Marketing Management, 16th Edition

Positioning as Storytelling

Rather than outlining specific attributes or benefits, some marketing experts describe positioning a brand as telling a narrative or story. Consumers like the richness and imagination they can derive from thinking of the story behind a product or service.

To help sharpen its marketing and positioning, Jim Beam, with its namesake Jim Beam and Maker’s Mark brands, hired The Moth, a group of professional storytellers best known for a weekly public radio broadcast, to kick off a three-day biannual gathering of its marketing teams. The Moth team broke down the structure of a story, identified the parts that were particularly meaningful, and had Beam employees tell tales to one another. This approach enabled the company ...