Journals
4 Reasons Why You Should Let Your Consumers Tell Your Story
Just whatisit that’ll get people to look at your brand’s vision anymore?
With the flood of ad campaigns, the surging overwhelm upon digital platforms, the pandemics that strive to keep us apart, the glut of overused, overdone ideas in business, 2021 has us living in perceptual mayhem. So whether you’re running a small, medium, or big enterprise, there’s a question that your marketing team will think about every day: what’s stark enough to stop your consumer’s world?
As a people, we live in an automaton of never-ending information, visuals and noise. So much so, that it’s easy to lose sight of oneself in the daily consumption of all these things. Sure, you know your name, you’ll go about your day, you’ll be with friends and family, and you’ll carry out the tasks and chores you usually do. But when you switch on any screen, glance fleetingly at any billboard or subject yourself to any media, you switch off from your place in the world.
We’ve become creatures of distraction; we use digital and media consumption as a means to escape, a moment to forget, a joyful disengagement. But then it’s simple – the solution lies in the very problem we see in this new normal.
Rebranding and marketing to the individual means thrusting their own face, their own humanity back at them. It’s time you bring your consumers into your marketing strategy. The great thing about consumer-driven marketing is that you can do it by directly making your intended consumers into your models - think Nike, who uses athletes as the promotional face of their brand. Or, you can indirectly invoke your consumers through easy and trendy tasks that involve them putting up content that centres them with your product - think Coca Cola, whose #ShareaCoke campaign induced many in America to seek out and photograph themselves with Coke bottles that had their names on them.
The latter example has yielded much success, with over 500,000 pictures shared by consumers in the first year of the campaign. Coca-Cola shows that marketing in this way can provide mass engagement with and awareness to your business.
So, what is it that consumer-generated marketing can do for your brand’s story?
- It builds a personal bridge: If what we’re trying to do is break the automaton, then one must yank a consumer out of it. Nothing stops you in your tracks like the idea that you’ve been seen, recognised and catered to in an instant. This is another reason #ShareaCoke has done so well – looking for your own name in a sea of names is an experience we have in many contexts. Finding it fulfils us. So, finding ourselves in brands we like and trust, well, is just another way of saying that a brand represents us, a brand’s story matches and is compatible with mine.
- It helps people visualise what your product might do for them: This is an intuitive benefit - if your consumers can see your brand of earrings, your particular line of skin-care masks or even a smiling face from someone who has eaten something freshly-delivered from your baked-goods business, they can immediately see what you have in store for them too. Pictorialise the expressions, movements and behaviours of your consumers when they’re using your product. Chances are, someone has already seen your type of good, but they haven’t seen a vision of how good they could look with it. Your brand’s end goal, no matter what the journey, can and should be summed up on the happy face of your consumer.
- It humanises your brand, no matter what you’re selling: That’s right - a shiny sophisticated watch, a sleek pair of earphones, or a new electric bike have one thing in common - they’re consumer goods that aim to enhance and aestheticise the human experience. Especially if you’re a tech brand, it can get tricky to sell the wonderful features of your device while trying to emphasise that there’s a human component to its existence, too. This comes down to personalisation of the universalisable item - what are the individual and varied ways your product can be used to give everyone the maximum benefit from the same functions? The best way to showcase this is to focus on the range of human experiences you can provide with your product. And the best way to do that? Engage your consumers in picture campaigns with your products.
People are already convinced that you provide an important good or service - how about you show them the importance they hold for you?