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By Jerry Bader (c) 2007
Advertising is all about telling your marketing story: a story that your audience can relate to, so that it builds confidence and credibility in your ability to deliver your product or service.

A well-crafted business story invites your audience to open a dialogue with you, a line of communication that will ultimately lead to a customer and sale for you, and a sense of satisfaction and accomplishment for your new client.

Effective marketing stories are about universal truths and primal needs; they provide a cathartic emotional experience for your audience. There is no point in spending a lot of money on advertising until you have identified that fundamental change your product or service provides to your audience.

Once you have isolated that hidden quality in what you do, you can then develop a video, audio, or print campaign that delivers your message in a memorable, meaningful manner that audiences will respond to.

There are only so many stories you can tell and the art of advertising, or corporate storytelling, is the ability to present that story in fresh new ways.

How Many Marketing Stories Are There?

An acquaintance of mine once pitched a Hollywood studio executive on a movie idea and was turned down flat. The executive told this fellow, “there are only seven movies and yours isn’t one of them.” When I first heard this I was appalled at the lack of imagination from someone in a creative business, but when you think about it, what financial backer is going to invest tens of millions of dollars in something that nobody knows anything about, certainly not the people financing movies. And when it comes to advertising the circumstances are the same; if you’re paying the shot, you at least want a fighting change at success.

Where’s Your Product On The Hierarchy of Needs

There are some disagreements as to what these seven stories are, and if there are really only seven. This magic number seven is interesting as it coincides with noted psychologist Abraham Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs.

Maslow identified seven basic human motivations that guide peoples’ conduct: physical needs, safety needs, social needs, self-esteem needs, cognitive needs, aesthetic needs, and self-actualization needs.

Develop a marketing campaign consisting of stories that satisfy one of these motivational triggers and you have a campaign that your audience will respond to and consider relevant……

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