Narrative Design

Live presentation #10

March 13, 2024

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Div Manickam

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Div Manickam

Mentor | Explorer | Director, Product Marketing at Celigo

Your bio can go here

Narrative Design

• Narrative design for business is the process of building a new game in the mind of your target audience.
• Narrative Design helps companies tell stories that win, even in the most crowded categories.

Narrative Design

• In Product Marketing 1.0 PMMs wrote messaging.
• In Product Marketing 2.0, PMMs layered in research driven positioning.
• Narrative is what’s next. A strategic narrative built by executives with PMMs.

New Games Break Through

Narrative design is a process, so it’s hard to know who is doing it. But you can usually tell a narrative has been designed when you see a new game emerge.

Narrative Design

Process for Narrative Design is based on the work of Brian Halligan and Andy Raskin and Marcus’s experience designing narratives at HubSpot. Here are the 5 elements.

1. The Change
2. Winners and Losers
3. How to React? The New Game
4. Why it’s so hard!
5. What you’ve built to help

1. The change

Narrative Design always starts with an undeniable change in the world of your customers. There is often a trigger, that sparks a change in human behavior. The original inbound marketing narrative for focused on how people started ignoring interruption marketing. Narrative Design is about competition in technology.

2. Winners/losers

Narrative Design builds a new reality (game) in the mind of the buyer — this game comes with rules and serious stakes for not abiding by them. There are very clear winners and losers / wrong and right. Knowing how the losers fail and how well the winners do makes your story highly persuasive.

3. The new game

The distinctive characteristic of Narrative Design is the new game it creates. The new game is how businesses should react or adapt to the change you laid out. Naming your new game is critical to designing a great narrative. It will become your calling card.

4. Why it’s so hard!

To help you become the expert and tee up your tools, it’s important to establish empathy with your audience. They need to know, you know how hard this is. That it’s a major challenge to play this new game and that you have been through it and that’s how you created the tools to help.

5. Your solution

The beauty of Narrative Design is that it builds the case for your product, without throwing it in your customers face or obnoxiously selling it. The story isn’t about you, it’s about helping customers adapt to change. That’s why your solution comes last and is a response to point 4. It’s their tool to win at the new game.

Breakout

In the next 15 mins..

What is the undeniable change in the world of your target audience? And explain why.

• Appoint a group lead�
• Group lead will share key insights/questions with full class�
• 2 mins (total!) per group

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Comfort Break - 5 min

Storytelling framework

“Brand storytelling is the cohesive narrative that weaves together the facts and emotions that your brand evokes.”

Forbes

The reasons brands tell stories

1. Stories are easy to remember
2. Stories simplify complex concepts
3. Stories unite your audience
4. Stories inspire action

Storytelling framework

Storytelling & Product Marketing

Buyer Journey

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Blogs

Social Media

Webpage

Video

Intro Webinar

Demo

Product Webinar

Customer Reviews

Community

Customer Success Story

What’s your favorite story?

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What’s in a memorable story?

START:

Make it worth their time to care (Discover -> Learn)

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MIDDLE:

Gain trust and credibility (Try -> Buy)

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END:

Find your true storyteller (Advocate)

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divmanickam

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July 2018

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June 2018

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DESIGN

DISCOVER

IMPLEMENT

SUPPORT

RETIRE

OPTIMIZE

April 2021 -- Infrastructure Services Marketing and Portfolio Management, SSG – Div Manickam

May 2021

TruScale

Infrastructure Services

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Wrap up & final Q&A

Templates & Frameworks

• Customer differentiation for messaging and positioning
• Mastering the art and science of Product Marketing

What did you think?

Any key takeaways or moments that stood out for you?

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