Ronan Redmond On Story Telling As A New Paradigm Shift

Story Telling as a New Paradigm Shift in Contemporary Brand Building: Convergence of Creativity and Technology

By: Ronan Redmond, Commercial Director TVC Communications

It has become very important in today’s business of Marketing and Advertising for brands to create emotional connections with consumers and to break through the clutter and noise that all individuals are exposed to everyday as they go about their busy lives.

Today when marketers wish to get consumers to engage with brands instead of having “their head turned” by competitor’s brands, it is important that marketers ensure the consumer “feels” something in the messages being sent out about the brand. The brand narrative or story telling has become very important as a primary marketing tool. The focus is now on tapping into consumer emotions and using those emotions to create connections between the consumer and the brand.

Often when you look at how consumers make decision about which brands to purchase or indeed how employees make decisions about which companies to go work for these important decisions are often based on which brand or which employer tells the best story.

Unfortunately, storytelling remains an underrated skill, often still considered as a “soft skill” but this is changing as this new paradigm shift occurs in contemporary brand building.

Today’s consumer is educated and very discerning in how they are prepared to receive brand messages. Consumers are demanding more and more from the content they consume. The audience wants content to be entertaining and informative and for the content to somehow enrich their lives. Consumers want to enjoy content and not to feel that they are subject to a hard sell by the brand owner. Consumers will identify a hard sell quickly and most likely switch off and not engage with the brand. This is the “worst case” scenario. The marketer must use his or her resources wisely to strike a balance between giving the consumer an enriching content experience whilst subtly promoting the brand and getting the key messages through to the target audience.

When engaging in story telling think first about how you can provide value to your audience. This will help build customer relationships and ultimately drive revenue. Also, it is important to be aware that trying to reach a broad audience with the same message can also be difficult. Instead content which is focused on specific target and or niche audiences can be far more effective in generating the desired emotional impact.

TVC Communications is a leading medium for brand story tellers in Nigeria

At TVC Communications and across our leading channels: TVC, TVC News, 102.3MAXFM Lagos, and 90.9MAXFM Abuja, we engage daily with Seven Million viewers and listeners. We do this by delivering a mix of the very best local and International content which entertains and informs. Our commercial teams work closely with CMO’s and Media Agency Leaders to help all brands reach their preferred target audience. Nobody understands our audience better than ourselves and nobody understand the brand better than the CMO but together we can partner to engage the consumer along with the brand through great story telling.

Over the past two years, TVC Communications has invested huge sums of money in acquiring the best broadcast technology, building the best studios, and employing the best producers and presenters. This investment in technology and talent is to create the platform to facilitate our advertisers to create and deliver the best content marketing campaigns.

The investment is really paying off as more CMOs ask TVC C ommunications to help them with their story telling projects. Instead of the traditional booking of 30 second spot campaigns advertisers are now asking TVC programme producers to help their brands become infused into the daily editorial plan. Commercial sales staff, producers and OAP’s work with the brand marketing tram to create great narratives which help promote the brand to the target audience. In this way the consumer now becomes engaged in fantastic story telling and consumers embrace the brand messages in an entertaining and informative environment all the while the message is delivered by their favorite TVC presenters.

At TVC Communications we firmly believe that story telling and content marketing is now central to today’s marketing mix. Brand leaders will have to refine the art of story telling to differentiate themselves.

TVC Communications is here to help todays leaders tell their story and deliver their brand messages.