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AUSTIN, Texas — When it comes to storytelling in a digital environment, the keys to success are not that different from any other medium: Be authentic, have a unique story to tell and keep the customer’s needs top of mind. That was the assessment of presenters at the NEXT Conference’s Art & Sale of Omnichannel Storytelling panel in Austin, Texas, moderated by Patricia Buch-holtz of the Austin Advertising Federation.
Rod Martin, general manager of advertising firm McGarrah Jessee; Casey Miller, public relations director at LookThinkMake; and Tim McLain, digital marketing evangelist for Netsertive, shared insights on the most effective ways that companies can project their message at a time of unprecedented media clutter and changing consumer platform preferences.
Martin, whose firm helped launch the Yeti outdoor brand, stressed the importance of focusing on the customer and being authentic. “You start with the customers. The Yeti brand was started by two brothers who were super-passionate about the outdoors and were really tired of coolers that would fall apart in extreme environments,” Martin said. “They set out to build a better mousetrap. They wanted to build something that mattered a lot to a small amount of people, and what they got was very powerful brand ambassadors.”
For those whose brand may have more local or regional relevance than national, Netsertive’s McLain stressed the importance of what he called “scaled localization,” a process for delivering messages with high local relevance, across many local areas. This is particularly important in today’s digital environment. He noted, for example, that Google has seen 500% growth in “Near Me” searches in the past year and that 80% of local purchase are influenced online.
He pointed out that delivering a national message to a local audience is not, in fact, localized marketing. Instead, he noted that messaging needs to be centered on those things that are unique to the local retailer and most relevant to the local audience.
“Retailers are more alike than they are different. You can leverage that from a digital perspective,” McLain said. “With the right tools you can take that store and start localizing it down to the store level because each store will be unique in its own way. They have different product cycles, different products to highlight at different times of year. You have to make sure your advertising is scaling that down to the local level.”
LookThinkMake’s Miller noted that many times companies mistake the broadest reach — a national audience — for the most effective outcome: driving traffic or sales. “A common mistake that people make is they try to blanket their message to everyone,” said Miller. It’s more about trying to find the people who connect with the message.
“It’s understanding the difference between national exposure, which might help deliver credibility and local, which might actually help you make sales.”
All three panelists noted the importance of having a consistent brand message, indicating that companies often cannot control where consumers will first find or engage with their brand. “That’s why it’s so important that everything you do as a brand is consistent with who you are,” said McGarrah Jessee’s Martin.
