The Power of Storytelling in Business

Episode 104: The Power of Storytelling in Business, with Sean Tracey

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The power of storytelling in business can help create emotional connections. Learn more from Sean Tracey about the power of storytelling in business.

Get ready for a marketing strategy that balances profit with authenticity to differentiate your brand by using the power of storytelling in business. In this episode of Sell With Authority, we unlock some rock solid awesome insights with our special guests, Sean Tracey and Predictive’s own Mad Scientist, Hannah Roth.

Sean is an award-winning creative strategist and speaker with over 25 years of experience in brand marketing. He is the Founder and CEO of Sean Tracey Associates, a full-service advertising and marketing firm.

Sean is sharing his groundbreaking P equals P framework, which has revolutionized the way his agency connects with brands and elevates their success. We dive deep into practical tactics, including the power of authentic storytelling and focusing on a customer-centric approach.

This episode illuminates the path to creating meaningful emotional connections with your right-fit clients using the power of storytelling in business. Double down on strategies that resonate on a deeper level and drive unwavering loyalty to your brand.

What you will learn in this episode about the power of storytelling in business:

The strategic tenets of the P = P framework
Why the power of storytelling in business is more important than aesthetics in authentic branding
Strategies for building emotional connections and trust to establish your reputation with right-fit prospects
Why trying to be everything to everyone can lead to zero impact
Steps to illuminate the path and fuel the inspiration of your right-fit clients

Resources:

Website: http://www.seantracey.com/
LinkedIn Personal: https://www.linkedin.com/in/seantraceyassociates/
LinkedIn Business: https://www.linkedin.com/company/sean-tracey-associates/
Mercer Island Group Workshops: https://migroup.com/mig-workshops/
Want to know more about the power of storytelling in business? Then check out these stories from the website of Sean Tracey

Additional Resources:

Website: www.predictiveroi.com
Visit our newly expanded Resource Library
Join us in our free How to Fill Your Sales Pipeline Facebook Group
Check out this related podcast about the power of storytelling in business from our guest, Gary Vaynerchuk

The Power of Storytelling in Business: Full Episode Transcript

Welcome to the Sell With Authority podcast. I’m Stephen Woessner, CEO of Predictive ROI, and my team and I created this podcast specifically for you. So if you’re an agency owner looking to sell more of what you do so you can grow a thriving and profitable shop that can weather the constant change. This seems to be our world’s reality within.

You’re in the right place. Do you want proven strategies for attracting a steady stream of well prepared right fit prospects into your sales pipeline? Yeah, we’re going to cover that. You want to learn how to step away from the sea of competitors, so you actually stand out and own the ground you’re standing on. Yep. We’re going to cover that too.

Do you want to futureproof your business so you can navigate the next challenges that you know are going to come your way? Well, absolutely. We will help you there as well. I promise you, each episode of this podcast will contain valuable insights into tangible examples of best practices. Never theory from thought leaders, experts, owners who have done exactly what you’re working hard to do.

So I want you to think practical and tactical. Never any fluff. Each of our guests have built a position of authority, and then monetized that position by growing their audience, by nurturing leads, and, yes, by converting sales. But all the while, they did it by being helpful. So every time someone from their audience turned around, there they were with a helpful answer to an important question.

I also promise you, every strategy that we discuss, every tool we recommend, will be shared in full transparency so you can fill your sales pipeline with that steady stream of right fit clients who, again, were never, ever made to feel like one of your prospects.

The Power of Storytelling in Business: Standing Out from Competitors

Okay. Before I introduce you to our very special guest expert today, I’m going to take a moment to tee up today’s topic and what we’re about to dive into.

And that’s the need for agencies to step away from the sea of sameness, and to stand out from your myriad of competitors. When you and your team are working hard to win that next new client, or even earlier in the buyer’s journey, when you’re just trying to get on their radar to be part of a consideration set so that when they are in the market looking for a new agency partner, you get the invitation.

So let’s peel back some of those layers and get ready to dive in. If you’ve ever attended the Selling with Strategic Insights workshop hosted by the Agency Management Institute, by the incredibly brilliant team at Mercer Island Group, which as an aside, Holy Bananas. Robin Steve Lindsey, if you happen to be listening to this, you orbit a distant moon of awesomeness.

They are absolutely incredible. So we’ll include a link to their next workshop. I promise no financial affiliation whatsoever. We just attended this workshop a number of different times and they are awesome. So we will include a link in the show notes. One of the things the Mercer Island team looks for when selecting agencies to participate in a pitch for a brand that has hired them to lead the search.

One of those things is looking for the agency’s process. More specifically, they’re looking for anything unique or proprietary about the agency’s process. Is the process smart? Does the process show the agency’s strategic chops and are the strategic insights the agency has uncovered about the prospective client? Are those insights visible and at the center of the process, or is the agency’s process vanilla and sound sort of like this?

Hey, you know what? And step one, we do discovery. In step two, we do ideation. In step three we do the creative and stuff for it’s all about execution. And step five is where we measure our work. And then step six we adjust and repeat. Obviously you can probably hear the sarcasm a little bit in my voice.

If some iteration of those steps, though, sounds familiar, I’m telling you, they also sound familiar to your prospective clients. They’ve heard all of those usual steps, and they’ve heard all of the retreads over and over again from many other agencies before you, before you ever even get an app that they’ve heard of before. The reason why your prospective clients may give you the eye roll when you share steps like this is because there’s a missing ingredient.

They don’t see themselves inside your process. The process is all about you in your work, not them. So fixing that so that you stand out the next time you have an at-bat with the right fit prospect. That’s our goal today.

The Power of Storytelling in Business: Sean Tracey’s Introduction

And to help us do that. I invited Sean Treacy, founder and creative Director of Sean Tracey Associates, to join us as our special guest expert.

He is going to take us inside his agency and break down what they call the P equals P framework. As you’ll hear from Sean, P equals P is more than a process that his agency follows. It behaves more like a let’s call it a methodology or even a belief system. P equals P is a set of truths for their agency that were born out of their decades of experience working alongside brands like Bigelow T and a long list of others.

Sean and his team know that if a brand honors the truths in P equals P, their customers will reward them. But if a brand ignores or violates the truth, the brand will be relegated to pitching the price of an item to its customers. Which of course is the path to commoditization in a race to the bottom. So okay, buckle in everyone.

This is going to be awesome. And I also invited Hannah Ross, our mad scientist and strategists here at predictive. Because of Hannah’s unique perspective from working in the trenches day in and day out alongside our clients, helping them fill their sales pipeline with a steady stream of right fit clients so they can sell more of what they do.

I promise you, if you take and apply the golden nuggets that Shawn shares during this episode, you will stand out from the sea of sameness because you put your prospective client at the center of your process. So without further ado, welcome to the Sell With Authority podcast, Sean and Hannah.

The Power of Storytelling in Business: Sean’s Path and Journey

Thank you, Stephen. You’re very welcome. Thanks, Hannah. You join us too.

Good to see you too. Yes, I’m thrilled to be back today to talk about this. P equals p framework. When I saw this for the first time, I was so excited because it’s awesome. And it touches on so many of the rants that I feel sometimes when I read to your point, Stephen, the same kind of thing over and over and over again.

And this is so different and has the potential to be just an absolute game changer. So I’m super excited to talk about that today. Indeed. And Sean, again, thanks for your willingness to share your smarts with us, so that our audience can take that and apply that into their business. Obviously not copy your framework, but be able to learn from your smarts and experience.

Before we dive in, though, actually take us behind the curtain. I shared a little bit of context about you and your agency. Obviously not much and not much on purpose. Because I want you to be able to share your path and journey and your voice and your words. So give us a couple of minutes of context, and then we’ll dive in.

All right. Well, thank you again. And it’s great to be here today to talk to you about this in the podcast. And share some things that have come up for me in my career, in my agency. But I never imagined being in this business. I was a religious studies major at Brown University and ended up owning an ad agency.

I thought I was going to go to law school and specialize in ethics. But, along the way, I wrote a couple of TV, sort of pilots for my older brother Brian, because he wanted to get out of the music business as a front man and get into TV. And one of them got picked up.

So I ended up shooting a TV show and producing it, directing it, writing it for a few years when I was just at 22 years old. So that was a, you know, initiation by fire and director, eventually I went on to direct commercials, for it not only for my own company, but for some of the largest and best commercial production companies in the US and in Canada.

The partners in Toronto and Albert Maysles, a famous documentary filmmaker I worked with in New York and then, oh, my God, my kids were born. And I was something like 25 weeks away. You’re my son was born in hotels in Canada and LA in New York. And I said, well, this has got to stop. So, I went back to sort of where I started in writing and creative and founded a small agency and vowed to my wife that I wouldn’t take a client that was more than a four hour drive.

And so, after a big pay cut, initially, we finally got the agency to, you know, do what it does today, and it’s a wonderful, you know, it’s a wonderful vehicle for my creativity and for a lot of other people who work with me. And we enjoy what we do. And we’ve been doing it for more than 20 years. And that’s how the agency started.

The Power of Storytelling in Business: The P2P Framework

Awesome. So, I’m really excited. And I’m not surprised, Sean, that you ended up in, you know, this kind of creative space because I’ve seen the work that your agency puts out. It’s absolutely incredible. Just super inspiring. Just. It resonates. It’s amazing. So, I am glad that you didn’t go into ethics.

And I’m glad that you let your creativity shine. Completely unethical. Now, mercenary. Only, I’m glad that your path and journey evolved in the way that it did, because I think that, you know, your passion and your talent comes through in the work that you do. Because I’ve gotten to see it firsthand. So, with that, I would love to go ahead and dive in.

So I know that we’ve got six kinds of tenants to cover today in the P equals P methodology. But before we get to the first one, help us better understand, you know, what does this mean? What is this kind of P2P framework? And kind of give us the 50,000ft view of what that is and how you guys are.

Sure. Well, like Stephen said initially, you know, we’ve been doing this for over 20 years and we, I think fell into the category of thinking that our, you know, process, which began with the deep dive and into the research and, you know, through to the creative positioning or the or the brand positioning, and then we do the creative as as you know, Stephen said that this was somewhat unique because it takes a long time to actually learn how to do all of those things, and to master them takes a lot of people with a lot of interesting experience.

To get that right and have all those components really do work. And we did that. But yeah, truthfully, you know, when we described it to clients, it really wasn’t that much different than everybody else’s process. But as we did this more and I think it really took, I don’t know, more than ten years, 15 years to discover that sort of at a deeper level.

We were doing something that was a little different, and it wasn’t about that process. It was about something, that kind of was the undercurrent that we were doing. We couldn’t put our hands on it. Exactly. And why, you know, we had a few pieces of it here and there that seemed to be able to be talked about to our clients, but we kind of almost didn’t know what we were doing or how to describe it.

It was coming out well, and it was working well to drive our creativity and drive our brand positioning with our clients. But it was hard to articulate, and it wasn’t until really recently that it was this sort of process, I guess you want to call it that. It’s not, you know, it’s not about, as you said, the research becomes this and whatever, but it’s a process of discovering, what is truly authentic to a client and helping them to understand that P equals P, or actually it’s, personal equals profitable is what it stands for.

And you know, that’s easier for a client to grasp. And it’s important to them. And we can kind of show how it all works, how it all works together and how you get there. So it’s a little different kind of thing. It’s just a different articulation of what we were already doing. But, now we can talk about it and we can show it.

The Power of Storytelling in Business: Guidance for Agency Owners

We show examples of how it has been implemented. It makes sense. It does. And I’m so glad that you started there. And here’s why. Because that right there was a big golden nugget. And here’s what I mean by that. In using your words 10 to 15 years like you guys have been working on this. Right. And maybe it’s the little pieces.

Maybe there’s subtlety. But there was something that was guiding the work. And the reason why I’m pulling this out as a golden nugget is because I can almost certainly assure you that there are agencies listening to this right now, agency owners in their teams listening to this right now going, yeah, we don’t have a process or we don’t have a point of view.

And they absolutely do. They may not be articulating it clearly like Drew and I wrote about in our book, Sell With Authority. But it is there. And so for a decade plus maybe a decade plus more, it was guiding your work that star. And now you guys have articulated it this way, again guiding your work and your relationships with clients.

The Power of Storytelling in Business: Helping Clients Move Their Brands

Now it’s fully articulated. Now it’s like this full transparency of awesomeness. But it was there right? Yeah, it has always been there. I just didn’t. I didn’t know how to describe it and I somewhat didn’t really know what it was. It just was there and it was working. But you know, you’re right. There are probably a lot of agencies out there because I’ve worked with a lot of people from other agencies.

And you know, prior to having the agency, I had a production company. So I knew a lot of agency owners that I was helping with mostly their television commercials. But I got to know so many of them so well and wow, they were brilliant. Some of them just could, you know, some of them had one particular slant on the business and their process.

But it wasn’t just the process. It wasn’t like here’s the steps we take. There was something going on like that. They did this really well for clients. And then another agency did something else really well. And I often think that some of these people were just really successful because they could offer this, but many of them also didn’t know why it was working or why it was successful.

It’s just what they did and it’s who they were and it was their essence. We had a client once tell us which, you know, it was super flattering, and she was sort of a bigwig with a national company. And we did some branding work for her. And I loved working with her because it’s one of those people you put, you know, 5, 7 creative ideas on a table.

And she immediately picked the right one and said, forget all those others. And it was like, yes, this is a great client. But when we finished our first project together, I asked her for a testimonial or actually to speak to a prospective client as a reference. And a client called me back and hired us after and said, you know, this woman was really smart.

And she said that branding is in your DNA. And I said, wow, I like that compliment. Right. So, you know, so what? And I think that it feels like that to me. And I know other agency owners that have other things that are in their DNA and when they can bring that to their clients and show them how it’s useful and how it will help, you know, move their brands, move the needle and sell products and services so that’s what we do.

And I don’t think you can survive in the business for maybe a year. I mean, certainly not 5 years or 10 years or 20 years without, you know, even if you don’t think you have a process, you want it. You’re not doing this for that many years unless you have something that has value to your clients, just not you’re not going to last like a bad restaurant, you know, they don’t last long.

And in the big or in the big league, there are too many people doing it. You know, there’s too many people and many of them are good at what they do. I’m sorry. We like to call that unconscious competence. Sometimes when it’s normal for you, it’s actually incredible to others. And uncovering that is so important.

The Power of Storytelling in Business: Spark True Loyalty

So, let’s dive into the first of kind of these six tenants under the personal equals profitable framework.

So the first one is spark, true loyalty. So can you explain what that means to you? And then, I’m sure that I’m going to have more questions because that’s always my M.O.. I always like to pepper our guests with questions. So explains what spark true loyalty means. And then, we’ll go from there. Well, you know, we are all for our clients.

And if you are a product or client, a brand, you all want these, you know, loyal fans. Raving lunatic advocates for your product. And everybody’s trying to get that, but it’s not easy. And so how do you spark that loyalty? And, you know, the first thing which is so obvious to me and probably to many of the people that are listening today, is that you don’t really focus on, you know, features and benefits and, you know, you can’t really focus on those things.

We do a lot of marketing with, with, community banks, financial institutions and you know, they all have pretty much the same products. They all have, you know, CDs, and they’re all relatively priced in the same range, you know, so that’s a really great example of, you know, you, you have to differentiate yourself by something else because your products are not that different than anybody else’s, and your services are not that different than anybody else’s.

And you know, many times we do third party research, especially in New England, where they come back and you know, the companies say, this is an area that’s over banked. You know, it’s like it’s really hard to differentiate yourself. So we always urge our clients, in terms of getting that loyalty that you have to focus on creating emotion.

You have to connect at a deeper level. You have to tell stories to people that involve people, whether that’s your people or your customers. You know, what kind of values and things do they share in common in their community? And you know, they’re, there are companies that do this well in all kinds of verticals.

The Power of Storytelling in Business: Focusing On Experience and Emotion

Like if you look at, you know, I know you’re, you said you’re a Samsung user and I won’t hold that against you because I’m an Apple guy. But if you look at the Apple packaging, you know, traditionally it’s very, very stark, right? There’s a lot of white space, a lot of glossy white spaces.

No info on the package other than like, what the product is. Sometimes that you say that just has a picture of it, but if you look at like a PC or whatever, you look at a case on a box of a PC, it’s probably going to be crammed that every little feature that’s inside that computer is somewhere written on the outside of the box in detail.

And if you ask me, which is more effective, which one compels me to buy the product? You know, I covet my apple stuff and I will pay more for it. And even the unboxing experience is a beautiful thing, right? And it’s something that you love and that’s, you know, focusing on that experience and the emotion, not the products and the benefits.

I mean, the features and the benefits, the product. It’s, you know, a very easy, understandable example. Well, even though I am a Samsung user, I love how you tie that in, because it is true, the reason that Apple is able to do that with simply a picture is because they’ve done the work to establish those emotional connections.

And so it’s funny because I just actually read an article the other day from Harvard Business Review. And it was basically discussing the elements of value. And so this, if you can imagine, was sort of a pyramid, loosely based on Maslow’s hierarchy of needs. And the base of the pyramid was, exactly what you’re talking about, kind of benefits and features.

They call it the functional elements. When it comes to value, and I think that most businesses, most agencies, whatever business you’re in, they kind of get stuck in that lower level of the pyramid. They focus on the functional and they never transcend to the higher parts of the pyramid, which is when you get into that emotional, you know, emotional element.

The Power of Storytelling in Business: Building Emotional Connection to Alter Public Perception

So you mentioned that you’ve done a lot of work with community banks, and you mentioned that essentially, and I’m paraphrasing here but a lot of what they do is sort of seen as a commodity. Right? So how are some ways that you guys have been able to kind of take something that is essentially commoditized and build that emotional connection to alter public perception?

Well, that’s kind of a complicated question. Yeah. And, if you answer the riddle, you get to be a master like Yoda or like chain gang kind of gang through series. I’m dating myself. Yeah, you probably even know what I’m talking about. No, that’s you. Unless, you know, it’s so sad! Snatch the stone from my hand, grasshopper.

Means, he probably won’t get that. But, you know, perception and reality are often two very different things when it comes to advertising. You know? And like I said, I’m still ethical. I, you know, my basis was ethical training and theoretical ethics. So I never want to try for a client to trick or cheat or pull the wool over someone’s eyes.

But there are so many commodities, you know, especially these products and services, like you said, that a bank would provide that are nearly or sometimes actually identical to your competitors product, but they could have a different perception based on your brand. And, you know, again, I’ll use a very common example that’s often used, you know, it’s just Clorox bleach.

Clorox, you know, a lot of people, families trust Clorox and they believe in it. They believe that it’s going to work. But I know because I worked with P&G and some other products and things that sometimes the supermarket with no name brand will work just as well. In fact, it might be exactly the same product, same formula, made in the same factory.

The same company puts it out, but they put in a generic bottle for those that are not brand loyal or don’t care that much about bleach or maybe their clothes, I don’t know, or they’re just price conscious. But over the decades, you know, companies like Clorox have won the hearts and minds of a great number of people, and they get those raving, you know, fans and people that wouldn’t ever change.

They believe and they share the same family values and care about their clothing the way that Clorox cares about their clothing and their family members. They wouldn’t think about using another brand and they’ll pay more for it. Maybe for the same identical thing with a different label on it. So that’s, you know, that’s what they do, but that, you know, that doesn’t come in a minute, that altering that public perception takes a great amount of time.

And I think it takes great ideas. And then executions of marketing and advertising campaigns over many years to make these connections and make people, you know, connect and believe it.

The Power of Storytelling in Business: Altering Public Perception Takes Time

So, you know, our experience with somebody like Bigelow Tea, which we’ve had a relationship with for over 16 years. They’re a wonderful third generation, family owned and operated company.

And we started with the second generation with David Bigelow. And now Sidney Bigelow is running the company. And you know, when they began with this, they were number 13 or more in sales in the US. They’re not that big a company compared to some of the others that they compete with. But now they are actually the number one selling key brand in America.

But that didn’t happen overnight. We focused on moments that happen when you’re having a cup of tea with family, friends, loved ones, even strangers. So we didn’t talk a lot about the features as much or the like, you know, the ingredients to the tea, although we have talked about those things because they do. David Bigelow invented the foil pack for tea.

The single teabag wrapped in a foil pack was his idea to really keep the freshness in. But still, all of those are great things. But we still focus on the emotion, the moments created in our lives as we’re sharing Bigelow Tea. And most recently, we have, sort of invented the positioning and the mantra tea proudly.

And it’s in its third iteration now, third campaign, and it’s doing amazing things. It’s really moving the needle. And it is the reason why in the last few years, they jumped from, you know, number 4 or 5 or whatever it was all the way up to number one. And it’s moving stuff off the shelves because people, you know are now, you know, you sit down for a cup of coffee at a luncheon with business partners, and everyone gets a cup of coffee, have a cup of coffee, and one guy says, I’ll have a cup of tea.

And he’s proud about it, right? Because it’s not his mother’s cup of tea with a little pinkie up. It’s something else. And maybe it’s green tea, which is how we started with them. We focused on a niche, which is men drinking green tea. We use Joe Torry and Phil Simms and Wayne Gretzky and all these people to endorse the product.

And it’s it’s again, it’s altering that public perception takes time. It’s not it’s not easy to do, but it can be done. Well. As someone that lives in the South, I completely understand loyalty to tea. So I get that. And I think you’re probably singing to Stephen’s heart when you were talking about Clorox bleach. Because Stephen, maybe unbeknownst to some of our listeners, loves this.

The smell of bleach. It’s funny. I’m going to let you speak for a little bit, because I know that you’re just itching to talk about this like, okay, I’m going to interrupt you before the bleach story, but here it did. You know that in Charleston, South Carolina, the last remaining tea gardens or tea plantation, was sort of on the ropes, and David Bigelow bought it and restored it and has it as a, like a museum of the production of tea and, you know, it’s the last remaining one in the country, and there’s a sweet tea that comes out of there for all the Southerners.

They know their sweet tea. And I think it’s only America’s. I think it’s called America’s tea. And so he kept that sub brand because all the people in the South were used to buying it to put in their cold, sweet tea. So anyway, I did not know that, but I’ll have to check that out next time I’m in Charleston.

The Power of Storytelling in Business: Evaluation and Evolution

That’s awesome. You probably had it a lot. You just didn’t know it yet. He doesn’t. Bigelow brand it. He keeps the original brand. Gotcha. Yes. Hannah likes to tease me that my favorite smell in the world is bleach. But that’ll be for a different episode. So let’s move into number two, and it’s you and Hillary Clinton.

For different reasons. Right. Maybe that’s funny. So, evaluation and evolution, like when we first hear this, it seems like, oh, are we going to go in a completely different direction, or are we going to throw away all the work that a brand has done? And I know that that’s not your point of view, and certainly some things may need to change and all of that.

So take us through number two because it’s not necessarily the expression to throw the baby out with the bathwater. So teach us more about number two. All right. So we call it evaluation and evolution. And you know much to my detriment sometimes in terms of, you know, making money, I have many times suggested that the client doesn’t throw the baby out with the bathwater, but many times the client is pretty tied to what they’ve been doing before the past.

And it’s a good idea to get an outside opinion, preferably an expert and somewhat of an unbiased opinion. Hopefully, and take a fresh look at things that the brand is doing. See what you should toss out and what you should keep. So we do that with clients. You know, times change, your brand strategy and messaging should evolve with the times.

It can’t be exactly the same all the time. But it doesn’t mean you have to change everything. You know, we’ve all heard stories because I know there’s a lot of agency people that may listen to your podcast or, and we’ve all heard stories all the time about any new agency taking over account, and they have to toss everything out.

They want to reinvent everything with some clients. Crazy, right? Sometimes it is the right thing to do. But in my history with new clients, I’ve often recommended keeping a lot of things that are working like the logo, well-designed logo or tagline. The product name. You know, I say if there’s equity in it and it’s authentic and effective and still differentiates your brand from your competitors, then keep it.

The Power of Storytelling in Business: The Importance of a Good Objective Opinion

So we’re very honest when we see something that shouldn’t be given up. And sometimes it’s funny, the client is very overanxious to make changes. You know, sometimes it’s a new marketing director that comes in. He’s a new brand manager or whatever. He wants to change everything and, you know, I am not a big fan of that. We have to look at it with a, you know, a good objective opinion and that some of these preexisting strategies are actually well received by prospective clients or customers.

And then we find out what’s not working. So when we do research on this and we do, especially when the client really doesn’t understand or see like the things that they really don’t agree that these are things that should be kept to things that should be reinvented, then we usually go to research and show them and once, you know, they can see customers, people sort of reacting in a positive way to the things that we’re recommending.

And it’s clear, it’s undeniable, then the direction is clear and the strategy is clear when it’s all laid out with data and research. So that’s something that you can do. We’ve had a lot of experiences where we just jive with a client and we all agree on the same thing and we don’t have to, you know, go backwards, I guess, and do research.

But sometimes you do in order to make everybody feel okay. Now we know, you know, now we really know it’s not just our seat of the pants idea or what we feel like we want to do. So I love that because obviously starting over sometimes feels incredibly daunting. You know, people invest money, they invest time and all of those things.

And I love that you guys use that approach because that’s keeping them, you know, and their needs and what they actually need at the center of, you know, your methodology. So you’re not just coming in saying, we’re going to revamp everything and redo everything and it’s going to cost you this amount of money. So I love that you guys include that in your approach so that you can, you know, build on what’s been working for them.

The Power of Storytelling in Business: Challenging The Norm

So, kind of in contrast to that, though, I know that tenant number three, is challenging the norm.

So I love that you guys kind of blend these two approaches. So you keep what works. But then you also want to challenge the norm with tenant number three. So let’s talk about that. And how those two kinds work together.

Because I know what, when you guys talk about challenging the norm, you’re again, basing that on data to your point that you just said. So let’s dive into tenant number three. Challenge the norm okay. Yeah. So it is that we do like to get data. When I was a TV commercial director, I used to often step into the conference rooms of agencies like Saatchi and McCann and, you know, big ones that had spent a year developing a TV commercial.

And I would look at it, I could have written a better commercial, you know, last night, you know, and I’m like, but they had gone through all these steps and what I didn’t realize, I was not a big fan of data. Anytime I saw data, it looked like I was going to, like, not get to shoot as cool a commercial.

So now, as an agency owner and seeing how good data the right research can actually inform you in a way that, you know, helps you do good things or do things that are going to work for the client. And, you know, I think that data and good solid research could help you avoid the normalcy, you know, the norm or cliches and things that everybody else is already doing, because then you can’t differentiate or stand out.

But data can also reveal what’s new, maybe fresh in the minds and intriguing to your customers. Something you never thought about. That’s what happened with Bigelow Tea. We did research, and there was this little nugget that Stephen calls it that, we interviewed a bunch of men and they were like, there was something, you know, between the lines.

The guys were saying, you know, we interviewed a truck driver, and he was like, you know, I drink 3 or 4 cups of coffee a day that I could probably trade the last two or something for something that’s better for me. And I hear green tea is kind of good for me. So we started to hear this repeat over different cities and different men saying something about something better for them.

The Power of Storytelling in Business: The Right Data Will Help Keep You Relevant

Now, green tea is known to be good for you, right? The antioxidants and all this has less caffeine, etc. so we were trying to convince men specifically to, you know, trade the net. Not that we had to give up coffee, but maybe they will try. And then we found your story. He was told I had prostate cancer, and he was told by his nutritionist, you know, you should be drinking green tea because it’s good for you.

And so he became the spokesperson. But this was all the data that got us here. I wouldn’t have thought of that without the data, without doing the research, you know, so they can tell you things and also tell you what your customer desires. Last year or five years ago may not be what they want now, right? So the data can help keep you relevant.

If you look at how people’s habits and behaviors have changed during and after the sorry, the P word, the other P word pandemic, you know, travel, home ownership, going to conferences, working from home, health concerns, information sources. It’s like a wild, wild West out in a whole new world. People don’t do what they used to do, right?

Five years ago. So with all this change happening faster and faster as a brand, you better be asking yourself what was, you know, when was the last time we altered our approach? Because we looked at, you know, new data and new information and, you know, you got it. You got to stick with it. You have to do that diligence, that due diligence, find out, you know, really where you are and where things are, where people are, what’s in their heads now may not be the same thing.

The Power of Storytelling in Business: Challenging The Norm Because of Strategic Insight

So let’s take a pause here for just a second to loop back to something earlier that I mentioned in the introduction, when I was setting up this conversation. Most agency processes feel like vanilla because they’re about them, the agency, the work, and all of that. And what you just illustrated there so perfectly is how this process is about your client?

You reference data, but you are also referencing data that led them to a strategic insight in the strategic insights or what are foundational around challenging the norm. We’re not going to challenge the norm. Norm, excuse me arbitrarily. We’re challenging the norm because the data says so, or how we’re challenging the norm because the data says this is leading us to a strategic insight that is about the client, not the agency, how you can move the client forward and that it itself is unique.

And what’s really interesting is we are looking to the next tenet together. So I’ve been jotting down my notes, I promise my notes here. And this is sort of like a little word cloud, but there’s like this red thread that is running through this conversation and it ties in with, I think together we rise.

Here’s what I mean by that. A number of different times, you said the word values a number of different times. You said the word ethics a number of times, truths, tenants connections, personal people stories, emotions, moments in lives. And so when I think about it together, we rise. Together we win. That says something to your clients, I would guess.

The Power of Storytelling in Business: Speak To Clients in A Way That Matters to Them

There’s like this red thread that runs through all six of these P equals P, and it’s this one together we rise, right? Like you’re not a star, an agency isn’t anything unless the client is successful. So take us through that one. Well it’s interesting. Just before this podcast, I was sitting down in my office interviewing a guy.

We’re looking for a new editor. You do so much video that we have an in-house department, and, you know, coming from my background as a production director of a commercial, you know, essentially, I’m a storyteller. I’m more of an agency guy. I’m a storyteller. I’ve always wanted to start with my TV show.

I worked for Albert Maysles and Maysles Johnson York. That’s one of the top three documentary filmmakers, storytellers ever lived. And I learned a lot from Albert. And he is or he, you know, he just puts my feet to the fire and stuff all the time. And interviewing this guy that I just interviewed, he differed. I called him into the office and asked for a two hour meeting, and I had seen 40 or 50 different applications in the last two weeks.

And I called this guy and immediately if I sent something and we were talking about many of the other portfolios that I had gotten, and some of them were so beautiful, it was a guy that, I mean, his work was mostly all national. He’s a DPI cinematographer, editor, everything. All his shots were perfect. Beautifully lit, beautifully designed, beautifully, framed, everything.

But at the end of it, I would say, well, you know, I see this detail too much, but I saw a story there. But it was not that he didn’t tell the story. He just had a bunch of great shots that were strung together. And you know, when I first started directing commercials, whatever I got caught up in making great shots and great fun.

Commercials are cool. Commercials. But at the end of the day, if it doesn’t tell a client story in a way that’s meaningful, and also the client’s story that has that intersection with what their customers are interested in. Right? Because you can tell a great client’s story, but if it doesn’t have any relevance to your prospect, then it’s not going to go anywhere either.

So, you know, I don’t know how to answer your question. Yeah. Because again, the red thread that goes through this one are all of those emotional connections. You’re talking about visual ways to set that story, which is great if you’re a creative visual learner and so forth. But those stories have to then ring true to your client’s client or your client’s customer.

Because if they don’t, then the brand doesn’t get it. All right? Right. Yeah. So it isn’t about me. I have opinions, I have what I like, and it isn’t about my agency for sure. And to some extent it isn’t even it is. It’s certainly more about the client and what they believe and they offer. But ultimately it’s all the way to the consumer, right?

That’s where that’s really right there. That’s the story that has to be for them. It’s not for the client even, and it’s certainly not for one of their products or their services. So we go back to the beginning again. And I think that’s so true. And the way to create, you know, true ambassadors for your company is to speak to them in a way that matters to them.

So keeping them at the center and at the heart of what you’re doing and your messaging and your branding and your creative, all of those things, can really amplify the amount of advocates that you have in your business.

The Power of Storytelling in Business: Don’t Focus on Negative Advertising

So I love that you’re talking about that. And it’s all about those emotions. Again, you know, we talked about emotions at the beginning, but you know, many times my clients come and say, well, what’s emotional about, you know, a bank or bank product. How can we establish or evoke those emotions?

And you know, when you study filmmaking or you do it for a while, you realize that all of it, you know, all stories revolve around mostly primitive emotions and the most effective love, joy, safety, surprise, intrigue. Those are the things that sort of a primitive, primitive standpoint, make us pay attention. Right? And there are the negative ones too, you know, fear or sadness or panic and anger.

But you know, I really do not recommend any clients or any brands focusing on the negative or advertising or tapping into negative emotions. I actually wrote an article once on national healthcare marketing, for a marketing magazine National, about not using fear to market services, especially in health care. I called out a very well known national healthcare brand.

That’s why I wrote the article. They had a big New York agency and they were using fear in consumers’ minds in order to sell a service. In this case, it was cancer treatment. And I just thought this was completely, you know, go back to my ethical, bad, unethical, and I said, this is really bad. This is unethical.

And this is one of the biggest cancer treatment centers in the country, one of the biggest agencies in New York City. And so I wrote the article. It created a lot of havoc. And then they asked me to come to this national conference of health care marketers with like 3000 people presenting this topic at a national conference.

So the advertiser at this hospital, provider, basically, and their national agency showed up in my audience to take issue with my condemnation of their actions. And they literally stood up and spoke out when I said something at one point trying to justify their use of fear and ads. And, I mean, the ad was horrible. There was a beautiful woman that was in an exam room, and they closed the curtain, and then they started shaving the hair off of her head as she cried, My God.

And they said, you know, she has a brain tumor the size of your hand. You know who could do this operation? And you see the doctors and they fold their arms. It’s only us. I’m like, are you kidding me? What a terrible thing, right? This woman, poor woman crying and they’re using that to promote their services. But, you know, public sentiment wasn’t in their favor.

They literally got booed out of the room and wow. You know. Yeah, it was pretty, dramatic. Let’s say it was one of the most dramatic moments, I think, in my history of just advertising, because usually advertising is not that dramatic of people’s reaction to it. But, you know, you can create a lot of kinds of emotions in advertising or marketing and you know, you want to focus on the right ones and do a good job with it.

The Power of Storytelling in Business: Dominating a Niche

I think that people should be rewarded by seeing a product’s advertising and feel good about it and feel good about themselves after they’ve seen it. We’ve all seen ads like that where you feel better after you’ve seen that ad. I love those kinds of ads. Yes. Me too. And I think they inspire action from, you know, a good place, from the right place versus you know what you’re talking about, which is fear based.

And so, I want to use that to kind of move along into tenant number five, because that’s kind of where you’re talking about, you know, dominating a niche. And so to dominate a niche, you have to stand out to them in a meaningful way, a positive way. So obviously this, you know, hospital or provider or whatever that you’re talking about, they stood out, but it wasn’t really in the right way or in a meaningful way.

So, for tenant number five, E2 equals zero. Help us understand what you mean by that and how to go into a niche and then how that helps you stand out in a meaningful way. Okay. I think that this goes way back. My brother had an agency and I worked a lot with his agency as a creative.

And he used to say this, and I think it came from working with a guy that was at Harvard, Doctor David Shaw, who wrote a book called The Trust Prescriptive for health care marketing. He is a brilliant guy. We worked with him on a number of hospital branding projects. I think this came out of his book.

I’m not sure it’s not it’s not original to me, but E squared equals zero. Okay. So that means if you try to be everything to everybody, you know, it squared, you end up with nothing E squared equals zero. And I love that. And I think it’s true. You know you can’t be everything everybody I mean, you know, anybody that’s ever done any advertising in the business now it’s the, you know, the dreaded so who’s your market target? Everyone.

The Power of Storytelling in Business: Identifying a Perfect Customer

You know, it’s like, so how do you advertise to everyone? It’s really hard. So, you know, how do you recognize that perfect customer? We always try to look at that. And how do we, you know, develop personas and things to try and identify? Because even if you really narrow that down and you say, okay, our perfect customer is a truck driver looking for a way to not drink five cups of coffee to stay up at night.

And maybe he’s, you know, but you know, so you drive that and you have a look and feel and guys jumping off his truck areas. That’s our guy. That’s who we’re marketing to. That’s not to say that you’re not going to also reach a lot of other people. That may not be truck drivers, but they may do other kinds of work, or maybe not.

They just kind of recognize they can kind of identify with that person, but one of the funny things that we try not to do is we don’t really when we start our deep dives, you know, that part of the process that isn’t that different from what we do. But, we often find that the C-suite in our client base, they’re out of touch.

They wouldn’t recognize a perfect customer if they were standing in front of them, you know, because their perceptions developed in the boardroom or in their office or in a vacuum of some sort, but not on the front line. So we do that research, you know, to identify the client, you know, and so we’re not trying to talk to everybody.

We asked the front line people who the perfect customer is because they know. It’s because they also often serve the people who are not the right customer. And they realize that, you know, I’m tearing my hair out trying to do this with this customer. And, you know, for X amount of time and they’ll never be a great customer because they’re just not our customer, you know, so, you know, find a customer and you really can’t talk to everybody.

You talk to everybody, not everybody. It’s not a good target to be looking at everybody. But I think all of us in advertising know that. Just try to convince some of the clients that their market is and everybody. And then we’re so aligned, with you with respect to niche and then, you know, working with right fits and finding right fits and really positioning well for the right fits and how and how best to be helpful for those right fits.

The Power of Storytelling in Business: Illuminating The Path

So I know that our time is quickly coming to an end and it’s like, holy bananas. How can it be? So as we come in for a landing here, let’s put this into, like, wrap this up into a bow with number six, which is, illuminate the path. So walk us through that in how it’s really leaning into their aspirations as opposed to other things, really painting them, painting the future for them.

So what’s number six? There’s actually five parts to number six and four parts, but we won’t get into all of them at this point. I think, you know, the, the, the summary of it, you know, of illuminating the path is that you’re showing you’ve got to show people, that are in your target demographic that you get them.

Right. So you’re illuminating the path, you’re showing them what they do, what they do with their lives, what events and milestones are important to them. You know what? What kind inspiring stories share stories you know from your customer base. This you know, one of our hospital clients, we shared the story of a Vietnam veteran who couldn’t move without a walker because his hips and knees were so eroded and a number of hospitals wouldn’t even do the surgery.

So our one client hospital and an innovative orthopedic surgeon said, you know, they could do the surgery. So Doug had a double hip replacement and a knee replaced, and we were there to film him on the day he hiked the mountain with a new mobility and called his wife from the top of a mountain.

He was in his 70s, and this inspirational video brought in a ton of new patients. They connected with Doug and his story. And, you know, almost every company has great customers with great stories. And so are you telling those stories? That’s the thing. Are you illuminating the path you’re showing them who they are in a meaningful way, connecting with them that way.

So that’s the last tenant right there, I love it. So for our listeners, I’m going to give a quick recap, because I know we’ve talked about so many awesome ideas today. So, number one, tenant number one, transcend the functional by sparking true loyalty. Number two, keep what works by evaluating and evolving. Number three uses data to challenge the norm and uncover new opportunities.

Number four be customer centric and create ambassadors. Because together we rise. Number five E squared equals zero. If you try to be everything to everybody, you’ll end up with nothing. And number six, connect the dots and illuminate the path to the outcomes of your clients or customers more. Don’t make them guess and tell the stories. So, Sean, I want to thank you so much for being here with us today.

And for our listeners, you can check out their P equals P framework by clicking on the link in the show notes. Sean, before we go, if you don’t mind, tell our listeners how they can get in touch with you or the best way to follow your content. And then we’ll wrap up. Okay.

The Power of Storytelling in Business: Final Advice and How to Connect with Sean

So hopefully you’ll be able to put some links there. Personally, I have no problem with somebody emailing me at [email protected]. And that is also our website seantracey.com and it will show you how to connect to the sun Facebook and to your Vimeo channel and all of that kind of stuff.

So I’m happy to talk to anybody that wants to talk about this. Okay, everyone. No matter how many notes you took or how often you go back and re-listen to Sean’s words of wisdom, which I sure hope that you do. The key is you have to take the uniqueness out of this process. What? He just walked you through this framework?

Obviously not to copy the framework, but you can see how he maps that out and how important the tenants are, so that when you stand in front of your prospective clients, they see that it’s not the vanilla process that they’ve heard the retreads many times before. They see themselves at the center. And the strategic insights that you are working through that process and how they’re going to win and how you’re going to rise together.

And Sean, we all have the same 86,400 seconds in a day. And Hannah and I are grateful that you said yes to come on to the show, to help us move our businesses onward to that next level. Thank you so much, Sean. Thank you. Be a guest. Thank you so much.

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