From Probing to Promotion – Four Catalysts to Manifestation of a Story

Consumers buy with Emotion and Justify with logic, apart from the daily need of bread & butter.

In the advertising world, a powerful storyline for a target audience is the spinal cord. With the relevance being not only for ‘present’ but slightly ‘future looking’ as well, with the connect of an emotion while stitching the value a particular brand or the product brings/ adds to the life of the consumer. And at times, the hero emotion may supersede the value it brings. For example – a cold drink is primarily water, sugar and flavour. Here a specific emotion will play the hero. While a Ayurvedic face cream may be more ingredient driven. The Reason to Believe (RTB) needs to be consistent at least for a considerable time for the target audience, else it can leave them confused.

Here are top 4 focus areas that I strongly believe that has the power to make or break a strategic approach in advertising and marketing. And these will always be in context to building connect with the target audience.

     A) Research followed by probing

Must be focused and swift. That starts from –what is the brief, product understanding accordingly what all to study and research about, ensuring credible sources for secondary research and always include some amount of primary research. I recall the time before search engines and a handful were using AltaVista in the 90s. Hence, my message to this generation is leverage the ‘ease of access to information’ and then of course making sense out of that information with relevance to the brief. Hence, this must be the step one, where need to also study the competitors of the brand while identifying the opportunity which will lead to bringing in a differentiated value.

Not only research is important but to be able to make sense from the study, it is important to spend some time probing deeper which entails asking deeper questions and examining the facts , before arriving at the story.

     B) Story & Manifestation

What exactly is a story? Story is a description of imaginary or real people and events, and it usually has a lucid structure. a climax and a trigger that will lead the audience to get inspired to take some action with respect to the story.

Folks from the 80’s through 90’s will definitely recall these-

• Neighbour’s Envy Owner’s Pride
• Jab Main Chota ladka tha tha, badi shararat karta tha
• Bhul na jaana ECE bulb laana
• Hamara Bajaj
• Washing Powder Nirma
• Yehi hain Right Choice Baby. Aha!

While washing powder meant Nirma. Pepsi meant Right Choice. What is that one common thing between all the above? The copy writing driven by how the story is told and of course the production.

Understanding what do the words actually mean – Narrative is the experience or the visualisation of the connect by the narrator whereas descriptive story is analysis of any topic desired.

C)    Micro-Copy

This I call as the secret weapon , a tiny piece of text which much of the UX of a product will pivot from. Micro-copy an extension of your brand’s voice.

Human nature is , when we want to know what we have to do – clear instructions help. That’s what micro-copy does for us; it provides just-in-time clear instructions, as opposed to an instruction manual Micro- copy. If you have a brand style or tone guide then you want to make sure that as much as possible your micro-copy adheres to it. If you use a certain explanation of a field and its data on one part of your website – you need to use the same explanation elsewhere too. Most importantly, the launch of every campaign could be leveraged ion website with the help of microcopy.

D)    Promotion (One of the 5 Ps that has found its new found significance in the Digital ecosystem)

EdgeRank is the Facebook algorithm that decides which stories appear in each user’s newsfeed. The algorithm hides boring stories, so if your story doesn’t score well, no one will see it. The 3 core ingredients to the algorithm being –

• Affinity Score
• Edge Weight
• Time Decay

In 2007, a Facebook engineer said in an interview that only about 0.2% of eligible stories make it into a user’s newsfeed. That means that your status update is competing with 499 other stories for a single slot in a user’s newsfeed.

To encapsulate, relevant and swift research followed by probing, building on the copy to have the story manifest, in tandem focus on micro-copy and paid media efforts help to measure the brand advertising & marketing initiatives.

Afterall innovating, failing fast will be the key keeping a combination of 2 elements at the centre of the ‘Flywheel’ – Consumer and Growth.

The views and opinions published here belong to the author and do not necessarily reflect the views and opinions of the publisher.

Ankoor Dasguupta

Ankoor, President’s Select Member of Leaders Excellence [MLE] at Harvard Square, is a prominent figure in the industry, serves as a mentor, advisor, and speaker at the Indian Institute of Film Training & Digital Marketing (IFTDM). Holding a significant role on the Advisory Board of the Marketing Department at ISBR Business School, Ankoor is also on the Advisory Board of Global Mathematics & Mathematics Olympiad Graded Assessment Test with Competition. Ankoor is also an empanelled Speaker at SpeakIn which also runs the Indian Speaker Bureau.

Extending beyond academia; Ankoor has been honoured with the "CIRCLE OF EXCELLENCE 2024" award by Passion Vista and recognized as the "MAN OF EXCELLENCE, 2024" by the prestigious Indian Achievers' Award. Additionally, he received the "LEADER 2.0 AWARD, 2023" from adgully and was named a "DIGITAL KAIZEN LEADER by DigiAdCon 2024”, Ankoor’s contributions to the field of marketing are widely acclaimed, marking him as an inspiring thought leader in his domain. Ankoor is also a member of IMA India’s CMO Forum.

Ankoor is a key member of the esteemed International CMO Council, member of MarketingKind, and also a GLG Council Member. Ankoor keeps delivering lectures at top Business Schools and colleges at University of Delhi. As an industry expert, Ankoor has also been a member of the interview panel at MICA for their PGP Group Exercise & Personal Interview PI process for PGDM-C/PGDM selection for two consecutive years.

Recognized by DMA Asia as a marketing Ace, Ankoor is now also a LinkedIn Top Voice, advocate of social impact, driven by kaizen, Ankoor believes in the power of Energy and Energize

Ankoor is practicing his PCC (Level 2) coaching from the gold standard International Coaching Federation [ICF]. Ankoor is a people's person and has worked across functions in marketing and advertising with a pedigree of 24 years and ongoing exciting journey. Trained from Dale Carnegie in Mentoring to Develop Talent, Ankoor is a marketing practitioner, a coach, a knowledge manager, a team builder, a thought-leader, an avid writer with close to 100 published articles / interviews and is a Thought Leader, Ankoor wears the hat of a CMO as well. Ankoor's leisure pursuits are reading, effective listening and percussion.