The Grocer – 24 August 2019

22 | The Grocer | 24 August 2019 Get the full story at thegrocer.co.uk

comment & opinion

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● All mults are struggling

● It’s just a blip

● It needs a takeover

28%

Needs must

36%

Confusing for shoppers

36%

Might need a new name

polling station

huge complexity, bringing tens

of thousands of products, oft en

short life, to hundreds of stores,

using mind-blowing supply

chains, running sophisticated

technology. But they are best led

with simple storytelling.

At Sainsbury’s in the mid-

2000s, there was an urgent need

for turnaround. This required a

simple story colleagues could

get behind. The pivotal idea was

simply about reconnecting with

customers. Whether you worked

in the store support centre or in

the stores themselves , the mes-

sage was simple and motivat-

ing – who doesn’t want to work

in a great company? Colleagues

rallied behind the story, and

Sainsbury’s began to consist-

ently grow ahead of the market.

The same principles apply

for brands and manufacturers.

Again, there is typically huge

Jeremy Garlick is a partner at

Insight Traction

The power of storytelling

W

hy is it that Blue Planet

was so eff ective at land-

ing the message about

plastic, when articles, reports

and testimonies over the pre-

ceding decades had not been

anywhere near as successful?

The answer is in Blue Planet’s

approach to storytelling.

First, the programme’s mak-

ers isolated a single pivotal idea

• that a huge number of beautiful
  and innocent creatures are being
  extinguished as a direct result
  of our behaviours with plastic.
  Second, they expressed this piv-
  otal idea with emotional power.
  The viewer saw footage of beauti-
  ful animals in pain and distress.
  No proper-thinking person could
  watch this and not respond with
  sympathy and some shame.
  So what can we learn in our
  industry? While the issues may
  seem less dramatic, the same
  principles of storytelling can
  be applied to draw attention to
  issues and opportunities, and
  motivate people to change.
  Retailers are dealing with

talking shop

complexity, in equipment, man-

ufacture, supply and marketing.

Unilever has put a lot of focus

into thinking and talking about

its purpose, beyond just making

money for shareholders. If you

are working on Unilever’s Dove

brand, you are uniting behind a

pivotal idea about ‘real beauty’,

emotionally expressed with

stories and images of men and

women living free from pressure

exerted by elements of the beauty

and fashion industries. ‘Helping

to make beauty a source of con-

fi dence, not anxiety’, is the stra-

pline. It’s not just about fl ogging

soap and cream to make cash.

Is this all just playing with

words? Marketing fl uff? It is more

than that. Storytelling can make

the diff erence between eff ecting

real change and carrying on as

normal. Just look at the impact

of Blue Planet versus all the wor-

thy, technically sound warnings

that preceded it. A pivotal idea,

expressed with emotional power,

has changed the way we think

about plastic, and perhaps even

the world.

“Storytelling

principles can be

applied to motivate

people to change”

Jeremy Garlick

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Volume: 241 Issue Number: 8420