How “once upon a customer” can lead to “commerce ever after”
How “once upon a customer” can lead to “commerce ever after”
Four in five marketers will prioritize brand storytelling in the next 12 months as they believe it will positively impact their marketing campaigns’ performance. While there’s the consensus that using a narrative will result in stronger customer connections, today’s marketers also say that a fragmented media landscape makes it harder to reach attentive audiences.
Like any good story, understanding the audience is the very first step marketers should take to deliver messages that resonate. Yet more than a fifth of marketers feel they lack access to audience insights and knowledge, inhibiting them from unlocking the true effectiveness of storytelling.
To bridge that gap between the awareness and the execution of this effective brand-building strategy, The Drum and Amazon Ads surveyed 250 UK-based decision makers across brands, media and creative agencies. This report is a summary of those findings, plotted by four essential ingredients: customers, creative, channels and commerce.
So curl up, get comfy, and dive in. This is the story of storytelling – for marketers, by marketers.
“Like any good story, understanding the audience is the very first step marketers should take to deliver messages that resonate”
What marketers are saying
79%
plan to prioritize brand storytelling over more performance-driven advertising
80%
believe storytelling has a positive impact on the performance of marketing campaigns
66%
agree that that brand storytelling helps build stronger connections with customers
BUT...
72%
say today’s fragmented media landscape makes it harder to reach attentive audiences
27%
feel a lack of insights and knowledge about their audience inhibits effective storytelling
40%
say falling budgets are preventing them from delivering effective storytelling
“The Holy Grail of brand storytelling is when people want to listen to your story...”
PROLOGUE
Kate McCagg
Head of Brand Innovation Lab, Amazon Ads
Our brains are programmed to remember stories. It’s why the strongest brands in culture have stories attached to them. To this day, I can still recall the first ad that struck a chord with me… it was an ad for Nike called ‘If You Let Me Play’ and it was all about the power of sports to give a girl confidence to pursue a better life way beyond the sports pitch. I was a student studying advertising and the emotional resonance this ad had – and was bold enough to take on – raised my bar for what I believe advertising has a responsibility to achieve.
Advertising is more than a pragmatic value exchange; when audiences feel like they are part of the story, they relate to it in a way that transcends product features or launches. This can be a critical moment for brands to lean into a compelling narrative and appeal to customers on a deeper level – beyond just the functional product/service benefits.
But with shorter attention spans and lots of noise to contend with, the rules are changing. Technology is making it progressively easier for audiences to ignore irrelevant advertising, and if a brand isn’t telling a story that resonates with them, they can easily avoid hearing it. With a smaller window of engagement, a story that feels familiar in audiences’ minds can be the differentiator.
The Holy Grail of brand storytelling is when people want to listen to your story – so that, just as they might reread and recommend their favorite book to others, they will keep coming back to your brand and even share their experience with friends.
This research reaffirms the power of storytelling and the role it can play in creating meaningful connections in a fragmented world. When executed effectively, marketers say storytelling improves campaign results (82%), reach (74%) and relevance (72%), and positions them as more relatable and trustworthy in the minds of their audiences.
And isn’t that the fairytale ending for any brand?
