Event Preview: Christopher Brace on the Power of Storytelling

Storytelling has long been a tool for marketing to consumers — but not shoppers. It's time shopper teams bring storytelling to their communications.This month, Syntegrate and Tyson Foods will share how and why to use storytelling to reach shoppers at the point of purchase in a session titled "The Power of Storytelling in Shopper Marketing" taking place at the Path to Purchase Expo (P2PX) on Sept. 28 in Rosemont (Chicago).We had a chance to speak with Syntergate chief executive officer Christopher Brace and learn more about the future of shopper marketing and why storytelling makes for successful shopper communications.In your session, "The Power of Storytelling in Shopper Marketing," you’ll cover how brands can use elements of storytelling to reach shoppers. Why do you think this skill is so important to reach today’s shopper? The common belief that shopper communications should focus on product benefits/attributes, promotion and price, because this is the information that’s most important in the moment of decision, is a fallacy. Decision science has proven long ago that, when faced with a decision, it’s our emotional wiring that activates first, then our rational processes. Therefore shopper communications, whether out of or in store, need to lead with emotional truths that trigger purchase behaviors within the category, then tell the full brand story including benefits, promotion and price.The belief that you only have 2-3 seconds of a shopper’s time and can't communicate that much information is another fallacy. Syntegrate’s own research has shown that if you give shoppers an emotional reason to engage, they will read all kinds of things.In your session, you also team up with Eric Le Blanc, director of marketing, Tyson Foods. Without giving away too much from your presentation, what are some examples of how Tyson does storytelling well? Tyson has been an amazing partner for us thanks to[Le Blanc's] openness to our beliefs about shopper communications. His team recently executed a retailer-specific program in the prepared foods deli that resulted in a 25% lift in sales. In our session, we will present a bigger program that leverages storytelling to its fullest in shopper communications.What are the common challenges or pitfalls that you've seen companies face as they try to address the needs of today’s shopper?The consumer packaged goods industry has been executing shopper marketing now for over 15 years and we have yet to solve the most fundamental issue: proving its strategic value. Everyone is so focused on proving the ROI (which continues to be elusive), but very few have taken the time to prove its strategic contribution, which is much easier and of even greater significance. The biggest frustration we hear from shopper teams is that while the brand teams “support” shopper marketing, they have no real idea of what it is and how it helps their brands. Shopper marketing is still seen as the executional extension of trade marketing.If you had to give one tip to a company about making shopper marketing work, what would it be? The single most important thing a company can do to optimize shopper marketing is to make sure it’s seamlessly integrated into the annual brand planning process. This is the future of shopper marketing. Today, most (if not all) companies put shopper marketing either in the middle or at the end of the planning process. The brand teams develop their strategic growth initiatives and then pass them off to shopper marketing. The shopper teams then have to retrofit the initiatives so they meet retailer needs and gain retailer support. This “shopper add-on” approach is inefficient, costs each organization money and lowers ROI.What needs to happen is an evolution of the brand-planning process so brands build initiatives that meet the needs of the consumer, shopper, brand, and retailer equally — one of the holy grails of marketing. This requires the following things:Pull the shopper and retailer inputs to the front of the planning process and give them the same strategic weight as the consumer and brand inputs.Help the brand teams understand how the shopper/retailer inputs should change how the strategic initiatives and communication platforms are built.Rather than integrating through a campaign idea, you must integrate through growth strategy, emotional & behavioral insights, communications strategies, and consumer & shopper story. Drive cross-pollination across the full tactical plan by pulling consumer activities into shopper and vice versa. Learn more about Brace's seminar here.

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