Reflection : Using Storytelling in marketing 

 Challenge 

 As a copywriter for a marketing agency , I work with dozens of clients in various industries .   The majority of the blog posts I write are selling a product or service . The challenge I face is   finding a narrative thread in every subject and making my writing engaging . With clients   including military radio producers and steel girder suppliers , this is n’t an easy task .      I need to find a way to increase the readership of the work that I produce for my clients ,   especially a new series that I had to write for my steel girder client about a new line of steel   beam they were using in a building site .     Connecting products that may only have a specific connotation to certain people and making   that data widely accessible and easily digestible in every blog is my target for this project . 

 Selection 

 Stories engage people . They help to find common ground between people . They help to   connect people to concepts that may otherwise seem entirely unengaging or passable .     In trying to sell a product / service , or give people more information about a business ’   benefits , you need to find a way to connect readers online to this information .      They say advertising is a statement ; marketing is a question , giving readers the chance to   engage with an idea . It ’s an exchange ; the writer gives you information , and in exchange the   reader has the potential to become a customer . That ’s why I ’m selecting storytelling as my   design thinking tool to increase the readership of the work that I produce for my clients . 

 Application 

 The first thing that I did was to step back from my individual writing projects and look at my   client ’s brand stories as a whole . Every company has ideas and messages that they want to   communicate through simple things such as their logo , slogan and even their name . So I   went through my clients one by one and created an illustration visualising words that   represented each company ’s brand and words that each company would like their clients to   associate them with . I validated these thoughts in discussions with each individual client .     After coming up with this list of words , I thought about each business ’ product / service from a   narrator ’s perspective to see how I can help satisfy business ’ potential customer ’s needs . I   considered points such as “ Would this story be better told from a customer or a client   perspective ” and “ What problem does this product / service fix and do customers know this ’ .      From there , I was able to work out a new perspective for viewing each business and   determine a more accurate tone of voice and style of communication that I could use .     One example of this is a series of blogs I wrote for my steel girder supplier client . Their   products , while niche and not in and of themselves engaging , were being used to construct a 

 new bridge . Tracking the development of this bridge presented an opportunity to create a   story around an area that was developing and improving the lives of the people that lived   and travelled there . Now information about steel girders could be translated into a narrative   centred around urban growth and the business ’ and communities that would benefit from it . 

 Insight 

 Reframing my work as stories that need to be told rather than products or services that need   to be promoted has drastically changed how I write and even how I think about companies .      With more work than ever being produced online , it ’s easy to get lost in the crowd . If people   are online looking for answers to an issue they have , they will ignore content they deem to   be tone - deaf or focused on a company ’s need to sell rather than on their problem at hand .     In the case of my steel girder client , I can see that using storytelling helped me to apply   context to what was otherwise a niche product . It helped me to give readers a narrative   thread of development , from Point A of a construction site to Point B of a finished bridge . 

 Approach 

 Looking at my approach to this project , I still think that storytelling was my best design   thinking approach to achieving my end goal of improving a business ’ blog readership .      However , next time I would take this storytelling approach one step back to consider if a blog   is the best communication medium to tell this story . There are many ways of connecting a   business with a potential client , and perhaps reading a lengthy blog is not the best one .      The ability design thinking has given me to stand back from a task and think outside the box   makes me think that perhaps a video or short documentary , tracking the building of the   bridge , would have been a better way of storytelling in this case . It would have been able to   tie together a narrative while still showcasing a business and its product in a succinct way . 


EMAIL: 
ID_NUM: 
NAME_STUDENT: 
PHONE_NUM: 
STREET_ADDRESS: 
URL_PERSONAL: 
USERNAME: 

### Task: You are a PII (Personal Identity Information) Detection. Given a essays written by students, you have to identify ONLY the following:
NAME_STUDENT - The full or partial name of a student that is not necessarily the author of the essay. This excludes instructors, authors, and other person names.
EMAIL - A student’s email address.
USERNAME - A student's username on any platform.
ID_NUM - A number or sequence of characters that could be used to identify a student, such as a student ID or a social security number.
PHONE_NUM - A phone number associated with a student.
URL_PERSONAL - A URL that might be used to identify a student.
STREET_ADDRESS - A full or partial street address that is associated with the student, such as their home address.
### Input: Reflection : Using Storytelling in marketing 

 Challenge 

 As a copywriter for a marketing agency , I work with dozens of clients in various industries .   The majority of the blog posts I write are selling a product or service . The challenge I face is   finding a narrative thread in every subject and making my writing engaging . With clients   including military radio producers and steel girder suppliers , this is n’t an easy task .      I need to find a way to increase the readership of the work that I produce for my clients ,   especially a new series that I had to write for my steel girder client about a new line of steel   beam they were using in a building site .     Connecting products that may only have a specific connotation to certain people and making   that data widely accessible and easily digestible in every blog is my target for this project . 

 Selection 

 Stories engage people . They help to find common ground between people . They help to   connect people to concepts that may otherwise seem entirely unengaging or passable .     In trying to sell a product / service , or give people more information about a business ’   benefits , you need to find a way to connect readers online to this information .      They say advertising is a statement ; marketing is a question , giving readers the chance to   engage with an idea . It ’s an exchange ; the writer gives you information , and in exchange the   reader has the potential to become a customer . That ’s why I ’m selecting storytelling as my   design thinking tool to increase the readership of the work that I produce for my clients . 

 Application 

 The first thing that I did was to step back from my individual writing projects and look at my   client ’s brand stories as a whole . Every company has ideas and messages that they want to   communicate through simple things such as their logo , slogan and even their name . So I   went through my clients one by one and created an illustration visualising words that   represented each company ’s brand and words that each company would like their clients to   associate them with . I validated these thoughts in discussions with each individual client .     After coming up with this list of words , I thought about each business ’ product / service from a   narrator ’s perspective to see how I can help satisfy business ’ potential customer ’s needs . I   considered points such as “ Would this story be better told from a customer or a client   perspective ” and “ What problem does this product / service fix and do customers know this ’ .      From there , I was able to work out a new perspective for viewing each business and   determine a more accurate tone of voice and style of communication that I could use .     One example of this is a series of blogs I wrote for my steel girder supplier client . Their   products , while niche and not in and of themselves engaging , were being used to construct a 

 new bridge . Tracking the development of this bridge presented an opportunity to create a   story around an area that was developing and improving the lives of the people that lived   and travelled there . Now information about steel girders could be translated into a narrative   centred around urban growth and the business ’ and communities that would benefit from it . 

 Insight 

 Reframing my work as stories that need to be told rather than products or services that need   to be promoted has drastically changed how I write and even how I think about companies .      With more work than ever being produced online , it ’s easy to get lost in the crowd . If people   are online looking for answers to an issue they have , they will ignore content they deem to   be tone - deaf or focused on a company ’s need to sell rather than on their problem at hand .     In the case of my steel girder client , I can see that using storytelling helped me to apply   context to what was otherwise a niche product . It helped me to give readers a narrative   thread of development , from Point A of a construction site to Point B of a finished bridge . 

 Approach 

 Looking at my approach to this project , I still think that storytelling was my best design   thinking approach to achieving my end goal of improving a business ’ blog readership .      However , next time I would take this storytelling approach one step back to consider if a blog   is the best communication medium to tell this story . There are many ways of connecting a   business with a potential client , and perhaps reading a lengthy blog is not the best one .      The ability design thinking has given me to stand back from a task and think outside the box   makes me think that perhaps a video or short documentary , tracking the building of the   bridge , would have been a better way of storytelling in this case . It would have been able to   tie together a narrative while still showcasing a business and its product in a succinct way .
### Output: 