Storytelling Fundamentally Helps Create a Human Connection
As digital strategies and brand storytelling continue to advance alongside technology, the need for evolving measurement tools and metrics becomes apparent. How can marketers create new metrics to innovate and be more customer-centric in this ever-changing landscape?
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In today’s dynamic marketplace, where consumers are bombarded with choices at every turn, the art of brand storytelling has emerged as the cornerstone of successful marketing strategies.
“Storytelling fundamentally helps create a human connection. The more that a brand shows its values and personality through its campaigns the stronger that connection will be,” says Priya Patel-Chomel, ex- Head of Product Marketing – Middle East, Turkey and Africa at Meta.
Priya is a seasoned marketing professional with a proven track record in launching successful platforms. With notable roles at BBC, Google, and Meta, she spearheaded the commercial launches of BBC.com advertising, YouTube across Southeast Asia, and Instagram in the Middle East.
She also contributed to Instagram’s global run rate surpassing USD 1 billion in its first year and orchestrating key product launches such as Instagram Stories and Shopping Ads. She has also crafted and curated multiple brand campaigns for brands such as L’Oréal, Du, Turkish Airlines, and Emirates, Dubai Tourism.
With vast expertise in brand campaigns, we asked Priya about the role of storytelling in effective marketing. “Storytelling plays a critical role in effective marketing. Being able to convey the true essence of what your brand stands for helps you to connect with your audience on a deeper level and build brand loyalty,” she said.
Components of Successful Brand Storytelling
- Engagement: Crafting a narrative around your brand’s origins and mission is a powerful way to captivate your audience and maintain their engagement. Through consistent storytelling, you can cultivate loyalty and emotional investment from consumers over time.
- Relatability: Storytelling is essential for establishing a human connection. By showcasing a brand’s values and personality in its campaigns, the connection formed with the audience becomes stronger.
- Influence: Brands wield significant influence over consumer behavior and perception, motivating purchases and garnering support for causes. Choosing the right brand ambassadors can effectively convey the brand’s story and message.
- Standout: Storytelling, coupled with unwavering authenticity, is paramount for a brand to distinguish itself from competitors and leave a lasting impression. Authenticity is the cornerstone; amidst a sea of imitations, genuine brands resonate and carve out their unique identity.
Priya cites a local brand example, The Giving Movement. Founded in 2020, it champions conscious consumerism and sustainability. Through crafting purposeful apparel and giving back with each purchase, the brand allocates $4 to support vital causes or charities. Presently, they’re committed to aiding Tarahum for Gaza.
“Being an F1 fan, I also admire how F1 has turned the brand into a huge success over the last 5 years. By choosing to launch Drive to Survive on Netflix, this series is a form of branded content, it tells the detailed story of the sport behind the scenes. F1 succeeded in its objective of marketing to a whole new and younger audience and gained a legion of new fans from all over the world” she adds.
While brand storytelling can tug at heartstrings, how can marketing strategies be relevant over time?
A balance of creativity and analytical thinking is also required, says Priya. Apart from agility, data analytics and A/B testing, it’s important to create an experimental marketing fund. “Marketers can carve out a proportion of overall marketing budget. Investment in learning and being able to apply these learnings for campaign success will ultimately help drive business growth.”
Embracing emerging technologies like AI, Web3, and social media trends is essential for advertisers to maintain a competitive edge and stay ahead of the curve.
“For me, AI is an exciting technology, it has already transformed many aspects of marketing. It allows brands to create images and content, deliver on audience segmentation and personalised experiences to customers, automate tasks and accurately analyse and predict data. AI tools can also help with competitive intelligence in spotting opportunities to improve your products and offerings, and fill market gaps,” Priya adds.
As digital strategies continue to advance alongside technology, the need for evolving measurement tools and metrics becomes apparent. Priya offers a concise guide for marketers seeking to innovate and be more customer-centric in this ever-changing landscape.
A Guide to Create A New Experience Metric
- Identifying the goal that you want to achieve for the new metric, either customer satisfaction, loyalty, driving business growth, efficiency etc.
- Understanding the customer journey including all touchpoints and interactions. What does their experience look like?
- Define the components to be measured that contribute to the overall customer experience, are they qualitative such as brand reliability and consistency or are they quantitative such as reviews, ratings and surveys.
- Develop the measurement criteria for each component.
- Develop a methodology and scoring framework based on the priority of components. Which one is the most important for the overall customer journey.
- Pilot Test, Validate and gather feedback to ensure its reliability.
- If the metric is showing positive results, then implement and monitor the new CX metric across various touchpoints. Continuously monitor and analyse the data to identify trends, patterns, and areas for improvement. This will also require a process of iteration to refine the measurement criteria and scoring methodology to ensure the metric remains effective in driving positive customer outcome
- Integrate with overall marketing and business strategy – use the insights from the metric to help inform strategic initiatives, investments and manage organisational change to enhance the overall customer experience.
