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

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 inclusive of different types of beauty. They walked that walk by having a far wider range of sizes in their clothing than alternatives (that was the feature) but they sold the differentiation by weaving that point of view on inclusive design into everything from their marketing to their hiring practices. If you have a number of points of differentiation that you're considering, here's how I'd recommend sorting them. Lay them all out as a group and rank them by the following filters: * Most defensible: You have a wide range of strong proof points to back up that differentiation. * Most ownable: Your product is the best example of that differentiation on the market and you have a significant head start in owning that differentiation. * Most closely tied to prospective customer's pain: There is sufficient demand for that kind of approach or differentiation in the market. e.g. Customers have been dealing with complex software for years and are tired of it and you're differentiating on intuitiveness. I would recommend by first narrowing down your differentiators by which of them specifically direct a real complaint or pain that prospective customers have, then map the remaining on a 2X2 of defensible (x axis) and ownable (y axis). That practice should help you sort what is your most strategic choice.

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... that's not exactly easy to understand or defend. Here's how I approach differentiation when the secret really is in the sauce: 1. Don't lead with the proprietary algorithm: People won't be able to fully grok it and the words will fall flat. 2. Instead, lead with the benefit that the proprietary algorithm provides: Is your solution the most secure on the market? Is it the most accurate? Can it innovate 10x faster? The algorithm is the how, but it's the end-goal that matters. Make that benefit your differentiator, BUT don't stop there... 3. Next you need undeniable proof points: If your algorithm makes your product the most accurate, the go after ways to prove that. Hire a third party to test your product vs competitors. Find specific places where your algorithm differs from the pack and show those points. Crowdstrike does a better job of this than most. They can't share what's behind their security platform, but they've run scores of independent tests, used MITRE's attack framework and analyst firms to demonstrate how outcomes are better with them. Take a look here: https://www.crowdstrike.com/compare/crowdstrike-vs-sentinelone/ Where a lot of companies bottom out is they just say their algorithm is "the best" without actually demonstrating it in objective ways. This is happening right now with AI LLMs. They all say their quality is the best, but it's very hard to consistently demonstrate such a subjective thing. See my other answer about differentiation and how to filter by most ownable, most defensible and most closely tied to the customer pain. Hope that helps!

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 are in an industry where every competitor is stodgy, cold, unapproachable, and flat and you think there is strategic and lasting differentiation in making your brand more human, that could be a good reason. Just be sure that this is something you are willing to commit to for the life of the brand. Okay, now after all the preamble. Here's my advice: * Focus on the tone of voice: The "voice" of your brand is the most recognizable, memorable, and unsung part of building a personified brand. I'd argue it's even more important than the look of the logo or mascot. Get the voice right (and consistent) to build trust. This can come to life in your social content and in the copywriting that you do across your properties. Really define that tone. Make it something that multiple writers can recreate without creating dissonance. Define the outer boundaries of that tone too. Wendy's and Dunkin brands have done this well. * Run that tone through everything: Don't just stop at adding personality to your social posts, make sure that everything down to the microcopy in your app and the language on your 404 page have that same tone. Make sure your humanized tone has ranged. You can't be silly in an email about a product outage. * Once you have the tone, then focus on building the rest of the brand out to reflect that. A few more cautionary thoughts: There are other considerations you'll need to have. Are you going to ascribe a literal voice to your brand or mascot in TV or audio ads? If so make sure it is one that can stand the test of time. Don't be overly reliant on one voice actor. If you are personifying your brand, think about the diversity of your audience and make sure that the choices you make aren't closing your brand off to anyone. If you're an AI brand, I'd be especially careful with perceptions of AI replacing humans at jobs and be careful about being misleadingly "too human". I know that answer came with a lot of red flags. I trust that you know the right thing for your company, and as I said there is definitely a right way to do this. Just sharing a few things to think through. You could crawl-walk-run your way into this first by simply defining a more human tone to your copywriting and social content and then expanding from there.

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 transformational imperative This story framework is great for when something outside of your control has shifted the culture or industry. E.g. how the pandemic forced people to change the way they approach work. Or how AI is changing how we create. To be the transformational imperative you really need an external societal shift that has happened regardless of your company. * The shift: Something major has changed about the world that necessitates a new approach. Describe it. * The consequence of business as usual: Those companies or people that don't adapt to this change will be left behind. Describe the consequence of sticking with the status quo. * The competitive advantage earned by adapting fast: Those companies or people that lean into the change and adapt will come out ahead. * How [company] can help you cross that chasm: Explain the role your company can play in helping your buyers navigate this transformation. Old Way / New Way This is a nice, simple story construct that we used a lot at HubSpot when I was there. It's similar to the transformational imperative narrative in that it centers on a new way of doing things, but unlike the transformational imperative, you can use it at any point. You don't need a crisis or a major global shift. Old way/new way simply calls into question the way that things have always been done in your field a fresh approach. In the early days of HubSpot, in the face of adblockers and general exhaustion with being interrupted by marketing we were proposing creating marketing that pulled people in. A focus on providing valuable content vs annoying ads. Challenger brand story This one works best when you've got a dominant player in the field that you're trying to unseat. It helps if that brand has been tolerated for years but not beloved. Challenger brand stories are all about calling attention to why customers deserve a better option than settling for that dominant player. It's about using that dominant player (even if you never mention them by name) as the enemy you're fighting against. Segment's choice In this narrative, you really focus on the people you're selling to. You make the story about what makes them unique. Picture a project management software solution focusing all its marketing on creative directors or designers. Picture a clothing brand focusing on empowering women in their 50s. Think about AMEX's focus on small businesses in the "shop small" campaign and holiday. This narrative approach is about making your specific segment of customers the hero. Holding them up to be celebrated and honored. There are many other narrative structures. My friend and former colleague Marcus Andrews has done some good writing on this: https://www.productmarketingalliance.com/an-intro-to-narrative-design-ebook/ I also really like some of the approaches that Ashley Faus of Atlassian has put forward in her writing. https://www.linkedin.com/in/ashleyfaus/

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 launch so that on the day of launch, they could go live with us sharing their own perspectives. They looked completely prepared, and we extended the activity around the launch. An important note: You have to put up safeguards around this if you are a publicly traded company and protect against anything that could be material in the market leaking. HubSpot was very good at being responsible about this line in the way that it set up partnerships and the audit trail it created around preview access and safeguards. But it's worth noting. If you are publicly traded, you absolutely need to bring your legal and investor relations team into this to make sure you are meeting compliance standards.

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 work in climate tech. In the early days of communications around climate change, a lot of the messaging was driven by fear. It makes sense. People had failed to pay attention to climate change for so long that the shock of showing how dire the situation was became necessary. We needed the doomsday clock. We needed the jump scare. The problem with only telling stories based in fear, however, is that the fear begins to paralyze. People get overwhelmed into a standstill when action is what it needed most. I think the best story telling in climate is happening right now, all around us. Over the last handful of years some outstanding storytellers have begun to emerge. I'll loosely refer to them as the pragmatic optimists. They are realists, they aren't overly idealistic, but they aren't stuck in doom either. They lay out, in painful detail the complexity and breadth of the challenges facing us, and then, in practical tangible terms, show you how to break down that tangle into something you can address. I'll leave a few here if you're interested... * Dr. Ayana Elizabeth Johnson and her new book, "What if we get it right?" * John Doerr whose book Speed & Scale: An Action Plan for Solving our Climate Crisis, breaks down climate change into a set of major levers that are so elegantly simple they can be written on a napkin * Hannah Ritche and her book "Not the end of the world". * Christiana Figueres, all of her writing but especially her podcast Outrage and Optimism (because you need both. None of these experts are overly idealistic or naive to what's ahead of us. On the contrary, they see the challenge better than most, but they are more interested in walking toward it than cowering before it.

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 recommending a service or product, you (and they) have some leeway. The good news is, this is often the more interesting content anyway for your audience. So don't ask them if they'd be in a case study. Ask them to share how they approach their work or their perspectives on where the industry is headed. You can also ease the risk by making sure they can review and approve any article you cowrite or interview you run. * Integrate advocacy into their renewal deals. After a really strong brand has had meaningful success on your product, but still has internal challenges against allowing logo rights, offer to lower their contract rates in exchange for logo rights or a case study. Having a financial incentive won't work for all companies but can be a wedge to reopen the conversation. * Remember there are different ways to advocate for your brand: Perhaps a customer can't share their logo on your website, but they may be open to being a reference call for deals in progress for you in the future. Reference calls are even more powerful than a logo display. Alternately, they may be open to joining you as a copresenter at an event or being interviewed for a piece of thought leadership as mentioned above. * Finally, if you really can't do any of these, ask if you can use a quote in an unattributed way. "A COO at a global, publicly traded retail company said this about our product."

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 suite of tools for revops professionals at HubSpot, we listened and read through hours of transcribed interviews with ops professionals on what bothered them and a pattern emerged. Underneath all of the specific features they needed and "jobs to be done" there was a clear sense that this was a cohort of people who have immense responsibility in the organization but often don't have a seat at the table. So many of the conversations came with a sense of feeling unheard and unsung. That became a big ethos in our messaging. * We recently had a peer discussion with a particular group of people responsible for sustainability reporting. Some of the most telling hints on messaging came not from what this group told us directly, but from how the spoke with each other. Where did the group become most passionate or animated when speaking with their peers about the work. AI has made synthesizing customer calls like these and interviews into themes a lot more efficient at scale. In addition though, never underestimate the power of being in the room if you can to hear what matters. Quantitative data: I like using test balloons to try out different messages online and get quick quantifiable data as to their resonance. A few examples: * A linkedin or other social post from someone who has a good portion of your target audience in their followers. Try a few different angles and see which ones attract the best interactions from that audience. * Search or social ads: If you can distill your messaging down to a few lines, a one-off testing series of ads are a good way to get in front of a targeted audience at scale prior to rolling out in a big way. * A/B testing of web copy: This is a classic, but worth mentioning. Which phrasing of your positioning drives action? I hope that's helpful!