POP has tried a few different slogans over the years. And though we eventually settled on “Your friendly neighborhood marketer” to fit our superhero comic theme, all said a little something about our company, and we continue to use them in our business in other spots. One of the most important is, “we tell your story.” It represents something we base our strategy around – marketing with storytelling. 

Not everyone associates marketing with storytelling. Instead, they think about flashy graphics, sales gimmicks, or even deception. But ignoring the story element of your marketing is a mistake. 

What’s the best way to convey important information? People learn in different ways, with visual learners, auditory, and tactile all being primary ways to interact with the world, but when you’re not teaching a process, but are conveying large amounts of facts, there’s one way that’s been around for millennia – storytelling. 

Think about it. 

History and Religion – Marketing with Storytelling

Whether you’re talking about the ancient Greeks, the Bible, Torah & Quran, Aesop’s Fables, or shared history, the way we convey facts or lessons is through epic tales and myths. We understand the world through stories. We also best remember facts that way. 

While there may be a few history-philes among this readership, I’m betting if you were to take a random sampling of people, only a small percentage could tell you much about the battle of Yorktown. Those who can likely remember it from Hamilton!

Conversely, nearly everyone you ask will be familiar with the myth of George Washington chopping down the cherry tree and telling his father, “I cannot tell a lie,” when questioned about it. 

The cherry tree story is likely untrue, but it captures people’s imagination and gives people a sense of national pride in their country’s first leader. 

It gets people interested in history! One thing that does it even better is the aforementioned Hamilton. 

Hamilton was a sensation because not only did it use actors of ethnicities and backgrounds who’d never seen themselves in historical epics, but it told the story using music that was culturally relevant to modern viewers. Suddenly, there was a new generation of people interested in history!

Want people to care about your business? Tell its story. 

Here’s another example. This one is about explaining the value of something – a business necessity!

Neal DeGrasse Tyson 

There are few better modern examples of a Renaissance man than Neal DeGrasse Tyson. He’s a brilliant and gifted astrophysicist who runs the Hayden Planetarium center in New York, but he also manages to communicate complex scientific concepts better than nearly anyone living today in the English-speaking world. 

Millions of young minds have been sparked by their interest in science through learning from him and his friend, Bill Nye. And Tyson got his start with a visit to the very planetarium he now runs. 

Hearing him talk about the wonder he experienced when he visited Hayden and how that led to him being one of the great scientific communicators of this century was inspiring. However, when I heard him talk about funding NASA, I was never quite sold. 

I understood how it made people think about Earth differently, advanced science in practical ways as the necessity of thinking differently for lunar landing has led to help here on Earth,  and how it inspired kids to get into science, but somehow thinking about all the money that went into building rockets, it, I could understand it intellectually, but not really feel it. 

Every time I hear about the budgets for space exploration, I start to wonder where that money could have been better used. That is, until I experienced the right story. 

The past month, I’ve been catching up on Apple TV’s For All Mankind. If you’re not familiar, (mild spoilers), FAM takes place in an alternate history in which the Soviets made it to the moon first and so both the space race and the Cold War never ended, leading to both scary moments and major scientific advancements. 

In the series, as we approach the modern age, global warming is slowing instead of accelerating, as the technology NASA used has made its way into electric vehicles. And the impact of space exploration on the next generation is explored. 

I don’t want to get into too much more, but the point is, I suddenly got it!

The right story takes you on a long ride and gets you invested in the people involved in it, heroes, villains, and everyday people. 

What’s Your Story?

Your company has a story too. It’s full of everyday heroes and maybe a few comedians. There are probably some lessons you learned along the way. 

If you want people to choose you, tell those stories. 

Show them who you are. Show them what you care about. Share the people who make your business work. Tell customers what you’ve learned. 

Your story doesn’t have to be epic (but it can be!). It just needs an arc – a beginning, middle, and end. And the end doesn’t have to be the absolute end, but the end of a chapter. 

Each day is a story – usually several! It all starts with understanding your objectives, value, and values. Understand those, and then find things in your everyday life that help express them. Infuse marketing with storytelling.

That’s what POP does for our clients.