The Magic of Role Casting
Do you know how to cast your customers in meaningful roles?
Hi friend,
How are you? I hope you had an amazing week.
I have just finished my Brand Storytelling class I teach every fall at the University of Miami’s Business School which gives me the exciting opportunity to work with fresh minds.
The course is offered as an elective as part of the marketing track.
This time around I decided to do something different and use a simple story students can play an active role in.
I divided the class into startups with 2 co-founders each. So they have a tight ownership on the whole process.
Their mission was to dream up new products and plan brand storytelling strategies to bring them to market using my visual storytelling framework.
Throughout the course, I refer to them as co-founders of startups, not students working in project teams.
The high level of engagement and passion they put into coming up with timely product ideas and innovative visual storytelling approaches to bring to life their brand narratives - taught me an important lesson.
The co-founder role magically allowed them to get into character and behave like one, even though it was just a simulation.
The Right Name Builds Identity and Engagement
To boost engagement you first want to tell a relatable story where you not only give your customers the hero roles but also use a meaningful naming strategy for their leading characters to motivate them even further.
Extra Three Examples
Healthcare
This reminds me I once attended a talk by a guy who wanted to revamp the healthcare experience for visitors by starting with a simple naming change.
How about replacing the label ‘patients’ that conveys helpless passivity with ‘athletes’ that is all about being proactive and gives the whole experience wellness and spa vibes?
Why focus on the negative if you can boost moral and overall culture with a positive name?
Software
Another example comes to mind from the time I lived in San Diego and was working in a startup with the ambitious mission to take a bite from the Mac and Windows market and adopt a Linux based OS for their computers.
As part of marketing strategy we identified our diehard product fans and created an advocacy program with custom content to arm them in spreading the word out.
And guess how we called these super fans, not brand advocates, loyalists, evangelists or ambassadors but Lraisers (L for Linux but also jives with hellraisers).
This simple label, anchored on the metaphor of Hellraisers Motorcycle Club ignited their enthusiasm, built their identity, exclusive community with special perks to keep them going.
NFTs
Maybe the most vivid example of the power of story and naming strategy to build engagement, identity, utility and exclusive community - is the insane success behind The Bored Ape Yacht Club’s NFT craze, last year.
The narrative premise is about bored crypto billionaires that hang out in a swamp club with a bunch of apes and get weird.
If you read how they describe their NFT collection on their website, you’ll find a detailed world-building strategy with a consistent naming approach for all the digital collectibles, activities, and members-only benefits.
For a deeper look, check out this insightful interview with Nicole Muniz, Yuga Labs CEO on Bored Ape Yacht Club’s backstory and its unique community dynamics
Co-founder Wylie Aronow says they chose the ape for their NFT mascot to echo in the cryptocurrency phrase aping in, which means placing a huge bet on a new cryptocurrency or NFT.
This allowed people to easily picture themselves in this unique world by simply buying a computer-generated digital collectible of a bored ape to give them more than just access to a membership club.
The project was released on April 23rd, 2021 for a mint price of .08 ETH, which was $200 US dollars at the time. Bored Ape Yacht Club sold out within 12 hours since it started minting. As of 2022, sales have totaled over US$1 billion with a ton of celebrities jumping in.
True, additional success drivers were the rule of scarcity, the perceived artistic value, the elaborate community marketing roadmap, and the status symbol to the point where owners posted their NFTs as their headshots on Twitter profiles.
What Could This Mean to Your Brand?
Generally speaking, as you may know, the purpose of a brand name is to differentiate a company, product or service from its competition.
There are various name types you can choose from and processes to achieve it in support of your brand architecture. I won’t get into this today.
My intent is simply to show you how coming up with the right character world (i.e., hosting visual story), and with the right naming approach, you can dramatically move your customers into action.
Try this!
Looking at the examples above, let’s do this simple exercise.
I’d like to think right now about all the naming conventions you use to identify your customers - in your marketing content.
Do you see any opportunities to rename their roles by conjuring a relatable visual story they could play an active role in? What target behaviors would you like them to adopt?
Take your time, do your research (social listening and customer interviews) and find out what associations, emotions, frustrations they come up when interacting with your brand.
Then look at your campaigns’ historical data; do you notice any high response patterns that converge around a certain theme or content type?
With this combined intelligence you can start planning a world-building strategy that aligns with your brand identity to max relatability.
I hope I was able to show you how sometimes a simple renaming change supported by an overarching story could make a big difference.
What do you think? Feel free to drop me a line or share a comment.
Until next time, keep spreading inspiring stories that help build a revved up community around your brand.
Best,
- Shlomi
Shlomi Ron
Founder & CEO | Visual Storytelling Institute
shlomi@visualstorytell.com