Storytelling Takes Sources

When it isn't how-to, most marketing content you encounter is pure myth, uniformed and unsubstantiated.

Myth-making isn't storytelling.

Storytelling takes sources, and sources must be cultivated.

In The Art and Craft of Feature Writing, Bill Blundell, former editor at The Wall Street Journal, chides the journalist who fails to cultivate sources.

"Like so many others, he has been counting on plucking ideas out of the air through some kind of immaculate conception," Blundell says.

"But this is backward thinking. He should be using his best-informed and most cooperative sources to help him originate those ideas."

Sources not only spur story ideas, but supply the facts that bring stories to life—even when those facts aren't brought to bear.

When novelist John O'Hara decided the main character in Appointment in Samarra would asphyxiate himself, O'Hara spared no effort to cultivate sources.

"When I wrote Appointment in Samarra," he told a friend, "I established a dummy garage business, took my papers to a guy I know who is a v.p. at General Motors (who wanted to know when the hell I had run a garage), and he in turn passed me on to a fellow at the Automobile Chamber of Commerce. Not much of that appears in the book, but everything that does appear is accurate and sound. I also boned up on toxicology with the late Yandell Henderson so that the carbon monoxide suicide would be all right."

Hard facts and direct illustrations from life "hammer stories into the reader's memory," Bill Blundell says.

How far do you go to gather them? 

Or are you satisfied just to make myths?

Do Donors Love Facts?

Dragnet's Joe Friday nabbed a lot of criminals sticking with "Just the facts."

But do facts help fundraisers capture donors?

Jeff Brooks asks the question in Future Fundraising Now:

"Is there someone on your organization's staff (or board) who wants you to turn down the emotional content of your fundraising because they believe emotion is dishonest or manipulative? 

"Do they tell you to 'stick with the facts' because making the rational case with facts and numbers is the only honorable way to motivate people to donate?"

The answer: it depends.

Large donors love facts, small ones don't, as a recent Yale University study shows:

"Altruistic donors are more driven by the actual impact of their donation, and thus information to reinforce or enhance perceived impacts will drive higher donations. 

"On the other hand, for warm glow donors, information on impacts may actually deter giving by distracting the letter recipient from the emotionally powerful messages that typically trigger warm glow and instead put forward a more deliberative, analytical appeal which simply does not work for such individuals."

Customer Retention: Not My Job

B2B marketers spend 60% of their budgets to land customers, but only 30% to keep them, according to a recent study by Demand Metric.

The imbalance shouldn't surprise you.

It costs more to attract new customers.

But you might be surprised to learn more than half (55%) of B2B marketers spend little to nothing to keep customers.

And three in four think keeping customers "is not my job" (instead, it's the job of sales or customer support).

The disconnect handicaps all B2B companies, no matter the business model.

For those with “subscription” business models, the value of a customer is realized in installments, so profits depend on keeping customers.

In others, that value is realized after multiple, independent and relatively small purchases, so profits also depend on keeping customers.

HAT TIP: Kudos to Ann Ramsey for suggesting this post.

Going Native Nothing New

There is nothing new under the sun.

Not even new media.

NBC has replaced ads on some of its shows with content sponsored by American Express, AdAge reports.

The content comprises extra scenes with stars from the shows, with the credit card issuer mentioned before and after each segment.

Other networks plan the same move.

"Many TV networks are cutting back on commercials to appeal to younger viewers who are used to watching shows ad-free on Netflix—and to appease marketers who are concerned their messages are getting ignored amid the clutter," AdAge says.

Before CLIOs are handed out, it's worth remembering broadcasters weaved "native ads" into TV shows 70 years ago (and into radio shows earlier still).

Containers of the Past

For nearly 200 years, Americans used stoneware to keep perishable food. It was, in fact, the predominant houseware of the 19th century.

The ceramic containers were heavy and expensive to ship, so stoneware potteries cropped up everywhere to serve local markets.

But after 1913, when refrigerators were introduced, the once-ubiquitous potteries sputtered and failed.

You could say, refrigerators had a chilling effect on the stoneware business.

Today's refrigerator is, of course, the smartphone, as this week's Mobile World Congress makes clear.

And, as the event makes clear, the business without a mobile strategy today is the stoneware pottery of tomorrow.

As ad agency exec Rishad Tobaccowala says, "The future doe not fit in the containers of the past."

What's your mobile strategy?