by Motivational Speaker and Strategic Storytelling Expert, Kelly Swanson
Today I opened up my email to see an advertisement from a company I did business with fifteen years ago. My experience with them was so bad that I had a visceral reaction just in seeing their name in print. One bad experience and I am still affected by it all these years later. That is the story I am writing about their brand. No matter what story they create, it isn’t as powerful as the one I have written, and the people who I will share it with over the course of my lifetime.
There is another company, XYZ, that has a bad reputation with people in my industry. Every so often someone new will pop up on the Facebook page and ask if any of us have done business with XYZ. It results in a long thread of messages that all say “RUN and don’t look back!” The power of referrals and reviews drive our buying decisions more than anything else. And what are referral and reviews? Stories.
Our stories, which are the experiences we have with your company and your employees, are what matters far more than anything you could say about yourself on a website or a brochure.
We are all concerned with the data that makes up our brand. What we do. How we do it. The list of features and benefits. The colors we wrap it in. When what really matters, is the story people take away from our brand - the story of their own experience attached to our face.
- What stories are your customers writing?
- Do your employees realize how much they are storytellers of the brand they represent?
- Are you harnessing the power you have to control the story we write?
The story you write about your brand has no power compared to the story THEY write about your brand.
Motivational Speaker and Storytelling Expert Kelly Swanson teaches people across all industries how to use strategic storytelling to stand up and stick out in a crowded market.