Will marketers need to evolve and reshape the focussing of their brands?

Recently I interviewed a barista to learn how he marketed his café. It started out as a quick chat about how he used social media to connect with customers, which, incidentally, he does quite successfully. The conversation then detoured into a fascinating story about how he had managed to obtain the rights to import coffee from Vanuatu, how he has taken an ethical trading approach to the coffee farmers he works with there and how he will be returning there for the next harvest. “Wow! That’s a great story – it would make a great feature for television!” I noted. The barista just smiled, nodded and said he was talking to some production people about just that. In the space of a half hour, we had covered some pretty diverse marketing subjects: use of Facebook and Twitter, staff engagement in social media marketing, scheduling content for social media, his mobile app, how he uses QR codes all the way to Vanuatu, the philosophy of fair trading and television production opportunities. All this from a barista with one location on the Northern Beaches of Sydney!

It got me thinking. It wasn’t a conversation that would have been possible even a couple of years ago. It was the kind of thinking a big franchise might have entertained, one with a hot, award-winning ad agency and a deep pockets marketing budget. And yet it sounds entirely realistic in 2012. Empowered by no cost social media platforms, low cost tools and, most importantly, a great story to tell, my barista friend is good to go. It is the story that will differentiate his brand from others, not having an agency or a big marketing budget.

I share this story because it seems to me that the rise of storytelling will fundamentally reshape what professional marketers do for a living. With the ever-accelerating ‘digitisation’ of marketing, focus will inevitably shift from process-oriented skills such as producing a magazine ad or conducting a press event to a broader set of skills that is more akin to a brand storyteller. What brands will look for in professional marketers will be the vision and imagination to capture a brand’s story and share it with the marketplace, regardless of method. The better a brand marketer is at storytelling, the more successful they will be. Marketers will be more like movie directors whose vision informs the creative process, and less like movie producers who ensure the business side of the movie stays on track. The pieces of the process – packaging, PR, advertising, etc – will be less important than the sum of the whole brand storytelling experience. If marketers grasp the opportunity this evolution presents to them, they’ll find themselves highly sought after in a world hungry for a great story.

So, the next time someone asks you what you do for a living, consider giving this answer: “I tell stories”. You might get a funny look, but you won’t be wrong!

Agree? Disagree? Tell me! Email me at [email protected] or comment below.