Definition
Storydoing is a marketing strategy that focuses on customer experience, rather than simple advertising. Rather than telling a story in an ad, the idea is to create a memorable, participatory experience that engages consumers with the brand and its values.
In other words, the goal of storydoing is to create an emotional connection between the brand and its target audience through meaningful experiences. These experiences can range from events and activations to social campaigns and corporate social responsibility programs.
How to do Storydoing
Implementing a storydoing strategy involves a proactive and authentic approach to connecting with consumers. Through meaningful experiences, brands can actively engage their audiences, fostering an emotional relationship that goes beyond the simple transaction. To carry out this strategy, it is essential to follow a series of steps that ensure the alignment of experiences with brand values and consumer expectations. The following are the essential steps for effective storydoing:
- Define brand values: It is essential that the brand has well defined its values and mission.
- Know the target audience: Research should be conducted to understand the audience and their needs.
- Create meaningful experiences: It is important to design activities that reflect brand values and allow for active participation.
- Encourage participation: Ensure that experiences are interactive and that consumers feel part of the story.
- Share and amplify: It is advisable to use social networks to share experiences and encourage participants to share their experiences.
- Measure impact: It is essential to evaluate the effectiveness of the strategy using relevant metrics.
- Maintain consistency: It is important to ensure that all experiences are aligned with brand values.
Benefits of Storydoing
Storydoing can provide a wide variety of benefits for brands that use it as a marketing strategy. Some of the most important benefits are:
- Build trust and loyalty: By creating meaningful and authentic experiences for their customers, brands can build stronger and longer-lasting relationships with them. The emotional connection that is established through storydoing can lead to greater trust and loyalty towards the brand, which can lead to higher sales and a better reputation.
- Increases visibility and impact: Storydoing can help brands stand out in a saturated and competitive market. By creating unique and memorable experiences, brands can attract the public’s attention and generate greater impact. In addition, experiences shared on social networks can increase brand visibility and attract new customers.
- Enables greater emotional connection: Storydoing focuses on creating experiences that engage consumers and make them feel part of the brand. This can lead to a greater emotional connection between the brand and its customers, which can be especially important for younger consumers looking for brands with a clear mission and values.
- Helps build a positive brand image: Experiences created through storydoing can include corporate social responsibility programs and social campaigns that show the brand’s commitment to important issues such as sustainability, social justice or equality. These initiatives can help build a positive brand image and make consumers feel more identified with it.
- Encourage participation and dialogue: Storydoing is a strategy based on the active participation of the customer. The experiences created through storydoing must be interactive and stimulating, which encourages their participation and generates a more meaningful dialogue between the brand and consumers. This can help the brand better understand its target audience and tailor its products and services to their needs and desires.
Storydoing examples
Here are some examples of storydoing that have been very successful:
- Airbnb – “A night in a shark’s house”: Airbnb partnered with the Paris Aquarium to offer a unique and memorable experience: spend the night in an underwater room, surrounded by 35 sharks. Not only was this experience exciting and unique for the chosen guests, but it also generated a great deal of media attention and a positive impact on Airbnb’s brand image.
- Coca-Cola – “The Happiness Machine”: Coca-Cola placed special vending machines in public places with signs that read “press the happiness button”. When consumers did, they received not only a can of Coca-Cola, but also had a surprise and exciting experience, such as a shower of confetti or a popcorn machine in operation.
- Patagonia – “Black Friday is neither green nor kind”: Patagonia decided to close all its physical and online stores on Black Friday, the biggest shopping day of the year in the United States, and instead invited people to join them in outdoor activities. Not only did this help position them as a brand committed to sustainability and reducing overconsumption, but it also allowed them to connect with their audience on an emotional level and make a positive impact on the community.
- Dove – “Real Portraits”: Dove launched a campaign that focused on the real beauty of women, not the unrealistic beauty standards of the fashion and advertising industry. The campaign invited women to participate in a photo shoot showing them their natural and authentic beauty. Not only did this campaign have a huge impact on Dove’s brand image, but it also served as a platform for an important conversation about unrealistic beauty standards.
- Toms – “One Day Without Shoes”: Toms, a footwear brand that pledges to donate a pair of shoes to a person in need for every pair it sells, launched the “One Day Without Shoes” campaign. This initiative invited people to spend a day without shoes to raise awareness about the difficulties faced by people who do not have adequate footwear. In addition to supporting its core mission of helping people in need, this initiative also contributed to strengthening Toms’ emotional connection as a brand committed to social justice.
These examples illustrate how storydoing can generate an emotional and meaningful impact on a brand’s target audience and how it can enhance brand image. By focusing on creating memorable and meaningful experiences, brands can build stronger and longer-lasting relationships with their customers and have a positive impact on the community in an authentic and credible way.
Difference between storytelling and storydoing
The main difference between storytelling and storydoing is that the former focuses on telling a story, while the latter focuses on creating an experience. Storytelling seeks to communicate the essence of the brand through a coherent and attractive narrative, seeking to capture the consumer’s attention in a world saturated with information and advertising. On the other hand, storydoing seeks to involve the consumer in the creation of a joint experience, which allows them to feel that the brand cares about them and is concerned about their well-being.
While both strategies can be effective in generating engagement with the audience, storydoing has the advantage of being a more personal and authentic way to connect with the audience. By creating meaningful experiences, the brand manages to generate an emotional impact on the consumer that translates into long-term loyalty and loyalty. In addition, storydoing is more effective for companies that seek to position themselves as agents of change or that have a very clear social or environmental commitment, since it allows them to demonstrate in practice their commitment to these values.
In conclusion, while storytelling seeks to persuade the consumer with a compelling story, storydoing seeks to involve them in creating a memorable experience that makes them feel part of the brand. Both are valid strategies, but storydoing represents a riskier and more ambitious bet that can generate greater long-term benefits in terms of consumer loyalty and engagement with the brand.