Stop Selling, Start Storytelling

The best campaigns don’t shout. They invite you in.

There’s always tension between selling and storytelling. One asks; the other gives. In a campaign you need to strike a balance so people don’t feel sold to.

What works is making the audience feel seen. By showing you understand their point of view, you create a genuine connection. And then you’re closer to making a sale (or whatever your CTA is).

When you treat storytelling as a strategy, not a ‘nice-to-have’ or a stylistic choice, you shift the focus from ‘we want to tell you this’ to what the audience wants to hear. You stop listing features and start showing the impact of your product. That’s what makes a campaign memorable. People lean in. They see with their own eyes how you’ve solved their problem, and it stays with them.

You judge a person by their behaviour. You’re also far more likely to remember what someone did than what they said. Show the viewer that you value their time by giving them something of value in return: 20 seconds of hilarious, lively cat videos advertising the local vets; a bored child’s imagination sparked by a visit to a nearby castle; a before-and-after demo of a pressure washer cleaning a grimy patio.

Don’t demand the viewer’s attention. Persuasion built on empathy lasts longer than persuasion built on pressure. Then the sale becomes the natural next step.

Plus, they might also come back.