Reflection – Storytelling

Deep Dive into understanding the Target Consumer

Challenge & Selection

I work as a consumer insight manager at a large multinational food and beverage company in  Switzerland. My role is to understand the needs, wants and behaviours of consumers to help ensure  advertising will resonate before the company spends big bucks! I have learnt that people love a good  story. A story is a narrative, designed to put human beings and their experience front and centre in  order to evoke emotion, interest and persuade. The best stories are simple. Storytelling can help  make communication more engaging, impactful and motivating. In any consumer insight role, we  need to be able to translate data into actionable insights and provide strategic recommendations  that the business can develop into profitable strategies. A common challenge that insight managers,  like myself, can face is that we hear colleagues say our slides are complicated and they do not  understand the data. Sometimes data and analytics can be difficult to explain and understand. This is  why one approach I try to use is storytelling. I have found that data alone does not create change, no  matter how excellent the PowerPoint, charts or spreadsheet is. As Daniel Prewitt, Global Leadership  Development Director at Mars, stated in the course videos, “storytelling is a fundamental part of  every great brand” and I believe that insight managers also need to present data as a story, mirroring  storytelling in advertising.

Application

The marketing team approached me with a challenge. The ambition was for one of our brands to  become the biggest and most popular brand reaching 1 billion in Net Net Sales (NNS) by 2020. The  brand was already a leader in the category increasing leadership year on year but its main competitor  was remaining strong, investing more to support the brand and benefiting from a huge heritage and  taste association. At the time, we had a robust consumer segmentation in place. However, there was  a need to gain a deeper understanding of our target consumer and to sense check our thinking.

To get this really deep feeling of our target consumers’ hopes, fears, motivations, aspirations and  emotions, we needed to see the full picture – not just the things consumers say in focus groups, but  the way they lived their lives and the factors that shaped them. We needed research that went  beyond not just knowing things about our target consumer but wanting to feel it and be inspired by  it.  To do this, there were a number of storytelling steps needed:

1. ‘Deep dives’: with the target consumers to introduce us to their world through self-

reflection, images and video. This deep dive uncovered new insights into their needs, values,  tensions and perspectives.

2. Ethnographic Depth interviews: I spent quality time with the most engaging consumers,

observing first-hand how they interact with the brand, digging deeper into their values and  tensions. These interviews were filmed to help really bring the target consumer to life!

3. Story building: I love to build stories and, with my research supplier, we conducted an

analysis session to give direction into the narrative takes.

4. Creative Learnings and Film: We produced actionable learnings and rules of thumb for the

brand by developing an inspiring and emotionally charged film that immersed my colleagues  in the world of our target consumer.

This recent application of storytelling with consumer data did not only happen at the time of the  presentation to my colleagues but started already with consumers involved in the research study,  which proved to be richer in creating consumer insights. As opposed to traditional survey research, I  tried not to set too many rules or guidance and used a variety of approaches such as video and photo  diaries. I let the consumers’ not only tell but also show me when the story begun.

Insight & Approach

The richness and detail in the consumer responses was surprising and, in turn, led to better  storytelling of the insights to key stakeholders in the company when we received the data. It helped  trigger emotion and led to better brand communications. Storytelling added a lot of value and I fear  that the presentation would have otherwise been another typical long and dry description of how to  communicate to our target consumer. I have realised that stories can come from many sources and  tap into our human need to understand why particular data has meaning. The team was able to gain  a deeper understanding of our target consumer and what motivates them. This was used to drive  relevance and meaning for the brand. It also acted as a stimulus for our agency partners to help them  develop marketing mix elements as well as for internal teams as they embarked on other brand  initiatives.

I have learnt from this course that one way to improve my storytelling at my work is to get more  comfortable storytelling in general and having a deeper understanding of what the particular  audience needs. Daniel Prewitt stated “leaders only have about 20% of your attention” and to get  them to pay attention, we need to create energy, passion and engagement through storytelling. I  think one way to improve storytelling at work is to practice it in other aspects of my life e.g.  explaining the story of key family events – births of my children, the marriage to my college  sweetheart, social life highlights, celebrating successes or learning from failures at work, events that  make me laugh or cry. I can also practice the art of storytelling by telling imaginative stories to my  young children aged 3 and 5 before bedtime and understanding what holds attention, awakens  interest, encourages interaction, questions and involvement and stimulates emotions from suspense,  curiosity to happiness, for example. In future, I want to become better at identifying very effective  storylines. In my line of work, although agendas are tight, storytelling is critical to translate data into  actionable insights and recommendations.

