What’s your story?

Grant Leboff: I think what's really important in a world of everybody using media channels, is stories, and you talk about the power of storytelling. So can you explain that a bit more for the audience.?

Warren Cass: It's amazing isn't it, when you see most people's marketing message - it's very functional. These are our features and our benefits, and this is what we do. But there are very few people who take storytelling and apply it correctly, and we can all do this within business. So people want to connect with people. And 'people buy people' first - the old cliché but it's true. We want to understand people's 'why?' We want to understand the story of what connects them to what they do. And when people can weave storytelling into their marketing message, they are taking people from just that functional 'feature / benefits' description onto a journey. We are empathetic creatures who want to connect, and want to understand, and the moment we can illustrate that with a story, we grab people's attention for much longer and we hold it to.

Grant Leboff: Stories are also much more three dimensional aren't they? So one of the things you talk about is the importance of your vision and your values and getting those across. How important do you think that is in the online world today and also how do stories help to do that?

Warren Cass: So a story which explains an outcome and how something you've done affects the customer / client... creates that emotional feeling. And remember, whether it's face to face or online, the only real way to make a buying decision is when you trust the outcome. When you know that your expectations are going to be met. A way of fast forwarding, accelerating, that process by telling a story - particularly if it relates to how somebody else has experienced your product or service and what it meant to them. But also humanising your brand. There was a recent example where a very big brand, who I won't name, had a customer service's nightmare. The service had gone down and everybody had taken to social media and shouted from the rooftops - and there was a single member of staff who came back and said look we're really trying with we're doing our best right now we're really, really trying. And at that moment the whole conversation on line changed, because people saw there were actually people at the other end of it and they were a bit more forgiving and understanding. But that's the key thing is humanising our brands, makes all the difference.

Grant Leboff: So how do people go about that? If you're not used to this discipline of suddenly creating stories, it has always been 'these are our benefits'. How do you start? Where's is the starting point to try and create something that's a bit more interesting?

Warren Cass: Well I suppose the obvious and easy thing is introducing your team. You know maybe even having a ‘meet the team’ on the website. If you're a big, big brand with tens of thousands of staff that's difficult. But actually you probably got a lot more budget to do something very clever with it. If you're a small business owner, it starts with just actually introducing yourself. I used to have a business card that, on the back of it, I actually had the words that defined me - that didn't relate to business - and that was a great way of just starting conversations. We found it made a massive difference, even just in a networking context of the people you might meet in meetings. You would have that softer introduction to the meeting in those first five minutes because they've spotted one or two words that resonate with them and suddenly, you've now got a connection on a human level rather than actually just talking business. Made the rest of the meeting go a lot smoother.

There may be small changes to the spoken word in this transcript in order make it more readable.