16 October 2011
Stories and lies about emarketing
20/10/11 16:37 Filed in: Gareth Lloyd
I’ve just attended a seminar entitled ‘Email, social marketing and the art of storytelling’. The central tenet was that ever since we lived in caves we have communicated through storytelling – so this should be how we communicate brand messages through email and social media.
Meh.
OK, so I buy into the argument that getting customers to share their own stories about your brand can help you build a social media community and a sort of ‘fan base’. But to also suggest that story-telling is the panacea for emarketing is, to my mind, absurd.
As a writer, I love to use storytelling to communicate messages. But I’ll only do it when I believe this approach is the best way to achieve an objective. For example, this email (the fourth one down!) uses storytelling smartly to explain the value of the product being promoted. The one below it doesn’t. It simply rewards immediate response – and it was just as effective in meeting the client’s goals.
What worries me is that we are reading too much into the psychology of the social media revolution when it comes to commerce. Emarketing is advertising. It’s not sharing pictures, funny stories and reminiscences with friends. It just doesn’t have that emotional pull. It needs to make its point fast so the reader can get back to Facebook and Twitter and what they really use these platforms for. Arguing otherwise isn’t just spinning a story. It’s telling a lie.