How interesting would a superhero movie be if it immediately jumped right to the part where the hero fights the epic battle, defeats the villain, and saves the day? Although the action might captivate your attention for a few minutes, you’re ultimately not likely to remember much about it once it’s over if you haven’t been provided with the backstory. The backstory gives you context, and more importantly, it explains why you should even care.
Yet with the heroes of our industry, ahem our pharmaceutical brands, we consistently feel the need to just jump right to the part where our brand saves the day. This archaic approach leaves our customers, whether prescribers or patients, in the same quandary as my fictitious moviegoer – trying to figure out on her own why she should care.
So how does a marketer avoid this sad fate? Easy… tell your customers a full story.
At ROF, we strongly believe in storytelling in the form of a communication platform to craft your brand positioning and message hierarchy. Like any story, a communication platform has to have a beginning, a middle, and an end. Yes, your brand should certainly be the hero, but we firmly believe that every hero needs a backstory. It’s the backstory that creates the interest and emotion to lean in to learn more. Too often, Clients want to skip the unbranded educational prescripts that set up the branded payoff. The naysayers vocalize that these facts or messages are already well known and therefore unnecessary. Our retort is that just because we know something doesn’t mean we don’t need to be reminded of it every now in then, especially when it’s relevant to learning something new. The backstory not only provides the context for your hero, but when done correctly sets up the villain in your brand story.
Why do we believe so strongly in this approach for our clients? Because recent evidence from Jennifer Aaker at Stanford demonstrated that stories are 22 times more memorable than facts alone. Think about that… 22 times more memorable.
Not sure if you’re representing your brand to the fullest? Then take a moment to ask yourself these 3 simple questions.
- Do you have a well-crafted backstory that sets up your Brand’s role as hero?
- Is it clear how your brand vanquishes the villain in your story?
- Do you want your brand to be 22 times more memorable?
If you can’t comfortably answer yes to the 3 questions above, then just shine a big flashlight in the night sky… I mean, just give us a call. We’re here to help.
