The relevance of storytelling in influencer campaigns!

• #How To
• #Influencer
• #Social Media

How to implement influencer campaigns that really add value

Everyone knows it, everyone loves it: emotional storytelling in influencer marketing. For a long time now, it has no longer been customary to bluntly place products and thus convince potential customers. Instead, it’s the story behind each product that convinces and with which each individual can identify!

How important is storytelling?

Storytelling has become an indispensable part of (influencer) marketing and has established itself as a fixed method for arousing emotions. Services and products should be told authentically and creatively and firmly anchor themselves in the memory of the customer. For example, information is packaged in a story that reaches customers emotionally. Storytelling tells the values of the brand and the company and arouses emotions. The goal is to influence the recipients and to convince them subconsciously of the product with a story.

Storytelling is often understood as implicit knowledge. Influencers know best, for example, which stories appeal to their own community and how good storytelling works accordingly. It is therefore particularly important to define the term storytelling together with the influencers and to involve them in the project. They tell their own story digitally and share it with their followers in the form of pictures, videos or other methods.

Where is storytelling used ? We tell our campaign story with Brother!

As an agency and thus mediator between influencers and customers, we know how important storytelling is for a successful campaign. Some time ago, we were asked to implement a major campaign with Brother and tell just such a story. But what is it about, how was storytelling implemented here and what content was used here, for example?

Brother has a wide range of products in its product line. In this campaign, the focus was specifically on a textile printer that can be used to print any type of textile (even shoes) quickly and easily.

Goal: With the campaign we wanted to support young up-and-coming designers to start their own business. 

The implementation

We quickly realized that creative storytelling plays a big and important role in this kind of influencer campaign and that we have to tell a story with the role as storyteller. It was important not only to select a suitable influencer to convey information and knowledge to social media users, but also to adapt the entire story around a brand.

The campaign was implemented with influencer @kates.diary and her own fashion label Tates, which is predominantly present in online marketing. How were we able to implement the story?

The storytelling was to be implemented as a kind of story for designers, which took the form of a design contest.

Young designers had the opportunity to submit their own designs. The winning design was printed and is now available for sale in the online store. The entire content marketing process was accompanied and recorded with stories, reels and posts. In this way, the community had the opportunity to be part of the campaign and feverishly shared which design would win in the end. This storytelling method was very well received by the community.

On the whole, this campaign was about reach: How many users could be reached with this content and how much attention could we achieve? But what was most exciting for the learning afterwards was the number of users who actually took part in the contest and were thus able to actively support the process. Here, both the creator and the client had direct feedback on how many fashion enthusiasts and designers were in the community, which provided further interesting insights in addition to the usual statistics.

What lessons did we learn from the campaign?

By now, everyone is probably aware that influencer marketing nowadays no longer consists solely of classic product placement, i.e. typical advertising. But that was also confirmed to us once again in this campaign.

There are also differences in storytelling in order to stand out from the competition. Our campaign was about the entire communication behind the product, which was implemented cross-medially. In the future, companies should no longer rely on just one story, but rather accompany and present the entire process in a variety of ways. However, the approach to each campaign must be communicated individually and adapted to the respective goals. However, the goal here should definitely be a long-term collaboration and not a campaign that is implemented with elaborate preparation on one day.

Now that storytelling and general storytelling is becoming more and more important in influencer marketing, there are further increases to generate even more success, to consciously stand out from the big competition and to provide both viewers and listeners with a definition of successful storytelling.

What makes for good storytelling?

We are all now aware that storytelling is how we tell stories. But what is the secret and the ultimate tip for good storytelling?

Every story consists of individual emotions with which, in the best case, each individual can identify. Storytelling is also widespread in journalism, whether in the form of a film or in written form. The perception of a story helps people to retain knowledge and information more easily and to pay attention to them in their memory.

Companies must therefore learn what needs potential customers have on which topics and how they can address these needs in the form of an emotional story. In this way, customers will unconsciously perceive and absorb the products and services more actively and thus associate certain situations directly with their own company and their own brand!

People have liked storytelling for quite some time and this is also a successful way in marketing to become and stay successful in one’s business.

Now you are curious about the result of our design story? You can find our storytelling example with the story of the Brother textile printer here!