The importance of Storytelling in a business (make your customers fall in love) 

Storytelling has always been a powerful way to sell, even when people had not yet given it a name. 

Our customer is impacted with thousands of products and advertising messages, therefore if we want to be attractive and competitive, it is no longer enough to have a good product… we need to be able to make that product tell a story that projects the values, brand positioning and lifestyle of its target audience, not just the features as in a data sheet.

This is precisely what storytelling offers a business.

What is storytelling?

This is something that advertising has been working on since the first business was founded and, with the advent of the Internet and social networks, it has taken on a new dimension.

Consumers are increasingly demanding something extra. That added value can be the shopping experience itself, but also knowing more about what they are buying and from whom they are buying it. This favors an emotional approach to the purchase and, as we know, this makes the transaction less rational and more impulsive.

Also, on a more practical level, it offers the potential customer the possibility of tracking the origin of raw materials and good business practices.

In short, it is a way of humanizing the business, building trust and involving the customer in our project.

How does stroytelling work?

Although we will see more developed cases later, let’s give an example of how it is present in any market and how it works.

Imagine that you are in a town in La Mancha and you stop at a shop to buy cheese. You happen to have some stimuli of this storytelling: a sign that says we are farmers, artisan cheese, third generation, establishment open since 1938… 

All this makes you compose a story for yourself. You imagine that family working in the countryside, with an experience, local product handcrafted … suddenly it is more than just a piece of cheese, you empathize with the brand, and you give that product certain virtues, even before tasting it.

Now take this to mass media advertising and think of the big advertisers. Does Coca-Cola sell soft drinks? We could say no. Coca-Cola tells us stories in its ads. 

It’s the same thing that Nike, Apple or even Amazon does. For them, the spots are a way to show their sneakers or their phones, in a context of use that is close to us or aspirational. There is no description of the iPhone, they show us how we can record our Christmas dinner with the family and share it directly on TV, happy faces, people enjoying together…

When the Internet and social networks exploded, sotrytelling proved to be more relevant than ever for companies. Suddenly there was no need to invest in TV campaigns, we could reach millions of people in a much cheaper and segmented way. No channel is as associated with storytelling as digital.

Thus we see brands that have used this resource in an outstanding way. You can look at the case of Warby Parker, an online optician’s that has built its success on social responsibility (with each pair you buy, they give away glasses to vulnerable groups), but there are thousands of other examples.

Another paradigmatic case and an example of good storytelling is that of Lego. It is a brand that has in its DNA to tell stories of pirates, cops and robbers or superheroes, so it is logical to expect them to reflect this in some way in the form of business storytelling. 

The best example is this video: a way of telling their story in a language that appeals to children, but also to their parents who, after all, are the ones who make the purchase.

They manage to replace something similar to the “who we are” section of a website, and make it much more powerful than just laying out a series of company milestones. 

As you can see, we all have our story, and it’s always interesting to communicate it. This brings us to how and when Oct8ne was created, did you know that it was originally a software for remote dentistry?

Well that’s right, Domingo Obradors was the one who patented this software and a chance meeting during a transatlantic flight, he met Doug Worple, an eCommerce specialist, who saw clearly the application of this technology to perform sales assistance.

Nothing like speaking in the language of people, to make customers fall in love.