4/13/14 Response to “Storytelling, a marketing tool”

This week I read a wonderful article by Jeffrey Benabio for Family Practice News about the power of storytelling. In this short article, he says that customers are overwhelmed with social media and advertising, but “when well told, stories are easier to remember than facts and statistics.” This statement really jumps out at me because it is the reason behind nearly all of my marketing efforts at BBBSCM—before writing a blogpost, article, or creating a video, I ask myself, “do we know of anyone here with a really powerful story?”

 

This thought process is probably most evident in my videography. For the National Women’s History Month video, I made sure to include things like “she inspires me to go to college” and “she makes me want to be the teacher’s pet.” These statements, while succinct, are still stories. They tell us something unique about the relationship, they have a different effect than saying “she’s improved my GPA” (although that would also be good to note). Another example of this storytelling would be the Avidia Bank partnership article I wrote. In the interviewing stage for the article, I discovered that one of the bank employees had come from a very difficult childhood that in many ways mirrored the underprivileged childhoods that many Littles have. With her permission, I used a direct quote about her difficult upbringing in the article. Quotes like these are way more compelling to read, and stick in your memory better, when they appeal to your emotions, memories, and experiences.

 

One thing this article reminds me of is to tell more specific, intimate stories. During the interview process for the National Women’s History Month video, one match told me that the Big texted the Little’s mother asking what her favorite cake was and surprised the Little with the cake on her birthday. This is a really sweet story that I was lucky have in film, but unfortunately it just wasn’t relevant enough to the theme of the video to include. In the future, I would like to tell more stories like this, just short 30 seconds or less stories, whether in video form or in a quote, that are easily read/listened to/ and shared!