The Right Story: The secret to spreading your ideas

Our mistake lies in trying to get the customer to make the leap from attention to action, from brand awareness to ‘buy now’, without nurturing them through the steps that help them to feel like they’re making an informed decision.

So your story’s first key driver must be who. You must consider the beliefs and aspirations of your intended audience before you begin to communicate what you want them to know.

we often give people too much information, too soon. It’s only once they develop trust in the brand that people are open to investigating whether the product will meet specs and fulfil their needs.

Progress depends on people having a shared sense of purpose.

Now, instead of investing time to understand customers’ unmet needs and unspoken desires as successful companies had been doing for generations, we began to monitor their online behaviour, looking for patterns and vulnerabilities, gathering data to leverage later—sometimes to serve or oftentimes to exploit the user. Virality became top of mind.

Many of us changed how we spoke to and treated prospective customers, behaving like predators rather than customer advocates.

Our message will fall on deaf ears and closed hearts unless we find a way to make a connection with its intended audience. As author J.K. Rowling said, ‘No story lives unless someone wants to listen.’

a few of the right people with particular social skills have the power to create social epidemics or make ideas ‘tip’.

To begin with, know where your audience spends time.