Real-time Marketing is a catch phrase of the moment. There are arguments as to what it means and how far it will go, but no one can argue with these basic premises:
- Response times are shrinking for marketers who want to play in the currents of popular culture. The velocity of change in everything from bestseller lists to tourist destinations has accelerated the cycle from up-and-comer to has-been. Marketers have to act more quickly, frequently, and astutely to earn cultural relevance.
- People expect brands to respond to them in multiple forums of their choosing. Today’s marketers can look with jealously at the ancient world where customer interactions were handled primarily in-store or through 800 numbers. People now assume that companies will respond to them wherever they happen to be – In-store, Facebook, Twitter, website, etc
- People tap into a wider spectrum of company behaviors in forming their brand perceptions. While advertising still commands considerable power, people are increasingly influenced by a broader range of company activities. Apple suppliers’ working conditions, Chick-A-Fils political views, and Zappo’s sales agents have exhibited powerful affects on their brands.
These trends affect the most primary foundations of successful brand building. More specifically, they shed a new perspective on the concept of brand storytelling. Any student of marketing knows that great brands are built on great stories. Stories are the means by which we understand, remember, and connect with things that are important to us. When we recall great people or great events, we do so with stories. It’s why American Idol and its variants don’t use their airtime to merely judge the talent. What draws viewers in are the stories they construct about what got them there (the obstacles they overcame, the people who inspired them, the dreams they’re chasing) and the stories that unfold as they progress through the natural drama provided by the multiple rounds of competition.
Traditional advertising rightly celebrates well-crafted stories. From Mean Joe Green and the kid with a Coke to Nike’s Jogger. successful brands have harnessed stories to conjure the highest level of connection with their audience. Yet these tight, well-contained, highly produced stories don’t mesh easily with the trends we just described. How do you craft stories in the world of tweets, snapchats and user-generated content?
The answer is that today’s brand stories must rely more on characters than on plot. Stories that rely on plots don’t have the malleability to meet the emerging forms of marketing. One can think of a movie like The Sixth Sense, composed with precision to deliver a steady dose of suspense that ends in a wonderful collision of surprise and inevitability. Compare that to a James Bond movie. Outside of a few twists, we already know how it is going to turn out in the end. Yet we embrace the ride in order to revel in experiencing the character we love. That is the advantage of character-based stories. They lend themselves to endless sequels. No one is pressing for Sixth Sense II but the James Bond franchise keeps churning on. Characters allow the stories to pour out in endless variation. They inspire Fan Fiction and fierce loyalties. The common quality in people’s passionate embrace of Star Trek, Sex in the City, House of Cards, and similar properties is not in the plots, but in the characters.
This is not the “brand character” often listed on a standard marketing brief. Those usually list a short collection of well-worn adjectives. Character needs to be richer than that. We feel genuine attachment for entirely opposite types: because they are the same as us, because they are different from us, because of their glamour, because of their humanity, because of their goodness, because of their badness. We are drawn less by type than by depth. A real character is the fuller expression of the drives, instincts and world view that shape how you act in the world. We want to be in the company of that kind of character, to interact with it, even to add to it. With this character firmly in place, a brand can more easily weave stories across channels, and let people tell stories on its behalf. This is the character that brands require to prosper in today’s real-time marketing environment.
(This topic was inspired by a discussion with Mark Figliulo on the nature of character in stories).
The Ryan Report 