The power of your story

1-min read

I am certain that you are thinking I could have chosen a better picture for this article. To be honest, I think the same. But let´s do a test. I challenge that after reading, you are going to perceive it (as a little) more beautiful.

Storytelling is a tradition as old as the existence of the human being. All cultures and civilizations have told stories with which to entertain and teach (sometimes control) people.

Of course, each company, each restaurant, also has its own story. In fact, there is a direct relationship between the most successful and the best told. Focusing on you, are you really telling your story to clients?

In 2009, a journalist called Rob Walker wanted to prove whether "storytelling" was really the most powerful tool of all. To do this, he bought 200 items from eBay for no more than 4$ each. He then called 200 authors and asked each one to write a story about one of the objects.

One of the objects was the beautiful horses head you can see in the picture above. This was bought for 99 cents and was sold, when the story was added, for 62,95$. Was this a one-off situation? Not really, he bought the 200 objects for a total of 129$ selling them for 8000$.

Your story is relevant, it adds real value to your product, and it helps you to differentiate from others. Actively being faithful to that story will give naturalness and credibility to what you are telling. Interacting with your customers while you share it, making them participate, will help you connect emotionally with them, exponentially increasing the options to retain them.

Find here some examples of how some restaurants are telling their stories, summarized below:

• Grosso Napoletano bases their entire experience in Naples. If there are two things that distinguish this city it would be pizzas and football, the two pillars on which they interact with their customers. For this, in addition to emulating the experience in their premises through their wood oven and "pizzaioli", they have created the Squadra Grosso CF, a loyalty plan that unifies the physical and virtual world, allowing them to have a fluid and consistent conversation with their customers maximizing their brand attributes.
  
  The Squadra Grosso F.C. simulates a football tournament in which their clients start in "Quarti di Finale" and progress to become "Campeoni". Along the way, each "calciatore" wins "partitas" to win rewards in the form of pizzas and different surprises.
  
  In addition to the messages through which they congratulate their clients when they win a “partita”, they encourage them to continue playing when they are close to a reward, they ask them for feedback in a contextual way, they congratulate them on birthday, or, when their clients haven’t visited for a while, they reach out to them highlighting key aspects of their experience, such as the history of their wood oven manufactured by Giuseppe, a fourth-generation Neapolitan artisan.

As we have seen, a loyalty plan is not only about the customer’s transactional experience, but the narrative and the way in which to impact each client in a personalized way.

I do not know if I have been victorious in the challenge that I proposed to you at the start of this article.

What I would like to have achieved is to have made you reflect on all the virtues of your restaurant and its history that you still have hidden. Are you are considering different ways to get them out of their hiding place?

If you already use Cheerfy, I encourage you to review your loyalty plan.

If you still don't use Cheerfy, but are thinking about it, we will be happy to explain its operation and capabilities in detail.

I am here to help you.

Tony @ Cheerfy