You wake up in the morning in a 100-meter-long bedroom, look through the panoramic windows overlooking the mountains at your car, which is already started and ready to go, drink a cup of coffee and drive off in your super stylish and expensive car along the serpentine road to work... Do marketers really think that this is how most people live? At some point, you will start to avoid official videos and photos of the car you want, because it all looks artificial! Why don’t brands use the content that is now actively in demand by users?
All these cars can be advertised next to the plane. Trite! What is Storytelling and what is it used with? Let's find out! An internet search showed many different definitions, but a few stood out: Storytelling is the oldest method of conveying information through narration, stories, and fairy tales. The characters in such stories can be either real or fictitious. A completely understandable explanation, but the part about fictional characters hurts the eye. Of course, such a definition will not help in sales; you can’t invent a cool car and try to sell it. Well, of course you can, but it’s better not to do it. Storytelling is a story that is told for a reason, but in order to achieve a specific goal. This is a definition closer to us, which can be applied in various fields, including the automotive industry. What goal can an auto brand set using storytelling techniques? Sales, of course! This is where bloggers come to the aid of brands, who express their, and sometimes not entirely their, thoughts in photo and video format. However, perhaps these formats can be taken over by the brands themselves and not show polished commercials or long 5-minute videos where the car stands in silence, statically and blinks with low beams, high beams, and emergency lights, but show real things. How the ergonomics of the cabin helps you not to be distracted while driving and have everything you need at hand, or how matrix optics helps illuminate the road, but using a real example, and not in conditions far from reality. Big test drive Pavel Bludenov Alan Enileev There are also specialized social networks, for example Drive2, to broadcast the experience of using and operating a car. It's like Facebook or VK, only instead of people there are machines. They go to car washes, travel, change spare parts, improve themselves, and even participate in meetings with real owners of the same and sometimes other cars. Do you think there is at least one official account of the big German three on this social network?
Eat! There is only one, and it is an Official Dealer. The content of the page consists mainly of descriptions of promotions carried out by the brand.
Of course, when we switch to reviews, we see a slightly different picture, which is much closer to what we are talking about. But still, why is there not a single page with good activity and necessary content? This is what users are looking for! Comparisons, operating experience, features of each car. This is storytelling.
comparison of two bodies of the same model Reviews form the opinion of a potential buyer about a certain product, so it is important that such material is freely available and visible! But where is it on the websites of the largest automakers?
There is no such thing here.
And on such a site we will not find anything like this
And here it’s empty It’s no secret that often they sell us not only the car itself, but also a certain way of life, into which, according to the company’s marketers, this or that model fits ideally. But now everyone wants to be more friendly and speak the language of consumers. Everyone declares that they are willing to meet the client and are always ready to provide any services. So why doesn't anyone actually do this? Many brands are trying to bring their social networks and Youtube channels into decent shape, for example BMW and Mercedes. Everything is structured and labeled, you open the playlist and see a whole story from several videos. True, these will all be advertising, ideal videos. Absolutely artificial images that do not at all reflect the reality of car owners and buyers.
As an example, we took the global channels of brands (the Russian channels of these companies look similar, but all the content is either without words, or in English, or with subtitles. Will you read the subtitles instead of looking at the picture? Hardly.) And it was quite unexpected to see a video from BMW with a story from a real car owner about his car (albeit an old one), in which he decided to drive from Lebanon to Munich, where his BMW was assembled. Looking at all the material described above, it becomes obvious that car brands are trying to sell a very beautiful life in which their cars play the role of an accessory, but they completely forget that real owners do not always correspond to this vision of the companies. Storytelling as a fact is present, but it tells something completely different. They sell us dreams, which is also good, but perhaps not as effective. Perhaps it would be useful for brands to personally enter platforms such as YouTube and even Drive2 in Russia in order to create not only advertising content, but also relevant materials, real experience in operating cars, and real storytelling. Of course, many other questions and even problems arise, for example, “what to do with the negativity?”, “how to promote it?”, “how to divide the audience?”. But Moscow was not built right away! So everything is in our hands! http://telegra.ph/Storytelling-kak-mostik-mezhdu-prodavcom-i-pokupatelem-09-28 Efimtsev Maxim / Digital manager Eventum Premo
