Storybuilding: Sturdier Than A House Of Cards

Bart Given, Managing Director & Chief Innovator

After recently chatting with a colleague about Netflix and the inherent advantage within their business model due to their ability to accumulate real-time information about their consumers, I was fortunate to happen upon an article that provides some additional context to the conversation.

“We monitor what you watch, how often you watch things,” said Netflix spokesperson Joris Evers in the article on Marketplace.org. “Does a movie have a happy ending, what’s the level of romance, what’s the level of violence, is it a cerebral kind of movie or is it light and funny?”

Isn’t this what every brand would love to do? Imagine if Nike was able to monitor every instance a customer put on their shoes, and therefore knew which product was being used, for how long and how far they travelled.  As loyal Nike customers, we’d be getting notices on when to replace our shoes and even which shoes to wear according to the weather forecast. (Which would be very helpful in Canada…)

But it’s not solely about raw data – it’s about the unique insights which can be used to better understand the customer and shape future growth. Netflix’s anchor program, House of Cards wasn’t created on a lark. Netflix knew their customers enjoy political dramas and are fans of Kevin Spacey due to sophisticated tracking of viewing trends.

This is a fantastic illustration of the importance of leveraging relevant consumer behaviour data to effectively engage your audience with impactful storytelling. Take this to the next level by creating engagement opportunities wherein the customer can co-author your brand narrative – and you create meaningful storybuilding.

Storybuilding is the future of strategic marketing, and inserting strategic partnership into the formula is our speciality at TORQUE Strategies.

And btw, I’m only through three episodes of House of Cards: Season 2, despite being tempted to binge-watch after the first episode.