Unleashing the Superpower of Storytelling in Marketing

In this podcast episode, Steve Miller and David Mayo Loomis discuss the power of storytelling in marketing and personal branding. They emphasize the human-to-human factor in business and the importance of a company's origin story. They also talk about the use of storytelling in movies and comic books, and cite Apple as a company that effectively uses storytelling. The conversation includes the role of testimonials in marketing, the need for personal information on company websites, and the importance of overcoming hurdles in a company's narrative. They conclude by encouraging listeners to use their unique stories to establish their personal brand and gain trust from their target market.

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Follow Steve:
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Want to learn how to generate more business without spending a ton of moolah, and separate yourself from the competition? Steve's online presentations and consulting will make you UNCOPYABLE! Contact him: stevem@beuncopyable.com

Transcript

Episode 77 - Storytelling

Steve: Hi, everybody. This is Steve Miller. Everybody around is feeling bad. Marketing Gunslinger. Yeah, we're just chatting. That was a preamble. 

Dave: Yeah. Oh, not an amble? 

Steve: We were not preoccupied, but 

Dave: it was a preamble.

Does that mean that... Now we're in an amble. We're 

Steve: in an amble and we are occupied. That's right. Me and my buddy, Mr. David Mayo Loomis.

Dave: I'm in the bright sunshine if you're watching this 

Steve: sunshine reminds me of the movie Barbie. I don't know why. 

Dave: Did you 

Steve: see Barbie? Yeah, we went and saw Barbie the other night and, oh, I want to see 

Dave: it. Is it good? Do you recommend 

Steve: it? I would certainly say you should go see it because it's so different from, yeah, 

Dave: I want to see Oppenheimer too.

I was trying to talk. I'm going to see 

Steve: him. I'm going to see him on this weekend. 

Dave: I wanted to see both of them together and do the Barbenheimer thing, 

Steve: the Barbenheimer, two step, right? The 

Dave: Barbenheimer. Exactly. But, I, being marketers, we have to appreciate what Mattel has done, which just especially in this day and age when I don't know, I think it's just hard to come out with a hardcore feminine or masculine stuff necessarily because it seems maybe yeah, old fashioned in a way but I'm sure that they address that.

And I'm sure that it's, I'm sure they figured out a way to. Yeah. It 

Steve: was an interesting take. It was definitely, it was, there was definitely a bent. I'm sure. I'm sure. There's definitely a bent to it. And I'm not gonna, I'm not, I don't want to 

Dave: give anything. But just the merchandising, just the promotion and the merchandising around it.

And just the, and they say that there's many more. Yeah, movies planned. That's what, yeah. So Mattel has this all planned for many of their products. Yeah, I 

Steve: know, but it doesn't mean they're all going to be great because, look at DC Comics, doing the DC universe, like the Marvel universe, and stuff, many different storylines, come from behind.

And and these guys and, we're using this to morph into storytelling. We, we are. 

Dave: That's the theme of our, yeah, that's what we're talking about, our chat today. But we're just talking, you just brought up comic heroes. That's an example of a very clear story and trajectory that captivates people.

People love that. Right? 

Steve: The stories in my book, in, in my second edition of Uncapable 

Dave: that is the one that, so it was copyable, you copied it. To do the second edition. 

Steve: The second one, I copied it, but then I added something. I added a chapter on storytelling and the power and I called it the secret ingredient into the concept of being uncopyable.

And I still believe that storytelling, copywriting is a super power. Storytelling is the secret ingredient into 'cause if you do it right, you're, when you write copy, you're writing in a way for people to, to, it's like telling stories, and when you know when I said yes.

When we talk, we were talking about people loves stories.

Oh you're frozen. Is that on your end? You're frozen. Am I frozen? You're frozen. You're 

Dave: not 

Steve: now. Am I? Yeah you're staccato. Still frozen? What's going on here? I on my end, I look fine. On your end you are can 

Dave: you hear me now? I can hear you. Am I staccato?

Steve: Actually a little bit, yeah. Still. 

Dave: Okay. Because I turned my video off. 

Steve: Yeah, I know you did. All right. What do you want? 

Dave: I could leave and come back, but then we'd have to, we'd have to 

Steve: edit. Okay. Go ahead and leave and come back and all that.

Sorry. I had to, I forgot. I had to look and just seek to admit you. I'm back. He's back and he's bad and he and we're telling stories. We are we're telling stories and to pick up where we left off. We were I was talking about Barbie and then you started bringing up this concept of, that Mattel was going to have more stories to tell in movie land.

And then I mentioned Marvel in D. C. and with the comic characters and stuff like that. But the bottom line of all of this is that storytelling is an extremely powerful way to communicate with your marketplace. 

Dave: No doubt about it. I think I, probably a lot of people have heard the advice over the years, you're going to give a speech, start with a story of something to get.

And even I've heard advice to start with the words once upon a time. Once upon a time. You could do that. And, what if you're explaining your company, and somebody says, so what's your company all about? Once upon a time, there was a guy, our founder, who started in a garage and he had this crazy idea that people should have their own computer, their own personal computer.

That was crazy, absolutely crazy. Now look at us, 

Steve: yeah, it was so crazy that even Bill Gates said there is no market for personal computers, 

Dave: right? Never say never. 

Steve: Never say never. So yeah, so that's, the, an Apple, we're talking about Apple and Apple has so many great stories.

That they use to to tell their story. That's really what it's all about. And in fact, there's a very gr there's a great Steve Jobs video. If you go onto YouTube and you Google Steve Jobs videos, look for the one where he's talking to a room full of Apple employees.

He's in shorts. And his, his requisite black, t shirt, mock turtleneck t shirt, but he's in shorts and this is when he has come back to Apple after he's been gone. Yep. And he's, he starts talking about how Apple lost their direction because they lost what they stood for.

Dave: A Simon Sinek type thing. Yeah. In terms of, yeah. People buy what they don't buy what you make, they buy why you do it. 

Steve: Yeah. And he was saying, Hey, that's what we really, we as Apple need to get back to is we need to understand what our values are.

why our values should be so important, to other people. And when people, when our values resonate with people then they will become our customers, and and so the same thing applies all over the board. I'm, when I'm working with companies small, B2B companies or anybody I'm always saying, okay, all right, what's the story we can tell here?

And how are you personally vested in this thing? That's really what people want. People don't want you to just be out for the buck. 

Dave: You mean as an employee? We're working at this company. We're representing a company. If you're telling that company's story, it's not even if you're telling like the origin story and you're saying, Oh our founder, maybe it's even a couple of generations before, who knows.

And now it's a big public company or whatever, but that's not it. You've got to form a connection between yourself personally. Like, why am I doing this? And why am I doing this? Because it's just a job and I got a job or I'm so devoted to the values and the mission and the vision of this place that I'm, I spend every waking hour, except for more than my family, at this company and here's why.

Steve: I'm proud to go to work. I'm proud of being, being a part of this story now, that we have these values that we want to share with the world and deliver to the world. We want to deliver products and services to the world that represent of companies out there that we can use as examples.

for this. And you mentioned the origin stories, that are out there of companies. I had a client who and their origin story was not really unique or anything like that. It was a couple of guys who were working for a big Software. Not a, I don't think it was a software company, but they built soft.

They did have software as part of their, they were in the, they were in the like trucking storage industry. Yeah. And and. And they were really unhappy with how this one segment of customers portable storage customers like when you see like a construction site, for example, and you see a trailer that's parked there, right?

On the construction site. That's a portable, that's a portable storage. Yeah, or portable office, things like that. And they and the reason why they weren't happy was because they had both come from that world, right? They had been there. The company they had worked for before got absorbed by this big company.

Then they go in there. And then they realized Oh, this is nice that they bought our company, but they don't really, they're neglecting the customers. And they got together and they said, Oh, we can do better than this. And so together they went and sat down and, got a napkin out probably in a bar and started drawing, a little, diagram of how this might work and then next thing you know, they've got this company going and fortunately for me, I I was a part of helping them to grow from the beginning early, and now these guys are just, kicking ass and taking names.

But it's, but when you they're, and they have a newsletter that goes out every month. And it's been going out since I was consulting for them. And every issue of the newsletter retells the story, the origin story. 

Dave: And why not? Because, if you've read it before you can skip over it, or maybe you're going to read it again but, for somebody that's new to the list.

They've never read it. Give them the benefit of hearing it and learning about it. And, just own it all the time. Remind people of it all the time. That's who you are. 

Steve: And it goes back and it goes back to, when we've talked about the branding proposition, the brand, I call it the branding promise that we make a promise to people out in the marketplace that, all right, this is what we stand for.

And this is what we're going to do for you. And then they determine whether we are, really living that, right? Absolutely. 

Dave: Yeah, exactly. So that's true. That's an important part of a story is that usually if you're going to, if you're going to bother to story, there has to be some sort of a point to it.

The point being, you're trying to tell the story to inspire people about the vision that you had originally, or still have, or what have you, but if you say, Oh, we were so industrious and we were we were so imaginative and innovative, and pulled all this stuff together.

And then you don't act like that. It's like where is the beef? Where's the, where is it? So you really do have to back up the stories that 

you're 

Steve: telling. Yeah. If you say to people, this is what we stand for. And then you and as I tell my clients, I want to look for stories that we can share that reinforce the promise the branding promise that reinforce that, that show that you are walking your talk, cause, obviously your customers are going to determine.

just by their own experience from you but maybe new people, they won't have that experience to, to fall back on. So they have to rely on hearing the stories from you. Do you I've got a couple of other examples of customers who have, of clients who, who have done that.

Do you have any that you wanted to share? I, 

Dave: I've got a bunch, just a general statement and for first, I feel like B2B companies are really perfect for stories because a lot of these companies were founded. Creatively, because somebody saw a need and then there was ingenuity involved and sometime invention, sometimes invention and it ends up being a manufacturing company of some kind.

Obviously there's all sorts of B2B companies, there's software now and there's professional services and all those sort of things. And, they have their own origin stories too, which is, which are important or distribution. Those sort of things. But I do think there, there usually is a need that somebody sees or wants to pursue or some driving desire in them to do better.

that motivates them to try this thing. And of course, not everything that people try succeed succeeds, but the ones that do, then you've got this built in story. And at least until you tank, which hope you hopefully you won't, it's a success story. It's actually a success story because you're still in business.

And you're still making something or providing some service or doing something. The other thing that I, I went to a I went to a conference once and one of the presenters was just probably one of my favorite sessions ever at a big conference. It was an investor relations conference, and there were probably three or three or 400, 500 people there, something like that big conference room.

And this guy was a professional storyteller and he We had this exercise where he's okay, you're all at tables of eight people and I want you to you're going to take a few minutes and then you're going to think of a story to tell the rest of the table. And, but you only have three minutes to tell the story.

So the exercise takes a while. It's eight times, 25 minutes. It's a long exercise. It's a long exercise. So you have this quiet time. People are thinking, making a couple of notes. And then all of a sudden, he says, tell your stories and you just go around and tell your stories. And then He says, look in the middle of the table.

And there are these little cards that say, I like your story. He's everybody take one of those and then give it away to the person on the table that has your favorite story. And so you only have one to give. You're giving your own way to somebody, but then somebody is going to get more than one of them.

And then he just does this thing that says. Who, okay. How many people got one, raise your hand, given to you. How many people got two? How many people got three? Hands go down to go down. How many people got four? How many people got five, six? A couple of people got six or seven.

And then he's just on the spot. He's okay, you two come up here right now, tell your story. And they tell the story and he pieces it together. And he's like, why? Okay. Why was that such a great story? And honestly, it comes back to all the great stories that you think about, but they have a an ingredients.

They have a trajectory and a structure like the odyssey or something like that, because. There's a hero in the story. A hero's journey. It's a hero's journey. And gosh. Is it a cakewalk? That's not a good story, is it? Oh, I set out to form this company and you know what? A year later, it was on its feet.

It was great. It was going great. Fantastic. That's a boring story. It may be great for the person, but it's boring. Yeah. Like now, how about the person runs into a roadblock along the way, like a hurdle or a, something that's almost actually insurmountable. Like this guy started to build his company and his house burned down.

Oh my God, what a challenge. Yeah. That's not all though, because when he did, the next thing that happened was... He was, working in the office and, the stuff, and then, the, there was a flood at his office and all this stuff got, then, the guy just basically, the simple takeaway is, the more of these insurmountable hurdles that are involved, that you get around somehow, miraculously, or with tenacity, you get around somehow, miraculously.

The better for your story, right? And then at the end you get it. And some people liked my story. My story was, it didn't have multiple hurdles, but it it was how I got my job with John Glenn the Senator John Glenn, and, I'll tell it in less than three minutes, which is, I had, I had applied for this job with a zillion other people, And I had no connections into John Glenn's office and I was telling a friend at college about this and she says, Oh, I heard he's coming to Chicago.

And I said I didn't know that. Yeah, he's got to have a press conference in downtown Chicago. And I said, Oh, okay. So at the time. You couldn't just look, there was no internet, right? I called the Chicago Tribune City Desk and I said, Hey, where's John Glenn's press conference going to be?

Oh, it's going to be at the Westin at this time on this day. And I said, Oh, okay, thanks. So I went down, I took the L downtown, walked into the lobby of the Weston, no idea where this was, how I was going to get in. And I saw these people with cameras go into the elevator and I'm like, I'm going to follow them.

Follow, followed them. Good idea. Acted like I was part of their crew as they walked into the room. Got into the room, sat down, watched the whole press conference, and when it was over, I looked at the long table, and there was only one way that Glenn could come out from that table. So I went over and I stood in front of the space that he was going to have to come out of, and he Loomis.

I'm applying for an internship in your office and he said, Oh, that's fantastic. Here meet so and so he's my advanced man. And he'll take your info. He took my info. I guess they thought that was a assertive thing to do. And it must have gotten a neat job. 

Steve: But, 

Dave: That was just one, that was one hurdle.

The winners had multiple things that you just can't believe that they, that they accomplished. 

Steve: Yes and in, when you learn how to, if you, I should say, if you study the great copywriters, Business copywriters the Gary Halbert's, the Dan Kennedy's Bob Bly's if you study them and the formula that they use in just even writing sales copy is, they start out by describing, cause, cause they're trying to sell you something, right?

Yeah. So they, so the first thing they do is they, I, they get you to identify with a problem that you have. All right. If, so if your company, or, I don't know, let's say you're trying to lose weight or you're overweight or something like that. And so what they'll do is they'll say, okay, in the beginning you start talking about did you used to be able to run a couple of miles.

Dave: My head is nodding. 

Steve: Yeah, did you remember when you used to be able to go to the beach and not be embarrassed by taking your shirt off or something like that? Oh, yeah. That type of stuff, right? Okay if that's you, then obviously, you want to. lose weight, right?

Or you want to get you want to get healthier. You want to get in better shape. All right. Because the problem is that you've let yourself get out of shape. Okay. So they identify they get you to identify with the problem. All right. But then they say then what they do is then they, the next step they take is they.

Now start playing with your mind and they say okay, now this is how you are right now. And here's this hurdle that you have to overcome. What would happen if you didn't overcome this hurdle right now? And then they aggravate the problem. Okay. You might gain more weight. 

Dave: Yeah. You might never want to go to the beach.

Steve: You will. And you will stop going out with friends and, maybe people will start making fun of you. 

Dave: I don't want that to happen. I don't want that to happen. So they, how 

Steve: can I fix this? Aggravate the problem. So it, see, so even in, even when you read sales letters, or not it's such a great thing to to go online and just say, okay, what are the best sales letters, I've ever written.

And and they all follow the exact same things. And that's storytelling. From a sales perspective. Yes. It's storytelling. It's planning a story in your mind. But like the guys I was just mentioning, the client that I just, I had, they got hired, they went to work for this, their company got, bought out.

So they go work for this big company. And then they realize, oh, my gosh, the people that are the companies that are from the industry that they came from, are not getting it. They're not getting served right. Okay. So there's a hurdle, right? Now you can imagine the other hurdles they went through.

How do you start a new business? How do you go out and write software? Where do you learn how to do that? And they have to overcome that and they overcome that and they overcome that. Because, and that's what story tell, great storytelling is all about. And when we're talking about from a brand storytelling perspective, what we're basically saying is that you want to have a story that it tells your story, right?

Or it tells a story about your company that people then see the values that your company stands for, 

Dave: right? They also remember. And that would appeal to somebody like Chip and Dan Heath who wrote Made to Stick which is a great book. And, if you can make things tangible, be able to tell your story and have people relate to it and in realistic ways.

Or use comparisons that they can relate to, or that are dramatic, then it helps even more. 

Steve: Yeah. So so when you're getting, and, we tell our clients, get testimonials, but, the, you have to tell people a format that you want them to write their testimonials in or speak their testimonials.

Dave: Write it in a problem. And then what was the problem was overcome, right? 

Steve: Exactly. What was what was the problem and what would have happened if you had not solved the problem? 

Dave: Ah yes. Exactly. 

Steve: That's that aggravate the problem, 

Dave: right? Yes, we would have gone down this path. We would have gone further 

Steve: down this bad path.

Yeah. And so we, our company shows up. And helps you to not have that problem anymore. Okay. Yes. And now everything is copacetic, right? And now everything is great. That's the testimonial. We want you to tell right 

Dave: in story format, 

Steve: basically. And if they just talk about it, it's a story, we had this problem and we knew if we didn't solve this problem, it's good.

It was, it might put us out of business. We knew if we didn't solve this problem that we were going to have, people were going to be, we were going to get bad reviews, and fortunately, We found the voice. We found David Mayo Loomis, and he came in, and he pointed us in, he pointed us in the right direction, and he, and he showed, and he helped us, and he held our hand and walked with us as we went through this difficult process of fixing this problem, but if he hadn't come along and helped us, We hate to think about where we would be right now.

Yeah. And, 

Dave: and folks don't I don't think that it's unethical for us to write our own testimonials and then give them to the customer and say, Hey, what do first of all, you ask your customer, would you provide a testimonial? Would you be willing to do that? They say, yep.

What do you want me to write? If you give them a starter, there's nothing wrong with that. No, nothing. Or you give them instructions but I've written, and not for me, but for others, for my clients and, with their customers and that kind of thing, it saves them time and they read it and they edit it a little bit and they say, yeah, that's absolutely exactly right.

That's, and then they say, yeah, put my name to it. There's nothing wrong with that. 

Steve: And just a little tip that I discovered years ago because my Smokin Out wife, Kay, and I have followed what you just said for many years, okay? Where when we have asked for testimonials and, people are, they want to do it, but They don't 

Dave: even know what to say.

Do you want one line? Do you want three lines? Do you want 50 lines? Yeah. 

Steve: So we, we used to say, yeah, okay, we will we'll write something up and then you draft a draft, right? And then you take a look at it. But here, so here's, but here's a little trick that I learned totally by accident later on.

I was, I've, I did that for a client and then I wrote this up and I said, just edit it or something like that. I said, in fact, I said here we're talking right now. All right, you're looking at you're looking at the write up. Okay, start talking me through from, in first person from your perspective, start talking me through what I wrote there.

So in other words, start reading it. and 

Dave: verbally edit. Oh, and so they, they start reading it and they're like, I wouldn't say it like that. I would say something a little bit different. Okay. What would you say? I'd say that knocked it out of the park. I use that one, but I don't say, I don't know.

Steve: Yeah. But what happened, what happens is that the people then start using their own 

Dave: voice. So they, and they end up rewriting it and like Yeah. 

Steve: And it makes it and it's very, and it becomes much easier for them to just do that. 

Dave: Absolutely. Absolutely. You want it to be sound.

You want it to be authentic. You don't want actually all of your testimonials to sound like you wrote them either. No, 

Steve: no, not at all. And but the thing also with these is, you know what? Get, get the stuff on your website. Get your test get these things put on there. Get 

Dave: your origin story on there.

Your origin 

Steve: story. Here's how we got started. When, where you have the about us, most of the time I read those about us and it looks like it was written by some English teacher in high school, English teacher who just, who is writing about you instead of saying my dad, my grandfather.

It does. 

Dave: It may even use like impersonal pronouns aBC manufacturing was founded in 14, and, way back in 1850 they began as a, 

Steve: how about we began. 

Dave: Just, you've got to make it personal. Nothing. Okay. That's not true. I was going to say nothing annoys me more, but there are things that annoy me more than this.

But one thing that annoys me a lot is when I go to a website and I go to the about, or there is no about at all, or I can't find anything about who leads this company? Where is the team? Where are the people? Who's, who leads this company? I look for this constantly, especially if I get solicited for a business.

I want to see who are the people involved? What are their roles? Do they have a board of directors? Who's on the board? I'm just curious. And when there's none of that or none of the history, it's just all, like sales speak and, we'll do this and that. I get very suspicious.

Steve: Yeah. Or I'll say to somebody, if I read something like that I'll often say this, look, this looks like it could have been better if in bullet points, that, oh, they did this, they did, and it's a bullet point. I don't want bullet points. I want a story.

We have a client, we have a client who manufactures. Event tents, right? Yeah. And also washers that, that wash these huge giant tents. And and they had this thing about all the, it started in 1929 and, and it was and they had the guy's name and stuff.

I said who is this guy? And she said it's our grandfather. I said it's okay. Say, it's our grandfather, right? Say 

Dave: it. Yeah, crazy time to start a business, right? He 

Steve: started this in 1929. Wasn't that the Great Depression? She goes, yeah. But he had to find a way to feed his family. I said that's the story.

Of course. Yes. That's the story. 

Dave: But even if you started last year. Even if your business started two or three or five years ago or whatever, still, there's a story. That's right. There is a story. There is a story there. Yeah. It's powerful. 

Steve: So to bring this all into a pretty simple formula is, dependent, every story has all right Dave said earlier.

There's a hero. There's going to be a hero of the story. So like for the tent company, the hero was grandpa. Grandpa was the hero. And then grandpa had a problem. All right. That's the second part. There was a problem. There was a hurdle. Grandpa, needed to feed his family.

Dave: So there's a quest. There's a, 

Steve: there's a quest. And then there become, Maybe there might be become might become some other hurdles, once you start on the quest, 

Dave: Of course, my quest was I wanted to get this job with John Glenn and I didn't know where the.

Yeah. So you 

Steve: started with you started with the first hurdle is where is it's going to be? So you had to overcome the hurdle by, by, and the way you did it was by contacting the Chicago Tribune. 

Dave: And then I had to figure out okay, how do I, where is it? Once, once I get to the West and then, and how do I get in the room?

I figured that out by just, following the people. Yeah. 

Steve: These are all hurdles. There are many hurdles. There are many hurdles. 

Dave: But they're all hurdles. Many hurdles. How do I get them to shake my hand? I 

Steve: trap him. And the hurdle of just the idea of standing there and trapping him for most people is intimidating.

I'm going to, I am going to stand here and I'm going to trap one of the most famous people who ever walked planet earth. All right. This is the first American to orbit the world, the earth. He was so valuable to the US government that they grounded him, until finally what, when he was like 70 something, they finally relented and said, okay, we'll let you go back up again.

Dave: Yeah. Yeah. Wow. Yeah. What a great. Yeah. He 

Steve: was just that hurdle alone of just being, just to say that you had the cojones to stand there, 

Dave: Yeah. And we didn't really, we don't have time on this episode to talk about it, but you're actually going to be doing a lot of work in this area of personal branding.

But you as a person have your own hero story too. And. So you can apply this storytelling to yourself and your own personal brand, too. Yeah, 

Steve: But we all do. We all have our own stories. Yeah, 

Dave: a hundred percent unique because no one is like you. No one had the path that you did. 

Steve: And so whether you're listening to this or watching this let, we need to stress to you, you have a story.

You have it. You might have many stories, but you might, but you probably have one big story. Okay. And use that story. Use that story to establish in the mind of your moose, of your target market. what you stand for, who you are. And from that, it's, it all, it helps them to trust you and it helps them to remember you so that when they are ready to make a decision to use somebody with your types of services or products or something like that, they go, you know what, that's the kind of person, that's the kind of company that I want to deal with.

Yep. 

Dave: That's it. It's a wrap. 

Steve: End of story. End of story. End of story. 

Dave: Love it. Conclusion. Hero wins. I love it. And we won and you won by listening to the B2B marketing and sales podcast with Steve Miller and Dave Loomis. Join us again for another exciting episode and see what happens in the, in 

Steve: part two 

Dave: of the story.

We'll see you later.