In storytelling, structure and formula are often important to creating a complete narrative. The traditional stories that you remember from your childhood are often simple and easy to compose – they have a beginning, deepening action, a climactic moment, and a resolution. There is usually a hero and a villain. And, invariably, the plot is told in chronological order by a trusted narrator.
Aware of the power of stories to hold an audience, brands have started using storytelling to connect with consumers, relying on storylines that made prospective customers associate positively with brands. Just like your bedtime stories before them, in the beginning, brand stories were simple to narrate through traditional media like TV, radio, and print. Vitally, those mediums enabled brands to tell their stories from beginning to end without breaking the all-important plot.
However, with the rise of the digital world, this has changed.
Digital has fragmented traditional brand storytelling
The ease of narrating a brand’s story has been lost. The digital world has made it almost impossible for a story to maintain its elements, disrupting the plot and shifting the control and power from the brand (narrator) to the consumer (audience). Customers can now engage with the story’s plot on their terms – whenever they want, however they want.
Today, brand stories usually fail because of two main factors:
- The plot is constantly interrupted because of your customers’ fragmented engagement points across devices.
- Research suggests customers are exposed to over 3500 marketing messages each day, and you’ve only got eight seconds to engage them and get across the desired message each time you have their attention.
However, these issues aren’t insurmountable. You can still tell a memorable brand story for your hotel using the following three key approaches.
1. Make your guests the heroes
Make your guest the protagonist of your story by creating a link to their lifestyles and emotions, not their wallets.
Let’s put this approach into practice. For a hotel, which piece of copy do you think works better?
