The Monetary Value of a Story – Storytelling in Marketing
At the begining of the story I: For how much is this chair?
He: It’s for 500 pound, it’s a rocking chair made from beech wood, its condition is great, just the fabric needs refurbished.
I: Thank you, bye.
I: For how much is this chair?
He: It’s for 500 pound.
I: Thank you, bye.
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He: Wait a second! Do you know why it has the highest price amongst other chairs in the showroom he begin his story ?
I: and why is that?
He: This is a rocking chair made from beech wood, although its fabric needs refurbished, yet this chair has a feature that no other chair has in the showroom?
I: What feature?
He: This chair was the favorite one for the attorney general who was investigating in the famous case of the murderous women Ria and Sekina at the beginning of the last century. They say that he decided to quit the case and even resign his job because he felt the case was brought on trumped up charges against the two women by the British authority who were occupying the country at that time.
They sought revenge from the ladies because of their active participation with the resistant militia. So after a long night of setting and swinging on that chair while looking deeply at the beech of Alexandria, the attorney general decided to speak out the truth and to quit the case. So till that day, people claim that this chair inspires whoever sits on it with the wisdom to take the right decisions end of story .
I: Do you accept debit cards?
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In his inspiring book Sell with a story, Paul smith narrates the following story ,
“In May of 2015, my wife, Lisa, convinced me to attend a juried art fair with her at Coney Island in Cincinnati, Ohio. As an artist herself, she has a sophisticated appreciation for fine art that I don’t. She can spend hours on end lazily drifting from one booth to the next, studying each piece and talking to the artists about their inspiration, medium, and techniques. Me, I just like to look at the pictures.
As the day dragged on, we arrived at the booth of Chris Gug (pronounced “Goog”), a photographer known for his awe-inspiring images of marine life. His gallery is full of breathtaking underwater shots of anemones, corals, sea turtles, and whales. On a mission to find a piece for our boys’ bathroom at home, Lisa eyed a picture that looked about as out of place as a pig in the ocean.
It was a picture of a pig in the ocean. She described it as inspired genius—a cute little baby piglet, up to its nostrils in the salt water, snout covered with sand, dog-paddling its way straight into the camera lens. I thought it was a picture of a pig in the ocean.
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The artist joined us as we admired his piece—Lisa admiring it in her way while I admired it in mine. I asked him what on Earth that pig was doing in the ocean. And that’s when the magic started.
Gug explained that the picture was taken in the Caribbean, just off the beach of an uninhabited Bahamian island officially named Big Major Cay. He told us that years ago, a local entrepreneur brought a drove of pigs to the island to raise for bacon. Gug went on:
‘But, as you can see in the picture, there’s not much more than cactus on the island for them to eat. And pigs don’t much like cactus. I guess in typical laid-back Bahamian fashion, the entrepreneur failed to plan that far ahead. So the pigs weren’t doing very well. But at some point, a restaurant owner on a nearby island started bringing his kitchen refuse by boat over to Big Major Cay and dumping it a few dozen yards off shore. The hungry pigs eventually learned to swim to get to the food. Each generation of pigs followed suit, and now all the pigs on the island can swim. As a result, today the island is more commonly known as Pig Island.’”
The story is done, Paul’s day is done, the fine art picture is done hanged in a special place in Paul’s home, and Paul’s bank account is done, and debited with a cash that never worth a picture of a pig. (1)
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Storytelling has an incredible ability to add value to products we sell, the main reason why prospect customers refuse a price is the inability of a seller to grab his/her attention toward the details of the product by not letting them mentally and emotionally immerse in it, and there is nothing better than a short and simple story that describes the features of the product so to persuade customers of their need to such product and subsequently to arouse their desire to buy it.
One of the prominent experiments manifesting the power of storytelling to increase monetary value is what Rob Walker and Joshua Glenn did when they sold for auctions some cheap products like small statues, souvenirs, candle holder,…etc. and instead of writing a traditional description for each piece, they brought some skillful writers and asked them to write short story for each piece, like writing in description for a small statues that it was a gift of a French soldier to his wife prior going to battlefront to fight German Nazis in second world war. So the result of such innovative description was a profit margin of 2700% as a direct result of using stories instead of traditional description.
The also sold a Miniature Pitchfork with original price of 69 cents that finally was sold with price $19.50, and here It’s part of the story that was placed as the product description,
“In the sugar house, near the celluloid sea, we tend to wake up early. You are — you design small, lovely, useful things in a room at the top of the sugar house. I am — I am doing research for a massive biography of three kings: the grandfather king (the First), the son king (the Second) and the last king (the Third). This research will take many years; it has already taken many years. We wake up early to put in a good day’s effort on our projects. I work at the big kitchen table, surrounded by paper. At lunch, we sit on a bench outside and lean against the white wall, eating sandwiches and looking at the sea, which seems marcelled. It is turquoise, deepening to a turtleback green in the troughs of the still waves…..”(2)
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In other experiment was done by Dr.Brian Wansink from Cornell University, he found that descriptive menu labels resulted in customers feeling more satisfied with their meals and subsequently made more purchases of those plates written in descriptive language. He compared both descriptions “seafood filet” vs. “Succulent Italian seafood filet” the second one showed a significant increase of sales reaching 27% more than the first description.
So, words like succulent, satin, grandma’s, juicy,…etc. they all tell a story in one single word that let the customer’s mind get immersed in the content of the food by imagining its taste, smell, and shape, so no way but to ask for more of it.(3)
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Storytelling has a crucial role to increase sales of many products and services by increasing its monetary value perception, beginning by on word that may suffices to describe the product and to trigger client’s emotions toward it, and even stories that take several lines may lead the client to see the product surrounding him from everywhere just because of the spatial dominance of its story.
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Refernces
1.Smith, Paul. Sell with a Story: How to Capture Attention, Build Trust, and Close the Sale. s.l. : AMACOM, 2016.
2. Grote, Jason and Glenn, Joshua. Significant Objects. s.l. : Fantagraphics, 2012.
3. How Descriptive Menu Labels Influence Attitudes and Repatronage. Wansink, Brian, Painter, James and Ittersum, Koert van. 168-172, s.l. : Association for Consumer Research, 2002, Vol. 29.
