Reflection Assignment – Storytelling

Challenge

I work at the Marketing division of an established FMCG company. Most of the products had  been doing good, but there was this one line of personal care products that wasn’t performing  well since the past few months. I proposed to change the pitch of our product in terms of its  contextual relevance to our target audience, but the higher management people were not on  board with this new idea.

Selection of Tool

I wanted the higher management people to understand my idea from the view point of the  customer. Hence in order for them to understand the buyer’s journey, I chose Storytelling Tool.  With the help of this tool, I would be able to sequentially take through each of the consumer  touchpoints in the form of a compelling story with a narrative. Designers create personas to  represent target users and add conflict to stories that reflect their user journeys and problems.  Crafting stories, designers can better understand what users want from a solution. Having a  story throughout your project means marketing the design at the end of the design process is  also straightforward, as you already know exactly which story to tell to show how your product  provides value.

Application

I weaved a storyline around the personal care line of products which we were trying to push. I  used storytelling in the form of a video representation stating everything right from how the  consumer’s needs are created, where does he go for finding products, what our competitors  have been doing and then finally how we, with the help of advertising and positive Brand  Association can pitch our product’s storyline and USP to our customers. Storytelling helps  explain the interconnections among people in situations and settings, teaching broad lessons  that engage real human beings. Listening engages people; and  empathy is an essential and  fundamental component in the process. The higher management loved this approach and were  on board with the idea.

Insight

Stories generate questions and questions expand the breadth and depth of stories, leading to  lots of innovative thoughts and ideas. Storytelling becomes an important tool for feedback,  which is the basis of the iterative process of prototyping that lead to solutions. In my case,  Storytelling tool enabled me to effectively communicate my ideas to my senior management  people who were rather closed in their approach but understood it with the help of storytelling  and visualization. Stories and prototypes are intertwined, explaining and repositioning

experiences through a multitude of potential interpretations, which allow researchers  to test new solutions before committing exclusively to a particular policy, program, or service.  The design thinking process ensures the user evolvement in every stage to build a user-centred  solution. Therefore, the storytelling is used throughout the design process, yet there is a  different usage goal in each phase. Generally, the storytelling can be used as three pair phases;  problem framing, solution framing, and solution implementation.

Approach

I was able to receive the required results this time using Storytelling tool, however I would also  like to use tools such as Visualization and Mind Mapping in my future pitches. It is about taking  a disciplined, objective and methodical approach to solving a design problem: clearly defining  the challenge, creating multiple solutions, picking the best and executing. In my opinion, an  ideal approach would be the combination of all the design thinking tools where each one can  borrow ideas and concepts from the other and work in collaboration leading to new and  innovative solutions and perspectives.

