Leo Burnett delves into next chapter of brand storytelling
Years ago, Leo Burnett, founder of the global advertising agency that bears his name, underscored the value of telling stories about products that ignited a relevant emotional response.
“Don’t tell me how good you make it,” said Burnett. “Tell me how good it makes me when I use it.”
Today, the strategy of wrapping brands in stories has moved well beyond the frameworks of Burnett’s era. In this insightful Q&A, Andrew Swinand, CEO of Leo Burnett, shares some of his perspectives on the evolution of brand storytelling. Excerpts
Q: Before we explore what the next chapter of brand storytelling might involve, where are we now and how did we get here?
Andrew Swinand: I think for most people the term ‘brand storytelling’ is misleading. People’s minds immediately jump to ads, but we live in a more multidimensional world. Brands need to be managing on three critical fronts: culture, context and commerce. They need to be known and loved, they need to sense and respond to demand and they need to be simple for people to access.
We engage in 3.5 billion internet searches a day, and the vast majority of those queries come down to three things: ‘I want,’ ‘I need,’ ‘Where is?’ If you aren’t surfacing as an answer to those questions, the story does not matter. If people cannot find your product, the story does not matter. Brands need to plan and win across all three dimensions.
Q: What should happen next with brand storytelling and why?
Swinand: Most brands major in one of the above, rather than balancing all three. The great irony is that digital brands are generally great at context but less so at culture. They’ve mastered the channels where people spend time, and yet people don’t know what most of them stand for.
Conversely, traditional brands have invested for years in culture, some building decades of equity, but are still trying to figure out what to do in a commerce enabled world. What’s next in the evolution is brands acknowledging that they need to be strong across all three – that it’s a world of ‘and’ not ‘either/or.’
Q: Changes in brand storytelling would suggest changes in how research capabilities are used. What do you see happening on this front?
Swinand: Better inputs make for better outputs. We have the ability to know consumers better than at any time in history. Like with the recent Publicis Groupe acquisition of Epsilon, not just to see people demographically, but to know what they are reading, buying and thinking about. With new technologies like Cooler Screens, what they are shopping for, right off the shelf and more. I think it is a golden age for marketers to evolve into a ‘to me’ era of personalized experiences.
Q: The potential impact of brand storytelling has a cruel way of unraveling when execution fails to deliver on the brand promise… and miscues are illuminated on social media platforms. To maintain the integrity of the brand’s story, what can marketers do better when it comes to monitoring and measuring execution?
Swinand: When brands have miscues, it’s because they’ve not been authentic to their voice and values, or they’ve misread culture. In trying to be provocative, they weren’t actually listening to what consumers wanted, and ended up making an ad about themselves. We know people better than ever. It is almost always the brand not listening versus the consumer truth not being visible. I think this is one of the biggest arguments for an agency partner over in-housing. There is need for a team that can have both perspective and an objective view on where purpose, promise and culture intersect and help create a resonant solution. Brands can tend to become insular and miss the daily bread crumb trail consumers leave to inspire insight.
Q: Any other insights on brand storytelling you’d like to share?
Swinand: We have established that brand storytelling is too narrow. Now we need to lean into the narrow definition. Awareness, consideration and purchase are now truncated into three letters: Y-E-S. You have an Amazon Alexa, you say you need to rev up your Centrum Silver, it asks if you want to purchase the Amazon private label brand, and in three letters ‘Y-E-S’ you have become a switcher.
Consideration and purchase have become that simple, that quick. But you still have to have the awareness to get people to that point of asking specifically for what they want and saying ‘yes’ to it and not switching brands midstream.
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