If your stories are all about your products and services, that's not storytelling. It's a brochure. Give yourself permission to make the story bigger.
Interpretation
True storytelling goes beyond just selling products; it connects with audiences on a deeper level.
This quote emphasizes the importance of genuine storytelling in marketing. Rather than merely presenting products and services as a list of features, effective storytelling engages the audience by creating narratives that resonate emotionally, allowing brands to build meaningful connections and convey their values. Jay Baer encourages marketers to expand their narratives to include the experiences and journeys that their audience can relate to, rather than treating marketing solely as a promotional tool.
In practice
In a marketing workshop to emphasize the importance of storytelling.
You have only 30 seconds in a TV commercial. If you grab attention in the first frame with a visual surprise, you stand a better chance of holding the viewer. People screen out a lot of commercials because they open with something dull. When you advertise fire-extinguishers, open with the fire.
We read advertisements... to discover and enlarge our desires. We are always ready - even eager - to discover, from the announcement of a new product, what we have all along wanted without really knowing it.
Facts are irrelevant. What matters is what the consumer believes.
Content marketing is the only marketing left
Every reader of your ad is interested, else he would not be a reader. You are dealing with someone willing to listen. Then do your level best. That reader, if you lose him now, May never again be a reader
A brand is no longer what we tell the consumer it is - it is what consumers tell each other it is.
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