Andrew Dunbar, General Manager EMEA, Appnovation





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Much of our engagement with the world is through stories — the stories we tell each other about our day or media stories about what's happening in the world. We also tell ourselves stories about decisions we take to make sense of our engagement with other people and with brands.


Understanding that narrative and the rationale behind our choices is key to building customer loyalty and trust, two hallmarks of brand success. When a brand experience fails to match the story consumers have created, they often look for a better match to maintain the narrative. Maybe they believe passionately in a sustainable world, and their favorite brand is creating unnecessary waste. Perhaps a regular supplier has broken their trust through poor interaction or delivery experience. A recent report by big four consultant PwC found that about 1 in 3 customers will leave a brand they “love” after just one bad experience.



Brands seeking to build loyalty and trust with their target audiences need to bake consistent storytelling into all aspects of their digital experiences. Here are four ways to get going.


1. Look for opportunities to change the narrative.


At this phase of the pandemic, faced with consumers who are tired of empty promises, brands need to look for opportunities or sectors to change the accepted narrative, especially where it's negative.


As a sector with a trust deficit on both sides, car insurance is a case in point. Consumers are skeptical about insurers' willingness to pay up against legitimate claims, while insurers are cautious about the potential for fraudulent claims.


This uneasy legacy has caused brands like Lemonade to step up and powerfully disrupt the existing narrative and defy low expectations. In an industry that tends to assume guilt over innocence, the brand’s smart use of AI/data analytics is not only an efficient means of handling claims. It also created a new story for the sector around rapid and fair decision making in a way that builds trust.



To rebalance the sector's trust deficit, Lemonade also introduced a sense of community by asking customers to sign a pledge that they would not make any fraudulent claims and then offered to give some of the profits generated when people did not claim to charity. By involving customers in its fairness narrative, Lemonade transformed them into evangelists around a cause that many people support.

2. Build reliable digital experiences that consumers want to champion.

Consumers love telling each other about new and special digital experiences and how easy an interaction is. But, conversely, they will also share stories of when things go wrong. Social media, review sites and online forums enable and enhance storytelling power. In that context, a report from Statista makes for depressing reading. It reveals that in March 2021, nearly 80% of online purchases worldwide were abandoned. Eighty percent! Typically, a consumer’s change of heart comes down to a myriad of factors, from high shipping costs to overly-complex transactions or a lack of reliable payment options.

To build trust, consumers must have faith in a secure and frictionless digital transaction that they are happy to talk about. And this interdependence between tech and trust is only set to get stronger. One key consideration in the digital era is the move toward composable IT architecture.

In composable architecture, a business’s systems and processes are "API-enabled" to improve flexibility and ecosystem management. This enables retailers to offer customers a differentiated proposition, such as a seamless and intuitive omnichannel experience or a highly personalized marketing campaign. Either way, it’s an illustration of how innovation dovetails with the delivery of trust-based experiences that consumers want to champion, not campaign against.

3. Boost storytelling power with interesting collaborations.

While consumers enjoy discovering new brands, emerging brands face a challenge in getting their stories across and building brand trust and awareness. This is where strategic collaborations can come into their own. Partnerships with like-minded brands help newer brands create a "circle of trust" by sharing the new brand's story through their channels and platforms.

Take startup Chinese coffee company Yongpu, which attributes its success to more than 400 brand collaborations in its first six years. Yongpu dramatically increased the reach of its story through these collaborators and used their combined storytelling power to build trust across a much wider customer base than it could have managed individually. These collaborations aren't only about seeding trust among a fresh cohort of consumers; they are also important competitive differentiators.

4. Be consistent in your storytelling and digital voice.

In these days of social purpose and brand activism, it's no longer enough for brands simply to tell stories about themselves. To engage deeply with consumers and influence their choices, it's increasingly important for brands to be involved in the causes their customers care about. The most recent Institute of Customer Satisfaction Survey found that 60% of respondents are drawn to brands for at least one ethical reason.

However, for social purpose and brand activism storytelling to have meaning, brands must choose to champion causes in a way that is consistent and relevant to their identity. Every activity brands perform must ladder into their chosen agenda; otherwise, it risks being viewed as tokenism. A brand's social stance must also be reflected in one digital voice: across the website, apps and social media.

Take action with these tips in mind.

Consistency of storytelling, partnerships and seamless digital interactions are essential touchpoints for boosting consumer confidence. If brands can align with and enable the stories that customers tell themselves, they make it easy for customers to justify their purchase decisions. And if customers feel good about those decisions, they'll want to share those experiences with like-minded people who can spread them more widely. If that's not the holy grail of marketing in the digital age, I don't know what it is.


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Source: Forbes

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