeg naar bekendheid met het merk, consideration, eerste keuze bij aankoop, koopintentie en Net promotor score (NPS). Daarnaast werd een aantal merkattributen getest om inzicht te krijgen in het merkimago. Na de pretest waren 50 studenten aanwezig bij een gastcollege. Tijdens dit gastcollege zijn de 5 testmerken besproken aan de hand van storytelling. Na afloop van het gastcollege hebben de studenten deelgenomen aan de post-test. De post-test onderzocht dezelfde aspecten als de pretest, om de vergelijking te optimaliseren.

This evolution has an impact on the way we need to communicate. Unfortunately, most managers have failed to evolve along. Traditional communication no longer works. Organizations, brands and their leaders need to change the way they communicate today. The gap between what they want to communicate and what people actually take in gets bigger every day.

It’s a whole new world out there. And to make it in this new world, you need a whole new story!

Catch, create and connect is the central theme in my storytelling book ‘No Story, No Fans’. It is THE way to connect your message to this new hyper-connected world.

The last 3 years I have been reading and collecting -as crazy person- great articles, videos, blog postings and many more on the power of storytelling. I have been collecting all of this story stuff in my Delicius account. Today I thought is was time to share it with you. Hope you find it as interesting as I do. Enjoy. Just follow this link to access the goldmine

As you probably have read in my previoius post I recently have become a big believer in story curation! So let me share with you one of my favorite blog postings of Thaler: “What, Why, and How Story Matters”.

By Thaler Pekar – March 03, 2010
I fear the term “story” is being used so broadly as to render it meaningless.

Messages are not stories. Statements of belief and opinions are not stories. And, most of the time, answers to direct questions are not stories.

Many well-intentioned professionals are rushing out and thinking they are asking for stories, when they are not. What gets shared as a result of their efforts is often called story, even when it is not.

Allow me to define the term simply. “Story” implies a series of unfolding events. Something happens to someone or something. A story has a beginning, a middle, and an end.

Understanding and recognizing a real story matters for three reasons: First, stories provide rich insight into complex emotions and situations, and competing, or even seemingly contradictory, values. They bridge the rational and the emotional. And stories provide context, enabling us to create meaning out of complexity and confusion. Flannery O’Connor observed, “A story is a way to say something that can’t be said any other way.” It follows that by listening to stories, you will hear things you wouldn’t ordinarily hear.

Second, the narrative elements found in many stories — protagonist, secondary characters, conflict, resolution, theme, situation, setting — usually combine to equal a whole greater than the sum of its parts. Moreover, when reviewing a large number of stories, the repetition of these elements, and the patterns and connections between them, very often yield insight and deeper meaning.

Third, when people think they are working with story — but are not — they tend to become discouraged and suspicious of the true power of effective narrative.

A recent Nonprofit Quarterly article, “Unraveling Development: Collecting Stories From Your Donors,” stresses the importance of listening to your donors’ stories. The article also poses a number of interesting questions. With a little tweaking, those questions can generate an abundance of details as well as important insight into your donors’ relationship with your organization.

For instance, instead of asking the direct questions suggested in the article –

• What interests you most about this organization? What is less interesting to you?
• Why does this cause matter to you?
• How does your philanthropy reflect your values?

– consider inquiring about your donor’s actual experiences:

• If you look back over your years of knowing and being a part of this organization, what experiences come to mind? What incident stands out as the most delightful?
• Can you tell me about an experience that was less interesting to you?
• When was the first time you heard of our organization? With whom were you speaking? What was happening?
• Tell me about a time when you felt really connected with the mission of our organization.

Think about the kinds of details you will hear in response. Each of those questions is likely to result in a mélange of emotion, authentic experience, and visceral memories. Specific incidents, people, places, and situations will be referenced. Your donor is no longer focused on answering the specifics of your question, satisfying your inquiry with a dry, data-filled response. Instead, by asking for a story, you’ve indicated your willingness to listen, have surrendered control over the content of the answer, and have granted your respondent the freedom to exercise his or her creativity. Cynthia Kurtz, author of Working with Stories, nicely sums it up: “If the kind of thing you need to know, or you need other people to know, has to do with beliefs and opinions and feelings, asking people to tell you stories can provide a more authentic result than asking them direct questions.”

I know. It sounds like an excuse doesn’t it? Fact is that I don’t take enough time sharing not only my thoughts but also the great story stuff I find on the Net. Story curation is (and has been for the last year) the new big thing on the internet. Have a look at this fantastic collection of stories by Gregg Morris.

I love Gregg! His story curation efforts have been a great source of inspiration for my book  “No Story, No Fans”.

When I was reading through the stories of the people I follow on Twitter, I came across this blog post of Anna Lantz.

Consider making your content like a gift!

What do I mean by a “gift” in this context?

• Don’t try to sell anything or provide “empty calories” that just waste people’s time.

• Give your content freely.

• Make your story their story.

• Make your story emotionally engaging.

Having a human story gives others more reason to care about you.

And don’t forget that the impression you make often depends on how much you reveal about your self.

The trick is, just like a Christmas gift, you need to give content that is of value to your audience and has the potential to help them forge an emotional connection.

Most marketing content rarely connects with an audience. You know why? Because it doesn’t make them feel anything. People join a story when they “feel” your story is credible and when they “understand” where your messages are coming from. They will make your story their own if they can identify with the elements within the story, respond to the narrative emotionally and have it serve their interests and agendas.

What makes great content spread is how compelling and inspiring the message is, not how it slants into a direction that ultimately positions your company as the only one to buy from. Content should make connections. I would even go further: content follows connection. First you need to engage, build rapport and make your audience trust you. And pure information or marketing messages do not make that happen. All these new forms of storytelling cannot change the fact that if you communicate in facts and figures, you communicate “brain to brain”. To be successful in any kind of communication, you need to go human to human, heart to heart, emotion to emotion.

I believe the most trusted people and organizations in this new experience economy are the ones that treat content like little gifts we can connect with.

Over the last years I have tried to walk the talk myself, and here are some of the ways I have been telling my story:

• Archiving dozens of blog posts and their comments

• Sharing 3-5 posts by other writers every day for more than a year on Twitter

• Initiating regular discussions with my network on LinkedIn using my LinkedIn

• Sharing presentations via Slideshare and Prezi.

• Sharing all the research for my book “No Story, No Fans” on Delicious (there

are more than 200 valuable articles, videos, reports, etc, on information related to storytelling).

And what is even more important than the sum of all this sharing, is that in telling my stories on all these channels I have been showing my audience that I am not a faceless “box house” simply taking orders blindly and shipping thoughtlessly. I have demonstrated that I am passionate about what I do and what I do it. My stories have given me and my company a human face that show I care. And from the reactions I have got, I can tell my stories have become little gifts to my network.

Now let me give you a simple example of how stories have been creating value for me.

I give a lot of keynote speeches and presentations of that sort. Before I was conscious about my storytelling, I would talk about the facts and figures of good communication: this much faster, that much productivity improvement, etc. After a typical speech, I’d get one or two people who wanted to speak with me. Now that I’m telling real stories that exhibit real emotion and real humanity, I have 20 or 30 people come up afterwards. Some of them say things like: “That’s the first time I ever really connected with a speech.” Those types of responses have helped me gain confidence in the process and have added a humble dose of mo-jo into my story work.

I experience the same thing when I communicate through other channels.

On Twitter for example I started interacting online with more people. In the beginning I could not understand why people were being so nice to me, sharing information with me and providing me with resources. Now I know it’s because I was earning their trust by communicating like a human being, and not like a content marketing machine. I now have a network of people, few of whom I’ve met in real life (yet), with whom I exchange value on a weekly basis. My twitter account went form 0 to more than 1300 followers in less then a year.

And what has all of this brought to my business? Everything. My own business took of once I started really connecting with people. All of my clients today come from my social content network. And what is more, when people contact me we mostly hit it of right away. Our stories connect even long before we start a project together.

What’s your story?

(In my next blog post I will show you how it works to create a story in the concept of a “gift”).

I just read some of the most popular blog posts on content marketing.

It seems that we all agree that good content should be Findable, Readable, Understandable, Actionable and Shareable.

So that’s it? Well, not in the least.

And by now you’re thinking “Okay Raf, get to the point!”

My point? Many companies have no clue what the difference is between good content and boring content. I would go even further. Many organizations are not even aware that their message has lost all connection with their audience.

At least that is my experience after four years of accompanying organizations, brands and their leaders in their communication efforts. Many seem to excel at finding ways to render their content marketing completely pointless. You can follow as many checklists and steps as you want, but without engaging content that makes your audience stick like superglue, your content marketing is doomed.

The strange thing with all this is that the solution is so obvious: stories and storytelling.

Stories are how we convey our deepest emotions and talk about the things we value the most. Everyone has a story to tell. I believe stories are the most effective vehicle to drive the heart of a message to the heart of an audience. And exploring these stories should be at the core of every organizations’ content marketing strategy.

In my book ‘No Story, No Fans’, Mitch Joel (President of Twist Image and Author of Six Pixels of Separation) puts it like this: “Stories captivate people’s attention. It happens when it comes to The Bible and it happens when it comes to Star Wars.” So true.

Now let me ask you this: Do you think that you or your business is in touch with its own stories?

Do you need to reinvent your story to connect it with a hyper-connected world? Do you need to put the story back in your storytelling? I believe you do if you have trouble answering any of the following questions:

• What is the story that really defines you?

• In which way is your story emotionally engaging to your audience?

• How does your story connect with the existing culture of your organization?

• Can your audiences retell your story?

• In what ways do they trust your story and act upon it?

In my next blog post I’ll try to bring some of my trials and errors -and my own storytelling experiences- together in one simple storytelling principle. Following this principle will lead you from deadly boring content that nobody is interested in to highly engaging stories that connect with your audience.

Believe me, I know how challenging it can be to produce smart, highly targeted and truly innovative stories. But I also believe companies today would be able to connect better with their audiences if they would start using stories as little gifts to the community. If they would start to use these gifts as a means to reconnect with their audiences and regain trust. Making your content little gifts is (or has to become) the new “business as usual”. I like to call it “the New Trade”.

And this brings me to my key storytelling principle for you:

Only use content that can be regarded as a little gift to your community.

Here is a company that has been following my 1 simple story principle and succeeds big time in connecting with their audience on an emotional level. For Patagonia (an outdoor clothing company) environmental documentarian Bridget Besaw travels to Chile to this beautiful story of the rugged people living in an area that would be changed forever by five proposed dams on the Baker and Pascua Rivers.

(In my next blog post I will explain the concept of “gift” a little more. And show you how your organization can use this principle in catching, creating and connecting your story.)

I generally don’t like PR agencies. We have little in common. Let me tell you why.

PR agencies are:

“clinging desperately to decades-old methods, sidelining staff training because it cuts into billable hours and getting farther and farther behind fast-moving digital media trends.”

“Most agencies today have so-called digital teams. They’ll claim to be at the “forefront” of anything online. In reality, it’s just the “B-S” factor turned up full blast. Pull back the veil and you will find few agency people with deep experience or practical accomplishments, even now, in the online world.”

(Read the full blog post -PR Agencies, The “B-S” Factor and Lagging- of David here)

You may have noticed I included a picture in this blog post. It’s a cartoon from Tom Fishburn. Tom knows how to tell this whole out-of-sync PR-agency-story in just 1 image. So… I like Tom as well. We are now a team of three trying to change the world of old school communications. We are still looking for a fourth team member (so we can kill time by playing cards if we don’t find any clients who are up to this challenge). Anyone?

I recently met an acquaintance from college whom I hadn’t seen in more than 10 years. We weren’t that close in college, but kept up sporadically through email. In more recent years, we updated each other on our lives through Facebook and Twitter. So when we finally met in person, I didn’t need to ask him the usual “What have you been up to since college?” question. Through his Facebook and Twitter updates, I already knew that he had recently changed jobs and had just moved into a new house. I even knew about his struggles to get internet installed in his new home.

In fact, I felt like I knew so much about him that I was briefly at a loss for words when we finally met in person. “So, how are you?” I asked, after we re-introduced ourselves to each other.

From there, we immediately started telling each other stories and we dove straight into a deeper conversation.

After we parted, I marveled that we hadn’t made much small talk – that little warm-up exercise before the real conversation starts. We also didn’t trade many facts and figures about ourselves or about our mutual friends from college. Because we felt like we knew each other from our Facebook updates, we immediately started trading stories. The authenticity of the updates and stories I had been receiving from my old acquaintance made me feel like I was still connected to him in some strange way, despite the time and distance between us. So what is it about stories that makes making and maintaining connections between people look so easy?

Stories are basic to the human experience.

So basic, actually, that we even have evidence of storytelling from the Stone Age (some would argue that even Adam was a storyteller). Storytelling has been used to pass along knowledge and share values for thousands of years. We are still cavemen, all of us. Intelligent scientists argue that much of human behavior is explained by the fact that we are using prehistoric brains to navigate a modern world. Stories are our main navigating tools to develop trust and commitment and generate an emotional connection with others and our world.

There has never been so much writing and talk about storytelling for companies and brands as in the last year. More and more companies are talking about “a brand positioning story”. But what exactly is the difference between branding and the story? And where does the concept of positioning fit in?

“Content is King” is the current meme for organizations and brands that want to connect with their audiences. Whenever you read something about social media these days, you will read about “the power of content marketing”. By now the expression “content is king” has become so standard, the meaning of the word “content” is no longer clear: what is content? And more importantly, what is the story of this king, and will he connect with his audience in today’s hyper-connected world?

Still today – and I would even say especially today – if you have a good story, and tell it well, people are more likely to remember you, and more likely to pass it on.

No Story, no fans.

The net has created new ways of telling your story. But it is my experience that many companies today fail to find their real story and get stuck in a self-promotional story that puts the entire organization in a less believable category.

Most corporate and brand stories are mere bragging, which tends to turn people off. They are blaring out messages, cleverly packaging them in stunning ad campaigns and repeating them as often as possible to augment the impact. But cavemen told their stories in a way that basically dragged people toward them. They could whisper the story around the campfire circle (the circle is what we label today as a “community”) and still find connection with their audience. Companies are in need of real and emotionally engaging stories to tell. “No Story, No Fans” (the book as well as the phrase) reflects the idea of shifting your mindset from broadcasting about your products to really connecting to the people who will eventually be spending money on your products.

How difficult do you find it today to get your story connected to a new, hyper-connected world?

How difficult is it to tell real, authentic stories to the right people and find real engagement? Believe me, I know how challenging it can be to produce smart, highly targeted and truly innovative stories. But I also believe companies today would be able to connect better with their audiences if they would start using stories as little gifts to the community, if they would start to trade authentic and truly engaging stories as a means to reconnect with their audiences and regain trust. And trading stories is (or has to become) the new “business as usual”. You can read all about that in Part 1.

I would like to share with you a few recent blog posts that I think clarify the importance of storytelling much better.

First this article ‘For Brands, Being Human Is The New Black’, an illustration how brands are seeking to gain customers by showing their human side.

Then there is artist Jonathan Harris’s new digital platform, aiming to help people “find a signal amid social media noise”.

German giant Siemens is (successfully) humanizing its brand through storytelling

And of course my book on storytelling “No Story, No Fans” is full of examples of engaging storytelling. For instance: “Days with my father” (page 70), or the story of Steve Jobs on page 73.

Storytelling is a process, in the sense that you actually need to take different steps to make it work.