CHAPTER 1
Once upon a customer
‘Move along’ might be how you tell your best mate to stop dawdling in the doorway, but for a stranger on the tube, ‘excuse me, may I please get by?’ might be more appropriate, right?
CHAPTER 1
Once upon a customer
‘Move along’ might be how you tell your best mate to stop dawdling in the doorway, but for a stranger on the tube, ‘excuse me, may I please get by?’ might be more appropriate, right?
“Audience understanding is foundational, because it’s how the storyteller, brand or service is able to demonstrate empathy”
Like every good story, this one starts with the ‘who’. Before any storyteller opens their mouth, puts pen to paper, or covers a canvas with paint, the first step is to understand the recipient of the story so that the message can resonate.
“Audience understanding is foundational, because it’s how the storyteller, brand or service is able to demonstrate empathy,” says Brandon Geary, US principal, brand strategist, Brand Innovation Lab, Amazon Ads. “When a brand demonstrates empathy, the audience recognizes a shared humanity between them and the advertising. Once they relate or recognize some aspect of themselves in the message or experience, they can make an emotional connection with the brand.”
Think about your favorite artist, author or musician; you trust them because they connect with you on a deeper level and consistently meet your expectations. The same goes for brands. Trust is built through relationships and fostering these relationships builds loyalty. Earning this trust is considered just as, if not more, important than revenue or ROI metrics by nearly all respondents (97%) to our survey – this is particularly true of larger firms with a yearly marketing budget of £6M+.
Stepping into their shoes
Eighty-two percent of marketers agree that audience understanding is an essential ingredient for successful storytelling – particularly marketing (94%) and creative (93%) directors. Having the perspective of where audiences are coming from plays a part in influencing their decisions.
But how granular does audience understanding need to go? Marketers say demographics (45%), interests (45%) and lifestyle (40%) are the top three most valuable insights to enable better storytelling – while acknowledging the value in understanding browsing behaviors (36%), life events (34%), media consumption (32%) and purchase behaviors (26%).
For consumer electronics, health and personal care, hospitality and travel brands, demographics (42%) are considered a key insight for brands to be able to tailor their storytelling efforts. While for fashion brands, there’s more emphasis on audience interests (40%), perhaps given that individual tastes widely vary, there's value in understanding the purpose behind the purchase (for example, it’s likely that music festival goers may dress differently than a derby attendee).
“82% of marketers agree that audience understanding is an essential ingredient for successful storytelling”
Key audience insights
Breakdown by industry
1 in 5
marketers say a lack of insights and knowledge inhibits brand storytelling
Plugging the insights gap
Yet more than a fifth of marketers (27%) say that a lack of insights and knowledge about their audience inhibits effective storytelling. With the deprecation of third-party cookies, there is now an even greater focus on developing audience understanding through first-party insights – first-party data from brands’ owned channels (48%) and from media owners (44%) cited as top resources.
Proprietary insights from Amazon Ads, for example, can help brand leaders make storytelling decisions. These billions of shopping, browsing and streaming signals can help shape campaigns to reach the right audiences with the right message when it matters most, across all of the Amazon touchpoints.
“There are a lot of insights in the world that can shape a message that is likely to resonate with people, whether it’s changes in culture, the competitive landscape, or just human trust that binds us,” says Amazon Ads’ Geary. “We can surface insights that can inform this compelling narrative – one that ultimately leads to effectiveness by way of incremental audience delivery, engagement or purchase.”
For brands to reach today’s audiences, there’s a real need to be customer-centric to create a dual benefit. Storytelling must work back from its audience. Everything else will follow.
Top tips
Know your protagonist
Understand who you are talking to: focus on what they want to hear, not what you want to say
Align your presence with their preferences: seek media buying opportunities based on audience interests versus programs and channels
Use first-party insights: shape the narrative to deliver a relevant message
Continue the journey...
