Selling with stories (what's old is new again)

[SARubin]

If you hang around enough copywriting circles, sooner or later someone will bring up the topic of using stories to sell your products or services.

Selling with stories is all the buzz these days, and for good reason. Story telling is the original method of transferring ideas from one person to another person, or from one person to groups of people.


The only issue I have with the idea of selling with stories, is this…

Many people think the concept is something new that some brilliant young marketer recently discovered. And they regurgitate the rhetoric as if they think it makes them sound like they’re at the cutting edge of the latest trends.


Now I personally agree that selling with stories is a powerfully brilliant way to enter the mind of your target audience. But for anyone who thinks selling with stories is something new…

… Here’s a classic advertisement from about 100 years ago…

There’s a lot of good stuff going on in this ad (like the classic “hero’s journey” and the fact that it taps into the powerful human need for recognition) But for this post I was mostly looking at the story telling concept.

I encourage you to read this ad and study it. Because for anyone who thinks story-selling is a new concept, all I can say is “What’s old is new again”…

[Franklin]

Oh man! I love the old school advertising. This was before my time but it’s still easy to see great copywriting is always in fashion.

[SARubin]

This was before my time

I hope that wasn’t a crack about my age , 100 years ago was bit before my time also. (although, some mornings I’m not so sure)

Yeah, very few copywriters today can compete with the old masters.

[AnnieJ]

Stories are a wonderful way to write engaging content. I always try to include story when I can.