We are taught a story needs a good beginning, solid middle and rousing end to be coherent and delight the reader. In brand storytelling this is less true. A brand may set off with their version of beginning, but the customer is more likely to determine the detail of the middle and end – if indeed it has a conclusion.
Customer relationship management (CRM) should be viewed as a work in progress, a story ever unfolding. What matters to someone today isn’t what matters tomorrow, as the story of their own life ebbs and flows. It is precisely in the smaller details of individual lives that brands can enrich their message and nurture longer-lasting appeal.
Inform your story. Augment your first-party records with quality data from other sources to better understand consumer behaviour and motivation. Identify segments that matter and approach with relevant messaging pertaining to your universal truth. Then be prepared to evolve as that detail itself evolves. That means understanding not just how a mum may feel during a specific week of pregnancy, or how someone’s weekday coffee drinking habits change on a weekend, but how their individual brand interactions over time create opportunities to be more relevant, timely and useful.
Brands brave enough to embrace smaller details of human lives know it’s not enough to know this detail – they must find rich sources of creativity there. In the bringing together of individual customer understanding and creative storytelling lies the opportunity to move beyond inertial, functional or transactional loyalty, to a space where deeper emotional loyalty resides. A space where brands feel constantly fresh and relevant. And where the stories they tell move beyond the personalised to something more personal.
After all, aren’t the best stories those that speak to us all as individuals, at different stages of our lives? For you and your customers, that’s knowing what is now and anticipating what is next. Dare you turn the page on your story?
Beth Pope is joint managing director at The Real Adventure Unlimited
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