AMA: Watershed VP of Marketing - Product Marketing & Communications, Meghan Keaney Anderson on Storytelling

Here are a few of my favorite storytelling frameworks. I like these because they've stood the test of time and have been flexible enough to extend to multiple different companies and circumstances. It's important to note that storytelling frameworks are different than positioning frameworks and you'll need both. Positioning is more lasting and fundamental. Storytelling is a way to bring that positioning to life in a way that reflects a moment in time. Here are the frameworks: The transformationa ...Read More

This is a great one. First, try not to differentiate on features alone. Most features can be copied, they aren't defensible enough from a long-term perspective. Your overall approach to building products - your unique point of view on the market -- that should be the source of your differentiation. Features can, on the other hand, be great proof points of your differentiation. For example, Third Love is a bra and underwear brand that tried to differentiate from Victorias secret by being more inc ...Read More

My first impulse is want to ask more about the strategy behind personifying the brand. The risk in doing so is that you make the story more about your brand or mascot than about the customer, which has worked occasionally, but also carries extra weight. The customer has to both like your product and your personified mascot. It's harder to make a uniquely lovable and lasting character than many think (RIP, Zendesk buddha). But there are good reasons for personifying the brand. For example, if you ...Read More

My current company Watershed is actually a similar case here so I'll use them as an example. Watershed is a software platform that helps companies measure their carbon footprint so they can report on it and make plans for reductions. Measuring emissions is an incredibly complex data cleansing, standardization and calculation process that can be highly error-proned and one of the ways Watershed differentiates is by the level of rigor that goes into its proprietary methodology for measurement. But ...Read More

Anyone who markets to major global companies encounters this challenge. I'm so glad you asked the question. Here are a few things I've found that have worked. Ask for their perspective, not their logo: I've found that some companies that are unable to give you rights to show their logo or speak about their use of your product in a case study, can get permissions to be interviewed on a topic for a piece of thought leadership. As long as the line does not get crossed into where they are recommendi ...Read More

Qualitative data: There is little than qualitative research - customer interviews, listening to sales call recordings, beta group message testing - to understand the trends of what motivates and matters to your target audience. Often times qualitative data takes a back seat to quantitative, but for storytelling this is where the story really comes together in the specific words, observed emotions and examples of real people. A few examples from my past: In preparing for the launch of Ops Hub - a ...Read More

People want to become better. They want to move from pain to solution, from being mediocre to being their best selves. The drive to become is, as far as I can tell, universal. Whether in a novel or a 30 second spot, the stories that speak to us the most make us feel like we're in the midst of a positive change somehow. If you focus too much on the positive -- the value prop -- or too much on the negative -- the painpoint -- you lose the transformation which is the whole point of the story. I wor ...Read More

Bring them into the tent. One of the smartest things we did -- in my opinion -- at HubSpot was to start sharing our major launches early with our network of partners in a closed sneak preview. That sneak preview gave them a chance to process the announcement and prepare for it internally. It also gave us on product marketing a chance to test and extend the reach of the messaging. We created dropboxes of materials, launch imagery, tag lines, blog post ideas, videos and the overall timing of the l ...Read More