How narrative marketing makes brands more valuable—5 ways to put consumers at the center of your story

Classic brand positioning has become too simplified, too static and too old-fashioned. It doesn’t capture the breadth of audiences and stakeholders or allow marketers to leverage current events, societal issues and topical news. It is a dated framework that is too simplistic for today’s companies and economy. Building on Nobel Prize-winning economist Robert Shiller’s finding that narrative marketing drives economic impact, new patterns are emerging from companies thriving by challenging long-held brand positioning theories. Nike, for instance, engages with narratives on equality and wellness, Tesla with self-driving cars and improving the environment and Apple with privacy as a fundamental human right. Such companies manage multiple narratives—including vision, product, leader, distribution, consumer and employee—in unison and across a portfolio of PR, public affairs, digital, social and advertising channels. The narrative framework brings the entire strategy of a company to bear, allowing it to address different audiences and different issues as they change. It makes branding more relevant and drives impact and performance without moving the entire marketing portfolio to ROI-focused tactics. And CMOs can harness this methodology and improve their power in the C-Suite. Web3 and metaverse marketing blog Catch up on the latest virtual experiences and more Click here Here are 5 ways to help marketers turn narratives into a cohesive strategy and plan: Visualize company strategy on a single page One of the most engaging parts of the narrative process is getting the strategy on a single page. Marketers can use the framework of their choosing (design thinking, business canvas, activity maps). But regardless of the strategic methodology, the goal is the same. You must be able to put a constantly evolving company strategy on a page in a visual way so that all members of the leadership team buy in. This process often encounters the most resistance and pushback. Marketing leaders need to reinforce that some of the greatest strategic thinkers in business history advocated for this type of simplicity. It does not dumb down ambition—it focuses on it. Align on issues and audiences that most threaten the strategy On every leadership team, there are different opinions on the greatest challenges facing the company. Members of the C-suite have a natural tendency to bring a functional bias. They see the strategy and the challenges through their own area of responsibility. Often, every member of the C-suite will have a different definition of the problem to solve. Leaders have to be aligned on key audiences and issues that pose the greate st threat to achieving the strategy. Alignment drives teamwork downstream. Accurate strategic assessment of threats will make or break marketing execution. Measure whether present company narratives are resonating This step empowers the CMO as they have not been for 30 years. The reason Shiller was able to prove that narratives have economic impact was because every piece of content in the world is now indexed. He could prove the relationship between economic data and media narratives. Every news and social media impression that happened over the last two years or the last hour can be indexed. This is much more powerful than a research study with a sample of 1,500 consumers. This is where brands can statistically identify what they own and don’t own in the market—information that can hold members of the C-suite accountable. Build a map of the narratives you want to own Research indicates that the most valuable companies in the world manage 5-7 narratives simultaneously. There is typically a vision narrative, product narrative, distribution narrative, employee or manufacturing narrative, unique feature narrative and a leader narrative—at a minimum. This mix of narratives should map directly to company strategy. This simple step of building strategy to narrative alignment ensures connectivity between the company strategy and the go-to-market strategy. Execute the narratives across comms, advertising, digital and social The goal is to implement narratives across the channels. The challenge: After the last 25 years of specialization, increasingly-verticalized brand, social, digital and comms teams like to work in silos rather than horizontally, which hurts narrative impact. Brands must embrace more nuanced matrix structures rather than more siloed functional organization structures to successfully respond to shifting narratives, audiences and issues. Differentiate narratives from storytelling There is an important difference between a narrative and a story. The Rand Corporation’s narrative lab defines it this way: A story has a beginning, middle and end. A narrative has a beginning and a middle—but the end is yet to be written. This unfinished nature of narrative is critical as it allows a brand to champion purpose, mission and a sense of work to be done. It also separates narrative from the thousands of great stories marketers create annually. Every company believes it is at some stage of a business or digital transformation. The narrative roadmap will empower senior marketers and teams to drive substantial change. Narratives will help marketers build more valuable brands and return CMOs to a power position in the C-suite. Subscribe to Ad Age Sign up now for the latest industry news and analysis Click here

How narrative marketing makes brands more valuable—5 ways to put consumers at the center of your story

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