Break Through The Noise: The Future of Marketing with Dr. J.J. Peterson of StoryBrand
On June 8th, 2023, Fruitful celebrated 10 years of growing compelling brands.
The event was a tribute to the collective effort made by clients, partners, and the community that have made Fruitful, well, fruitful.
To mark the occasion, StoryBrand Guide and Chief Strategist, Raj Lulla; and Fruitful Founder, and Principle Designer, Ben Lueders were joined by StoryBrand expert, Dr. J.J. Peterson for a special live podcast recording.
In the episode, Dr. J.J. Peterson gives his insight into what the next 10 years of marketing will look like in a world of AI and automation.
Here are the highlights:
Is Email Marketing Dead?
Talk about your customer’s problem. A lot.
To effectively communicate with your customers, email marketing remains a powerful tool for engaging with your audience. You may feel that you are sending too many emails to your customers but chances are, you’re not sending enough. The more you communicate and provide value through email, the stronger your brand connection becomes.
Humanizing Your Marketing with AI
Artificial Intelligence (AI) has become an essential component in the marketing landscape. However, it's critical to note that AI should serve as a tool, not a replacement for human interaction. Amidst the online noise, companies that effectively use AI to create genuine human connections will stand out. By leveraging AI technology in a thoughtful manner, businesses can break through the noise and create a clear message to their target audience.
Mastering Your Elevator Pitch with StoryBrand
“So, what do you do?”
A powerful elevator pitch, or one-liner, is essential for conveying the value of your business in brief encounters. The StoryBrand messaging framework helps you craft an impactful and memorable one-liner by making your customer the hero. Instead of solely focusing on your brand, shift the spotlight to your customers.
Here are the key steps:
Begin with your customer's problem and show empathy towards their situation:
Position yourself as an experienced guide who can offer a solution to the identified pain points.
Paint the picture of success.
Fruitful didn’t celebrate 10 years of being in business, rather, celebrated the people; friends, family, and clients who help make the world a better place by growing brands that do good.
For Dr. J.J. Peterson’s full episode about what to expect in the next 10 years of marketing, check out Growing a Fruitful Brand here.
Ep. 36:
Break Through The Noise: The Future of Marketing with Dr. J.J. Peterson of StoryBrand
Automated Transcript
Ben Lueders:
Welcome to Growing a Fruitful Brand, where we discuss how to create and grow a brand that makes the world a better place for you, your customers, and your employees. I'm Ben Lueders, Founder and Art Director of Fruitful Design and Strategy, and this is my business partner and brand strategist, Raj Lulla. Today on the podcast, we're super excited to have Dr. JJ Peterson in the room.
Dr. JJ Peterson:
Thank you for having me. I'm very excited to be here.
Raj Lulla:
You did it on the first try. That was impressive.
Ben Lueders:
I know, all that buildup and it was ...
Raj Lulla:
For anybody who's listening, this is a live recording and so if the sound's a little different, we appreciate your patience with that. Yeah. We're doing this in person. JJ flew from Nashville to be with us here today to talk about ... Since this is Fruitful's 10th anniversary, we thought instead of looking backwards at marketing, to talk about the next 10 years of marketing. What do we think is going to happen?
JJ, why don't we just start with that question. The world has changed a lot in the last few years. We're seeing new technologies crop up and everything. What do you think the next 10 years looks like for marketing?
Dr. JJ Peterson:
I think in the next 10 years, marketing is dead. Good night everybody. Thank you.
Ben Lueders:
All right. There you go. That was easy.
Dr. JJ Peterson:
It was wonderful. We had a good run.
Ben Lueders:
[Inaudible 00:01:20].
Dr. JJ Peterson:
I get asked this question a lot, especially I think because purchasing decisions and marketing changed during the pandemic a ton. If you haven't heard of ChatGPT and AI in the season, then you've been under a rock. AI is clearly what everybody says taking over the world and going to get rid of all of the copywriters and designers that are out there. That's kind of what the news seems to say. Yet, when I look at trends and where things are headed, where things currently have gone over the last couple of years in particular and where they're headed, I actually see some really exciting things on the horizon.
The first I would say is that the AI component that we're all hearing about these days, AI, especially ChatGPT. ChatGPT is the fastest-growing user app of all time. I can't remember the exact numbers, but it took something like ... What it took Twitter to do in three years and Instagram to do in a year and a half, it took ChatGPT to get a hundred million users in about six months.
Raj Lulla:
That's crazy.
Dr. JJ Peterson:
In about six months, it became the fastest growing user app in the world. When it feels like maybe that grew up overnight, it kind of did. From its release till now, the amount of people that are using it is just insane. There's all this discussion about it and there's a lot of fear I think around it in the marketing world. One of the trends that I would see in the next 10 years is we are going to be obviously using that more. We're going to be using it a lot more. But I would say the way we need to look at it is more of a ... AI, especially in the marketing world, is a tool, not a takeover. There is this, I think, fear that all of a sudden AI is going to take over, but the reality is it's a great tool that we can all use and we're probably going to start using it more and more, but there are some cautions with it.
You still have to have human interaction, people who are going to input good data, who are going to ask the right questions and who are going to edit the crap out of it. Recently I put in to Chat GPT, just kind of playing around, give me five facts about Dr. JJ Peterson. I was just very curious. Of the five facts, only one was true. Only one was true.
Raj Lulla:
I want to hear all of these facts.
Dr. JJ Peterson:
Well, the first one said that I was the founder and CEO of StoryBrand, which I am not.
Raj Lulla:
I'll take it.
Dr. JJ Peterson:
My boss would be very hurt by that, that the internet believes that I am the founder and CEO. Donald Miller is the founder and CEO. A second one said that I worked for a brand called Keep and I was the head of their talent and development, which I spoke at a conference with the person who was in charge of talent and development, but they said I worked there.
Raj Lulla:
Is that how you get job titles? Because I'll speak with [inaudible 00:04:25]. That's great.
Dr. JJ Peterson:
Write it in.
Raj Lulla:
I'm the CEO of Disney now.
Dr. JJ Peterson:
Yeah. I'll put it on the internet and it will be true. There's things like that. Chat GPT and AI, I think we're going to be using it a lot more. It's going to save a lot of time in creating marketing. It's going to save a lot of time in coming up with new ideas. The reality is it's not foolproof, it's still not that good, overall. This is another big piece, anything that you create with AI cannot be copy written. If you create an image, if you create a design, if I go into Chat GPT or any kind of AI and I say, help me design this image and then I use that image in something I'm selling, it cannot be copy written. There's a lot of stuff that people are not really thinking about when it comes to this. There's this panic. But I will say, I think one of the biggest things we're looking at in the next 10 years is how we are going to begin automating a lot of the beginning phases of creativity and sparking brainstorming in the world of marketing.
Ben Lueders:
I've already seen in Photoshop and stuff, you see some ... They're bringing all these AI tools in. They're making all of the most boring parts of my job so easy. I'm going to be saving so much of my time in designing. I'm going to be able to spend it and actually being creative and coming up with better concepts than trying to cut people out of photos meticulously.
Raj Lulla:
Yeah. Let's talk about what those kinds of things are, because we're not just sitting here in Chat GPT and designing all of your work. No. We've got Jason Rothfus from Red Fox Consulting in the room here tonight. I remember when you were designing his logo, one of the things you have to do is draw a fox. Now, it may seem super straightforward, but are you drawing a fox on a rock? Are you drawing it ... It's not a Dr. Seuss book. Don't worry about it. [inaudible 00:06:27] Dr. Seuss book.
Ben Lueders:
Fox on socks, fox on rocks.
Raj Lulla:
Are you drawing it face on? Are you drawing it pouncing? There's so many different ...
Ben Lueders:
We explored all those poses for Jason's logo.
Raj Lulla:
Yeah. I mean there's so many different ways that you can sketch it. If you ask the AI, Hey, give me 10 different poses of a fox, that at least starts that brainstorming process, but you wouldn't use any of that material in the end product. It's just like it helps you get that spark going.
Ben Lueders:
Yeah.
Dr. JJ Peterson:
Yeah. I think it's a great tool. I just don't think it's a takeover. You still can't just turn over your marketing to it. The other kind of next kind of piece I would say, in the next 10 years that we're going to look at, trends that are going to happen, is really I think the companies that are going to get ahead are the companies that actually are more human in many ways. In that, what's going to happen with AI and people who use it poorly, by just putting a bunch of noise out in the marketplace, is really we're going to be inundated with more and more noise in the market. More emails, more ads, more things are going to be going out all the time.
The ones that are going to be able to cut through are the ones that actually treat people like humans instead of a number and actually have clear messaging to them. That's what's going to win in the marketplace, because this ... I do think we're about to enter an age where we're just going to be inundated on a whole new level and most people's brands are going to diminish in that noise. The ones that I think will cut through will be the ones that are humanized, the ones that actually treat people like humans. In fact, there's a whole bunch of statistics right now that are out there that really reinforce ... This one I just read was about how 85% of people who are engaging in customer service right now are done with AI. They're just over it. AI can be a tool that you can use in customer service in really powerful ways, but they are all now saying, I want a human. I want to be treated like a human. Don't treat me like a robot by making me talk to a robot.
Raj Lulla:
Who here would prefer to talk to a human on customer service. I may not want to wait 30 hours.
Dr. JJ Peterson:
Yeah. Yeah. It's things like that. I think we're going to see a little bit of a season of inundation and people experimenting with AI and getting more things out in the marketplace, which is going to be frustrating and overwhelming for customers for a while, but the brands that will break through are the ones who will humanize the message and create a clear message.
Raj Lulla:
Yeah. I think Google's announcement about how they're handling AI shows that this is going to be the case, because in Google's kind of counterpoint to Chat GPT, when they were talking about Bard and the future of more natural search, they were referencing exact sources. They were referencing blogs that were written by real people or stuff that was written by the National Park's Park Service. Because the more content is written, especially more junk content is written, the more valuable that actual expertise is going to be, the actual experience is going to be, actual opinion is going to be because that's something that a predictive language model can't serve us, is when a mother of four visits a national park with children who are under 10, which one should we do so a kid doesn't fall into a canyon. You're most likely to hear that from another mom rather than from AI. Even if the AI is sourcing it from somewhere, it's going to come from a place that has an actual human point of view.
Dr. JJ Peterson:
I mean, the reality is we are all becoming more and more savvy when it comes to being a consumer. We can smell the bull. We can kind of smell it. It's annoying and in fact it's insulting. We're becoming more and more savvy. People who are using just pure templates ... There's some research on that templates aren't as effective anymore. Mass kind of just messaging to everybody without any kind of personalization is not working as well anymore. I mean especially during the pandemic email usage and email marketing rose incredibly because we were all at home and so they couldn't catch us out and about as much anymore. We were getting more and more messages. We're getting more and more messages on Instagram and more and more messages on Facebook and more and more messages on TikTok. We're starting to understand and become more savvy of where people are trying to trick us and do all these other things.
In this process, if people just rely on those kind of things and just kind of pushing mass noise out there, you'll get some attention, but I really ... The part that actually makes me really hopeful even in this season where we're kind of becoming more automated and more disconnected, what I'm actually seeing is the companies that are going to be doing well, and this even comes from some research with HubSpot and some other marketing networks, is that the more you actually connect with customers on a human level, the more success you're going to see. Those are kind of, as I look at the next 10 years, the first two things, it's like, yes, AI is going to rise and we're going to be a little bit more automated, but the reality with that as well is that the groups and the companies that can actually humanize all of that and be connected with people are going to win out. They kind of are going to balance each other, I think.
Ben Lueders:
I like what you said right at the beginning though, of just thinking of it more as a tool because tools are for humans. It's not going to replace them. It's going to help them automate some of the things that are just harder, that just take longer, speed it up. I think when we think about it as just something that to not be afraid of, you can be afraid of it a little bit, it's a little spooky, if you put spend any time with any of the AI stuff, but think of it more as a tool to help humans do even more and better work.
Raj Lulla:
Yeah. I would add that not just because we're creative people up here and just want to dog on AI, because I think there are a lot of good uses for it, but an example for this would be that some content that is fairly rote in terms of ... If you want to write a blog post about how to change your oil in a lot of cars, that's going to be the same. It's just a fairly standard process. If you think about across your company, there are probably a lot of those things that are fairly kind of mechanical or could be automated or even the content could be automated. That stuff pretty okay, how do I apply for this or how do I, whatever. I'm not a very handy person. Like I mentioned earlier, my dad paid me to write when I was a kid and not to mow the lawn. I only learned one of those lessons the right way.
Ben Lueders:
[inaudible 00:13:37]. It's interesting
Raj Lulla:
One of my favorite YouTube channels that shows you how to fix things, it uses, I think it's an F-word meter of how likely are you to swear while making this repair? Essentially the closer you get to five out of five F words, the more you should call a professional to do that for you. Even just taking an article like how to change your oil and then giving it that one human touch of, okay, so the process is fairly straightforward, but having done this for 20 years, I know that most people either can or cannot do this without any help. That little human touch alone is going to make a huge difference.
I think that is probably a good example of the balance between, yes, it's a good tool that can help you get to second or maybe even third base on a piece of content, but if you put it out there unpublished ... A StoryBrand of ours, Kenny Jung, he is like in the future, your AI email will go to somebody else's inbox that will be summarized by AI and then they'll reply with an AI email. I was like, "Oh, this sounds horrible." I'm not looking forward to that at all.
Ben Lueders:
AI purgatory or something.
Raj Lulla:
I think that there's a question there of how do we actually intake any of that information? I think the better world that we're thinking though is that the things that are easy to automate like checking your balance on something or those simple mechanical processes where sometimes you don't really want to talk to a human. If I could text Amazon, "Hey, help me return these shoes," or something, cool. I don't really need help with that, just shoot me the label and I'll stick it on there. We'll be good to go.
Ben Lueders:
See, I want to be best friends with the person that I'm texting.
Raj Lulla:
Yeah. There's a reason that we call him Sunshine and me Rain Cloud, and that may be on display here.
Dr. JJ Peterson:
Can I be thunder?
Ben Lueders:
Oh, yes. A hundred percent. You can't leave though. You've got to stay here.
Dr. JJ Peterson:
Okay. Okay. Those donuts will keep me.
Ben Lueders:
Yes, yes. They're amazing.
Raj Lulla:
Yeah. AI, but balanced with human connection, I think that that makes a ton of sense. Again, we don't want to be in email purgatory where our AI are just talking to each other and it's like do I just not come to work anymore then?
Ben Lueders:
I mean, that sounds nice sometimes.
Dr. JJ Peterson:
What the humanization becomes in the next 10 years, I actually do believe is not just a nice thing that we get to add on. I actually think it becomes our differentiation. We become different in the marketplace because we are more human. I believe that's going to happen, and I also hope that that happens because I think that in this world where, especially in the last three years, we've become so disconnected that people are longing for connection. It's not just with people, but it is with brands. They want to be a part of a tribe. They want to be a part of a group of people who are moving with something. It can be literally donuts. I want to be a part of your tribe. I want to be a part of your donut tribe.
Ben Lueders:
The Square Donut tribe.
Dr. JJ Peterson:
For the listeners, we have donuts here tonight that have already changed my world. When I join that tribe and I get to know you as the owner, and I get to say, oh, I see the joy that comes from you experiencing people experiencing this. We get to get on board with something that is fresh and new and fun and exciting. I can relate to other people through a donut. It may sound weird, but it really can become that. That's different than a corporate donut making machine that we won't name. It's a different vibe that that becomes your differentiator in the marketplace. When you can actually create then marketing and messaging that incorporates that human side of things, not only is that a good business move, just as far as making more money, but it is your differentiator, I think, in this season where people are longing for that.
I get excited. I do get excited about AI, because it's going to save us a lot of time in a lot of different areas, but I also see that there will be a little bit, if I'm forecasting like Nostradamus ...
Raj Lulla:
Nostradamus. Yeah. That's what we want.
Dr. JJ Peterson:
Yeah. That guy. That I see actually the people who are able to step into that human side of things, that will be their differentiator. I honestly believe that the world will be better because of it. That's what gets me excited about that balance.
Raj Lulla:
Yeah. I think a good example of that is in the room, if I may call someone out, Autumn Pruitt from Hardy Coffee is here, and we had a little bit of a logistical hiccup with the party today. I called Autumn instead of calling the giant coffee chain because I knew ... First of all, thank you for answering my call. Secondly, it was like I thought she would maybe help me and as opposed to some third manager at whatever mega national coffee chain. You do, you build these networks. You know guys are probably all going to get a little bit of Hardy Coffee in your Christmas gift from Fruitful this year again. Yeah. We build those tribes together.
Autumn, in her business, talks about the ritual of getting coffee. She incorporates that into Mother's Day, having a photo booth so that moms and their kids can have a treat together, but also take a photo together. It's all of those little human things that just can't be replaced and that makes a difference. Whether or not she writes 10 blog posts with AI, what really matters is that heart behind it, the thinking behind how do we make this a human experience is really what stands out to people.
We talked about AI, talked about human connection. Those are big things in the next 10 years. Something else that we've discussed is where is all of this going to take place? Because as you're talking about, content is going to be generated by AI. I actually got fooled the other day, because we got a video sent to us with voiceover on it. It was just a placeholder. Then the video producer said, "What did you think of the AI generated voice?" And I didn't know. I was like, "Oh, okay. That's one of the places we are now." I mean, just thinking the implications of that for social, for other places, we're going to see a lot more AI generated content. I think that's going to matter a lot with our platform.
Can you talk about that a little bit of how are we going to stay connected to our audience in this new, oversaturated world?
Dr. JJ Peterson:
I think one thing that's nice about where we're headed, in all of this stuff is, it's almost there's like a democratization of marketing. It actually allows everybody to reach customers in a whole bunch of new different ways, even with the new Apple goggles.
Raj Lulla:
Oh, yeah. Let's talk about that. Apple Vision Pro.
Dr. JJ Peterson:
There's new ways all the time of reaching people. There's of couple things I would say. One is that I think the mistake a lot of people make, especially when new technology or new avenues of reaching people come out is they start with the form of how we're going to ... They start with video, okay, we're creating a video. Or they start with, all right, Apple has these new goggles, we've got to create something for that. Or Instagram or TikTok. They start with the form and then they go into content. I would argue that in order to stay connected with people, you have to start with the content first and make it clear, create a incredibly clear stories that are targeted at your customer in very powerful ways, so clear messaging. You start with that, and then it can go into any of those forms. Then we take that message and we transform it for TikTok, we transform it for Instagram, LinkedIn, emails, blogs, websites, videos, all of that stuff.
Ben Lueders:
They all have their own style.
Dr. JJ Peterson:
They do.
Ben Lueders:
You'll have to adapt it. Yeah. You're right.
Dr. JJ Peterson:
If you don't start with a clear story, one of the things we say at StoryBrand is that you can hand a monkey a megaphone and he's going to be loud, but it's not going to make sense. That's kind of like like to me, when you start with the form is you're just yelling noise into some kind of other tool that just adds noise out there. Start with the form and the content. I mean, start with the content and a clear message, a clear story, and then it can translate to all the other forms.
One of the things that in is interesting, because I've been kind of doing some research on this, is that a question I get a lot is; is email dead. Is email dead, because we're getting all of these other forms to put content out there. The research shows that in the past few years and moving forward, pretty much across the board, the answer is no email is not dead. That's one thing I don't think that's going to change, even in the next 10 years, to be very honest. I think we may in 10 years be getting messages just beamed directly into our brain or our fillings or something like that. It's already happening. We're going to get chips implanted. New forms of how that stuff is communicated. Oddly enough, I really do believe email will last. Let me just for the people that are in the room. How many of you in this room check your email every day? Okay. I might see one hand that didn't go up.
Ben Lueders:
I think my 11-year-old son did not raise his hand, which is good. If he did, it'd be weird.
Dr. JJ Peterson:
I have some statistics on his age group too. The reality is 95% of people say that they check their email every single day. 95% of people check their email. 99% of people have email. 95% check it every day. That's true across the board for all users. Now, when you talk about regularly using emails, the group that uses emails the most on a daily basis is age 24 to 45. They're at 91% would consider themselves, multiple times ... I think it's 65% check their email multiple times a day, but it's 91% are regular email users. 15 to 24 is 90%. Even 15 year olds to 24 year olds are checking their email and using email regularly 90% of the time. The lowest group of that range is from 45 to 65 is like 89%.
Ben Lueders:
Still pretty high.
Dr. JJ Peterson:
Teenagers are using their email more than 45 year olds. As we are looking at the future moving forward, the younger generations are still using email on even a daily basis. Just from an ROI right now, return on what you're putting in, for every dollar you put in to investing in email, you're getting about a $42 return on that investment. 4200% return on your investment, nothing else comes even close to that. Nothing comes close to that in engagement wise on Facebook, Instagram opening ads, engaging with ads, nothing comes close to that as email.
What I see in that then, say when we're talking about marketing trends for the next 10 years, what are some things that need to happen? Is that in order to connect with the people and get a greater return on your investment and get a higher open rate and engagement, you need ways of getting people's email addresses. Essentially what that is called is you're getting their data. You're getting customer data. Right now a lot of companies are relying on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, all of these social media platforms who owns all that data. We're using them and the data they have to reach customers. The reality is that is changing on a daily basis and becoming less and less effective, because they are now the gatekeepers of the data for your customers.
In the next 10 years, for companies really to survive, they need to own that data. That sounds a little weird and a little creepy, because we all are not real happy with Facebook right now, of gathering our data and everything's happening and data breaches. The reality is, companies, nonprofits, organizations need to begin the process, if they're not already, of finding ways of mining data, which means getting people's email addresses, getting their phone numbers, understanding their buying habits, and owning that themselves.
One of our friends, Amy Porterfield, she always says her big thing is don't build your business on rented land. If people are just exclusively ... Facebook still works, Instagram, all that stuff still works. We use it all the time. We're still using paid ads on Google, on Facebook, all those things. Those work. What works better is if you actually own the data. Trying to figure out how to get personal information from people in a way that's legal and ethical, which are not always the two same things, but legal and ethical of getting people's information and then connecting with them on a human level, that is actually what will ... I think, in the next 10 years, people need to be focusing on that. We've allowed other companies to gather our customers' data and own our communities. We need to start building our own community off of that platform. The primary way of doing that is through email.
Ben Lueders:
Wow. Yeah. If you're just building it on social media, I mean you're just at the whims of the algorithm, which just changes. I think Amy Porterfield, when we were at the last StoryBrand thing in Nashville, she told the story about when Instagram went down. What happens then? You've got all these ads going, you have all this stuff you're putting all of ... What did she do? She went and sent an email and that still worked. There's a real power to that to be able to own that and to not be at the mercy of whatever the latest change in the algorithm is today.
Dr. JJ Peterson:
All these things I'm talking about, not only makes me excited for the next 10 years as a marketer and someone helps people with marketing, but it actually gets me excited as a consumer. If I have more control over my data and who gets my data, who gets my email address, who gets my information, that means that I'm giving it to people who I actually want to connect with, versus on Instagram and Facebook where I'm getting these ads for things that I don't care about, I don't want to buy and are incredibly annoying. These trends that I'm talking about, people being able to create video and podcasts and blog posts and emails with AI and getting that information to me faster as a consumer, I'm excited about. Connecting with me on a human level and understanding and being human yourself, I'm excited about that. Then also being able, for me as a consumer, to control who does and who does not have my data also is very exciting for me.
When I talk about these things as the next 10 years, I talk about it both as a marketer, that I'm excited for the direction that I believe things are headed, but I'm also excited as a consumer. Does it mean that everything's going to be perfect and rosy? No, no, no. Absolutely not. We're going to be in more noise. There's going to be more things coming at us for a while, but I think the companies that I'm going to connect with are going to step into those three spaces and be able to succeed and that gets me very excited.
Raj Lulla:
JJ, you're the expert on StoryBrand. Your doctorate's actually in narrative transportation, is that right?
Dr. JJ Peterson:
Narrative theory, narrative transportation.
Ben Lueders:
What is that? He just made up a PhD. Not a real doctor, guys. No. Just kidding.
Raj Lulla:
When you talk about yes, still use TikTok, yes, still use Facebook, all those things ... Help us connect the dots between StoryBrand ... Maybe even just talk for a second about what StoryBrand is, how you would use it in those places, and then how you would use it to make those human connections and get the data, but in the good way.
Dr. JJ Peterson:
Okay. How much time do we have? I was one of those that it did take me nine years to get my PhD. What I studied is narrative theory and narrative transportation. What that is, is a study of story basically, in its most basic form. Well, let me start with narrative transportation. How many people in here have ever cried at a movie or jumped at a scary part in a movie? Okay. Again, everybody's hands. You have, in that moment, whether you've cried, laughed, got scared, got anxious, you've experienced what's called narrative transportation. The story was good enough that you actually put yourself in the story, to some degree. I remember one time I found myself praying for characters that were in a book. Anybody ever done that before? I was like, I've got to get outside. You're a little too into this.
Raj Lulla:
In a little too deep. Yeah.
Dr. JJ Peterson:
That's narrative transportation.
Raj Lulla:
Was it Twilight?
Dr. JJ Peterson:
It may have been. It may have been. Come on, Jacob.
That's narrative transportation. Now, what the research shows is that when a story is good, whether it's read or told or seen, when you experience a good story, you experience narrative transportation. The better the story, the higher the level of narrative transportation that you experience. The research goes further to say that the higher the level of narrative transportation you experience, the more influence that story has on your thoughts and your actions. So movies, books change us. They actually change us. They change the way we think. Ultimately, if they're really good, they change the way we act. Now, the research goes even further to say that that not only happens in movies and in books, but it can happen in marketing. It can happen in as little as a tweet or an Instagram post. If you tell a good story, what you're actually doing is helping somebody see themselves in that story. They experience narrative transportation. It has more influence over their thoughts and actions.
What we do at StoryBrand is we actually help people tell good stories. What I mean by good is that there are actually rules to how stories work. Story is formulaic. Every story you've ever seen and read that is meant for the masses is actually very similar. It's all very the same. There is a hero, typically one person, who very early on in the story, you know what they want. It's not confusing, you know exactly what that character wants. That has to happen in a movie within the first nine minutes of the movie for us to be engaged.
Then by about minute 12 to 15, that character has to encounter a problem. Something has to get in the way of what they want. If there is no problem, there is no story. This person's sitting at home and everything's fine, and then all of a sudden a meteor crashes to earth, and that meteor is between him and his girlfriend. Now he has to get to his girlfriend. If he and his girlfriend are just sitting on the couch watching a movie, the whole movie, that's a very boring movie. A character wants something who then ultimately encounters a problem, and then that character meets a guide, somebody who comes alongside and helps the hero win the day. That's Obi-Wan Kenobi, that's Yoda, that's Gandalf in Lord of the Rings. You could look at every movie that you've ... Mr. Miyagi. Any movie you've seen, there is this older, wiser person who comes and helps the hero win.
Then the guide gives the hero a plan. You hear the phrase in almost every movie, what's the plan? Or here's the plan. You think about every movie you've seen. One day, I just want to sweep everything off of a table and put down a map. That's my heart's goal, because that scene happens in every movie. Then there's a moment that the hero has to be called to action. A bomb is going to go off. There's typically a countdown clock, like the daughter who is kidnapped is going to disappear if they don't get them back in 24 hours, or they don't blow up the meteor in two days, or they don't disarm the bomb in 10 minutes. There's this moment the hero has to act. Then we, as the audience, know what success and failure looks like, what a tragic ending will look like, everybody gets blown up and dies, or they live happily ever after. We root for one and want the other one, basically that other end, to be defeated.
That's what every story is. That's the seven elements of every good story. A hero who wants something, who encounters a problem, who meets a guide that gives them a plan, calls them to action, that results in either success or failure. That's every story. You'll see it over and over and over again. That's true in movies, but what it's also true in is in our own lives. The reason why we resonate with that in movies is because we all are, in essence, the hero of our own story. We are the main character of our own movie. All of us are. We live life like that. We encounter problems that we have to overcome. We know what life can be like if those problems are overcome. We look to older, wiser people to help us win the day. Those things are in movies because they're in us.
When it comes then to marketing, what we need to understand is that most companies make the mistake of making themselves the hero of the story. They try to tell their story, but they tell it in a way where they're the hero. The reality is your customer is the hero of the story. That's who needs to be the hero of the story. If you, as a brand, are telling your story and you're the hero of the story, people will not experience narrative transportation, because they don't see themselves in that story. You're actually in competing stories with your customer. One's got to win and one's got to lose, if you're the hero of your own story. If you position yourself as the guide in your customer's story, then you both win because you're there to help them overcome their problems and win the day.
That's what StoryBrand does, is we actually go in and we look at a company's marketing and say, let's look at your customer and identify these talking points about your customer. What is it that they want? How do we be really clear about that? What problems can we overcome for them? How do we position ourselves as a guide? What's our plan for them? What's our call to action for them? What does success or failure look like for them? When you create those talking points and tell a good story, then what you're doing is you're helping your customer experience narrative transportation. Your message actually then has influence over their thoughts and actions. Ultimately, it's a more gentle and human way of connecting because what you're saying is, I see you.
It's not about me walking in and talking about all the features of my product and how good we are. It's starting with you and coming in and going, I see you. I see your struggle. I see what you're experiencing, and I'm here to help you. If you can't help them, then you're not trying to sell to them. It's actually, again, a more human and gentle way of selling because you're seeing people as people and you're seeing their stories. That's what we do. We come in and we work with companies, and we work with agencies like you guys and train you how to do that, so that you can do that for your customers, because we can't reach everybody in the world and we want to help everybody we can.
Raj Lulla:
Do you have an opinion on which agency is the best?
Ben Lueders:
I knew it was coming.
Raj Lulla:
I just want the Chat GPT to answer ...
Dr. JJ Peterson:
To answer. Yeah, I'll put it in Chat GPT
Raj Lulla:
Maybe just me saying it that close to your name, Dr. JJ Peterson, might suggest that Fruitful Design is the best StoryBrand agency, but I mean, we'll just have to see what Chat GPT says about that.
Using those elements of story then in the world of tweets and TikTok and all that, how do we get from there to email? Do we just tell pieces of the story? Do we tell the whole story in the tweet? How do we get there to the part where we're building not on rented land, but on land we own?
Dr. JJ Peterson:
Yeah. When you ask the question of say, how do you build it on land ... How do you get people's data, essentially. How do you get email address? How do you make that initial connection is typically what you do in the story part is you're starting with your customer's problem. If you can give your customer information or a product or anything just to begin with, that solves a problem for them. That's where you start; with generosity, not with trying to sell something, but with trying to solve a problem, then that allows that connection to start. Then that gets the email address or gets them to follow you on social media, because you put out a video that helped them solve a problem. That solve a problem literally may be that they got donuts for a birthday. It doesn't have to be all of a sudden somebody has to be, every problem is solved. It's one small piece that you're solving. Then they will begin to follow you on social media, and begin to give you their email address.
Then once that happens, then you have to consistently communicate with them with pieces of that clear story. Sometimes you tell parts of it, sometimes you tell the full story, sometimes you tell ... Individual or you might use three. One of the formulas that I like to use a lot is problem, plan, success. Instead of talking about what does StoryBrand do ... If I'm in a Uber with somebody and they go, "So what do you do?" I don't start with saying I'm a marketing consultant. I don't start by saying I help companies with stories. What I start with is I say, so many companies aren't getting the leads that they want these days, and they're not able to grow their business, because they're not getting enough customers. Start with their problem.
Then I say, what we do is we actually come in and help companies tell the right story and connect with the right customers by using story theory. That's the solution, the plan. Then the results; when they do that, it's actually proven that they're going to have more success in connecting with customers and making more revenue, because that is true. Narrative marketing is more effective, statistically. I tell that short story. Problem, plan, success. That hooks them because I don't start by talking about me. I'm starting by talking about their problem, and then they go, "Tell me more." Or they go, "Here's my card," or, "Do you have a card?" Now, I have data, and now we go from there.
Ben Lueders:
Wow, good job.
Raj Lulla:
When you're having these interactions online, then ... I know in the StoryBrand world we talk about lead generators. How do you make a lead generator valuable to that audience? You've connected with them on that problem level, but we're also, like you talked about, we're also savvy now that it's like, "Ah, I don't want that ebook, because you're going to email me forever." How do we make that seem valuable to someone?
Dr. JJ Peterson:
Well, you don't want it to seem valuable, you want to make it actually valuable. In some ways, a coupon. You know what I mean? If you're solving a problem by giving me a discount on donuts, I'm there. You see I'm a little obsessed already. I'm sorry if I keep using donuts as an example. If the rest of you had food here, I would love you to. Just by giving actual value. Now, let's say we didn't want to give a discount. We didn't want to give a coupon, but it's like just ... We wanted to send out, say we wanted to do on Instagram or something like that, talking about five different ways to use donuts creatively. One might be use a Dash waffle maker and make day old donuts into waffles. Yeah. It's actually kind of magical, but let's say we start doing that on social media.
We just start doing one tip or something like this. Here's something you can do here. Here's something you can do here. Here's something you can do here. Or educating about what it means to be gluten-free and still have a great taste, all of those kind of things, those are things that start to solve a problem for somebody. If I'm then interested in that information on a more regular basis, because you've started solving a problem, giving me value ahead of time, I then am willing to give you my email address. We all know people are going to email us as soon as we give them our email address. That's not a surprise anymore. As a business, you have to give something valuable enough that either gives me information I don't have, saves me, or makes me money, gives me back time, positions me as an expert or saves me money, avoids pitfalls, something like that. You either have to solve a problem or give value.
When you do that as a brand, when you are a generous brand and give, and give, I don't think for the most part ... We've never been hurt by being a generous brand. I think that builds some reciprocity and it builds that human connection of that we actually genuinely care about your success. We're not just here to get money from you. If you do that on a consistent basis, then people trust you enough to give you their data, give you their email address. Then you can email them. They know you're going to email them, but they don't care because the things that you've given were valuable enough for them to give you an email address.
Raj Lulla:
Yeah. I think that, I think like said, if you don't want to give a coupon, something that it could be is even just something as simple as, Hey, be the first one to know when the new weekly or monthly flavor is out. Like you said, that's information that we don't have. Nobody hates the experience more than you get all hyped up to finally get the kids in the car, go to the donut place, would not happen in our favorite donut place, but get to a donut place and the new flavor is out. You want to be the first one to know, so you are providing value there.
Sometimes we're so close to our brands that we forget what these actual problems are. We have to take a step back and put ourselves in the shoes of the customer. Something that happened to me recently, so I started a 365-day challenge on Instagram. You do not need to bother following me.
Ben Lueders:
@RujLulla. It's great. I'm learning a lot about Raj BA looking at his photos and what he writes.
Raj Lulla:
It's just taking a photo every day. I've been a photographer, a professional photographer for more than 10 years now, but I've never done this. I thought that Instagram was an annoying platform that for elderly folks like me is just not working out. You know what's annoying, I went from 400 views in the 30 days prior to when I started to almost 1300 views when I started posting every day. How annoying is it ...
Dr. JJ Peterson:
That it works? Yeah.
Raj Lulla:
I know that you go to work every day and that you eat, sleep and breathe your customers' problems. You feel like you talk about it all the time, but you probably don't. I mean, literally, if you're not posting daily, that's a good place to start. If you're not sending an email every week or sometimes more than one email a week ... I mean the average open rate on email, depending on your type of organization, is anywhere anywhere between 10 and 30%. You could send three emails a week, and it's unlikely that anybody on the list is going to open all three, but it is likely that three different people are going to open them.
There's some of those things where it's like we're just not talking about the problems enough. We think that we're providing so much value, but we're just not, because it can be exhausting. This is a way that we can use some of these tools that we talked about of like, Hey, give me an idea about the next 10 emails to write. One of the things that we do with the StoryBrand brand script is that we take every section of the brand script, there's seven sections on the brand script, and we will brainstorm with you 20 to 30 different headlines for each thing. If you get to the end of that, do 30 for each box. That's 210. That's more than four years worth of emails, if you just do one a week, that's how math works. If you did two a week, it's still going to last you two years.
You're still always talking about what your customers' problem is, what they aspire to, the plan that you have to help them get to a solution, what the solution is, calling them to action, what success looks like, what failure looks like. You're always doing that. You're not having to make up those really awkward it's Mother's Day so it's probably time to consider your tax preparation. I don't know how these things are connected, but I felt like I had to write this email because it was the second week of May.
You really can not talk about your customer's problem enough. Even though you feel like again, every day you sleep, eat, and breathe these things, you actually have to say it. The sad but true thing is, and the great thing is also that it works.
JJ, we always like to give people a little bit of action to take. I'm going to challenge you, if you would, to give them an action that they can take.
Dr. JJ Peterson:
Wow. I think the challenge that I would probably give everybody is, we talked about a lot of practical things that can happen in this space, but I think what I would say is that I would challenge your mindset. There's a mindset that I would ask everybody to step into, who are business owners or work in nonprofit or work with any kind of organization, is that the thing that we really do talk about all the time at StoryBrand is that you want to think of yourself as a guide and not the hero of a story. Why that's so important, when it comes to story theory, is that in stories, heroes are actually weak. They're up and they're down. They're all over the place.
Think about movies, a hero all of a sudden they get a little cocky and then they fall on their face and then they get a little excited. They get the girl and then they lose the girl. It's just kind of this back and forth. Heroes are actually incredibly insecure. When you are looking at talking about yourself on social media or you're looking at explaining what you offer to people or what you do or creating even a website or any information you're putting out there about your business, start thinking of yourself as the guide. Because if you start by saying things ...
If somebody goes, "Well, what do you do?" You go, "Well, it's complicated, or you, they go, "Well, what do you do?" You're like, "Oh, well, I kind of like ... We do these unique donuts." When you start shrinking yourself, you're actually in that moment making yourself the hero of the story. Is that a weird thing? Normally, we don't think of that as being a hero, but heroes are weak and they're insecure. None of us actually like to be around really people who are self-obsessed about their own insecurities. When you shy away from what you actually offer to people, that is not being a good guide and helping other people win. That's not humility. That's actually making yourself the hero of the story.
What I would challenge you is, in those moments when you have an opportunity to put yourself out there from social or talking to people, stand firm in who you are and what you offer. The way that you do that and position yourself as a guide, because the guide is the strongest character in a story, is there's really two elements that make somebody a guide in a story; empathy and authority. Empathy is, I understand and have experienced some of the same problems that you have. So just saying things like, "I get it. I understand." Or asking questions to find out what they're experiencing allows you to have a moment of empathy and then step into your authority, not with bragging and not with grandiose kind of comments, but by saying, "This is what I do and I'm actually good at it." You don't have to say those exact words, but that's the mindset you want.
I understand what you struggle with, and I also have the ability to help you out of it. When you do that, a lot of people think that's positioning yourself as a hero by being strong. That's actually not true. You're positioning yourself as a guide. A guide helps other people win, and a hero shrinks. They become weak, they become insecure. Don't be the hero of the story. Companies that actually can help their customers transform by winning their story are going to win in the long run. Always position yourself as a guide. Always have empathy, but always stand in your authority that you know what you're doing and have the ability to help people, because when you do that, then they win. They win. That's what really I think all of this is about.
Raj Lulla:
I should mention, because we talked about donuts a lot, we have not actually said the name of Square Donut, our favorite donut place on the podcast. I do want that recorded for posterity here. To kind of just think through what we talked about tonight, let's be the guide to our customers and to our donors. Let's use new tools and new technologies to serve them. Let's make human connections with them and let's own the place that we're building on. Let's move them to places that we have more control over the connection we have with them.
Dr. JJ Peterson:
Let's grow something good together.
Ben Lueders:
Thanks for joining us today on Growing a Fruitful Brand. If you found today's show helpful, don't forget to subscribe and consider sharing it with someone who might also enjoy it. If you'd like to work with Fruitful on a branding website or messaging project of your own, you can always reach out on our website fruitful.design. Until next time, don't forget to grow something good.
