How to Humanize Your Branding With Customer Stories

Transcript is auto-generated from the episode audio and lightly edited; it may contain small errors.

Grace: I feel like all of this is very meta because we're recording something that we do, and you're behind the camera right now.

Paul: Right.

Grace: Or in front of it, rather, when you're used to being behind it.

Paul: It feels like I'm behind the camera a little bit still.

Grace: Because you're probably thinking that way while you're talking.

Known For, podcast episode one. We're doing the first episode of our first podcast. And I think that something we're always doing whenever we're working with clients and we're talking about how to pull their branding into their storytelling, or how to capture their branding in a video, because that's most of what we do — is video production. We are helping them tell better stories. And the best stories are always about the people that they are impacting. So I thought it would be appropriate for us to talk about how to tell customer stories, because that's what we do most of the time. It's what we're really good at. And also, I feel like that's something that everyone wants to do but doesn't exactly know how to do. I want to pick your brain on a couple of things when it comes to this.

Paul: Okay.

We actually just talked to a client recently about how to make their video more human centered. And that's why I like the concept of humanizing your branding, because you are. The only way to get that human-centered or humanized element into something is to capture and tell the stories of actual, real people. AI is such a big deal right now, and I think everyone's like, okay, well, let's make sure it's very human, and it sounds like a real person talking, and the way to do that is just to talk to real people. It's good for what it's good for, but people still value real.

I think when people think about customer stories, the first thing that comes to mind is reviews. And we've worked with people with different businesses and organizations — healthcare, nonprofits, food and beverage. It's a super knee-jerk reaction for someone to say, oh, I need to get more reviews, we need to get more reviews. How do we get more reviews? But at what point do reviews just start becoming white noise? I mean, it's good to get reviews, don't get me wrong. Every business, every organization, you've got to have your Google reviews. But after there's hundreds, it all kind of blends together. It's good, it's social proof, but you want to be able to take it to that next level. How do you make it real?

One client comes to mind where we did their brand video — a dentist's office — and we interviewed some of their patients. They had stellar five-star reviews across the board, but we were able to humanize it. I remember that project, and I remember how we were talking with the main dentist who owned the practice, and he was talking about how the reviews helped them get the traffic and brought people to the website. But we talked about how the brand video, and the video that we captured of the people who had given some of those reviews, is what nurtured that relationship when they got to the website. If they're searching on Google, if they're searching on GPT, if they're searching anywhere, the five-star reviews get you through the door, but they don't always make the decision. It helps to have that next step. Even if it's as simple as more reviews on the website with photos — that's an easy first step. Taking it to the next level is hearing people talk, hearing people elaborate, looking them in the eyes and telling their story.

I remember one of the patients we talked to — we found out she'd only been a patient there for a short amount of time. Why did you switch? Because the last practice she was at was trying to rip her off. They gave her a quote for a crazy amount of work, and we were able to help dig that out by asking the right questions, by interrogating those lines of thought that come across. And that was something I remember the dentist sitting there like, oh yeah, I do remember this. They quoted her like $15,000 worth of dental work, and she might've only needed two or three simple little things. We were able to help capture that story, and that helps translate into less empty space in their calendar.

That actually reminds me of something I was going to ask you. What do you do — because I feel like you're really good at this, and I remember that when we were capturing those interviews, but I also feel like you're just always thinking this way when we're interviewing, whether it's customers or employees or any kind of story that we're trying to capture — what do you do when someone gives an answer, you ask a question and they give a super boring answer? Because then it's like, what's the point? Here's an example: let's pretend you're interviewing someone and you ask them, how has this impacted you? And they say something like, it's just a better product, or it's just good. So what do you do when you're behind the camera and that's all they give you?

Paul: We help give them the language. Sometimes we'll turn the camera off. Sometimes we'll ask them on the side, like, what made you choose this service? So they have some time to really think about it. And if they say it's good, you might even give them, would you say that this has made a difference in your life? How has it made a difference in your life? After you ask a lot of these really specific questions, even if they're short answers, they're their answers. And then we kind of ask them to put it together. It's like, okay, so this has made a difference in your life because — and then they list all three answers back to back, and that strings together the complete thought for them. It gives us a little bit more to work with, and it plays really well on social, plays really well on the website.

Paul: Can I tell you my tricks?

Grace: Please.

Paul: I have a little framework.

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Paul: I don't normally think of this as a framework because I'm actually thinking about what it does most of the time, but this is how I remember it. I always ask people, can you think of a specific moment that something really stood out to you? Something about this organization or this product or being at this company? Let's say maybe it's an employee story — I think that says a lot too. When someone who's working there can share how the company has made an impact for them, you want to hear from leadership, but more people are going to relate to everyone else. Because sometimes you can give incentives to customers to say nice things about you, and I mean, I guess you're paying your employees too, but when they can say genuine things — anyway, that's the scenario. If you can ask, what was the moment that really stood out to you — thinking to a specific time or a day makes someone backtrack in their memories a little, thinking about a point in time. Asking for something very specific makes it a lot easier for them. It's more graspable, if that's a word. It's easier to pick something rather than this big picture, "what's the big impact this has made for you."

If you pay attention to the first letter of all of these, it spells the word. The next one is universalisms. I ask people to narrate their experience. Tell us why you came. Tell us what happened. Who did you meet? What did you do first? Who did you talk to? What did they give you? How did it feel? Because when they do that, it also helps them remember the moment, and it gives us narration for us to show B-roll of them doing all of those things — it tells us the B-roll shot list that we need to go and get. They essentially become their own storytellers at that point, and we want it in their voice. So that's really, really important. And because the universalisms are so universal, it's so much easier for someone watching to see themselves in their shoes. Like, oh yeah, I go to the dentist's office all the time, oh yeah, that's typical, that's going to be normal in the experience when I show up. It just helps people feel that connection.

I feel like so many times people feel like their stories are boring, that their experience is just so typical, it's not noteworthy, it's not worth talking about. I just don't think we understand how powerful our everyday moments are to other people, because it validates theirs — especially if they're making a decision about a place to go or something to invest in. Knowing every little step of what to expect helps make the decision for them. You will get people that give you too much minutia, but we can edit that out. It's okay if it feels like they start to ramble, because a good editor comes through, gets everything they need, and makes it flow from beginning to end without altering the story — just making it obtainable, graspable, in 15 seconds, in 30 seconds, or whatever it needs to be.

I'm glad you brought up the minutia, because my next one is asking them about specifics. I do think more specifics is better than not enough. We can always cut people off in a really nice way, but sometimes having them describe what they saw when they came into the building — the expression on somebody's face, the first person they saw at the front desk, or the first person they met at that networking event — those specifics, I think we all relate to as well. It's so easy to tell a story when you have pictures that people get specific with.

So the last one is emotion. We've talked about this so much, but I feel like any time we can make the story more emotional, or point out the feelings that were felt in every single one of those elements we discussed, it's so, so key. I think it's just bringing to light the underlying things that we don't talk about because they're not visible. When you can make something a little more tangible for other people to feel before they work with you, before they book the package or the call or whatever it is, it's so helpful for someone else to validate the emotion they might be feeling. Whether that's, I was super hesitant to work with this company because I've had this experience before and it did not work out well, but I instantly felt safe, like I could trust this person, because they said this and because they did this — they came back and made this right. Even when this happened, even when that project went south a little bit, they came back, they fixed it, they made up for it, and it was night and day compared to my last experience. Kind of like that patient we talked about. The emotion is huge. It's why we really recommend these video testimonials for so many of our clients — because going back to the reviews, seeing somebody with six exclamation points saying this place is the best is great, but seeing them smile in the same video shows the impact more than the written word. Somebody writing "this place enabled me to get a college education" is one thing, but seeing them in a graduation cap saying "I did it" — it's so key.

So if you haven't figured out the word yet, it's M.U.S.E. — Moments, Universalisms, Specifics, and Emotion. It's not any specific order, but I feel like all of those elements can help turn a boring answer into something that just has more life, more humanness to it, and can give a lot more visual to something that someone is just talking about.

Grace: So today we've talked about how to humanize your customer stories so that you can really get a grasp of what you're actually known for and incorporate that into your brand messaging — incorporate the people that you're about into your brand messaging in their own voice. And if you're processing this idea and thinking, I like what you're saying, how do I do this, where are my starting points — I want you to think about the testimonials that you have. Maybe these are reviews, maybe these are customers that are just the best, they have so many good things to say, or maybe they've had the best experience working with you and they keep showing up. What questions could you ask them? How could you tell their story? And how could their story become a bigger part of your brand?

I want you to also think about the types of stories that you want to tell. Do you need to address the hesitations that people typically feel in your industry? If you're in healthcare and people are nervous about coming to see a dentist or coming to the doctor for their wellness checkup, what hesitations do people feel, and how can you address those in stories?

Well, that's the gist of what we wanted to share with you today about how to humanize your brand with customer stories. If this episode was helpful to you and you're excited about this podcast, we want to ask you to subscribe so you don't miss any episodes, and to leave a review, share your customer story, and tell us what stood out to you, what you found helpful in this episode. We would love to hear what you have to say, we would love to get the feedback, and we just love to know that you're a part of this audience. So thank you so much for listening, and we look forward to sharing with you on the next episode of the Known For podcast.

Known For is a Griffith Media podcast recorded on the volume wall at Big Screen Studios in Dallas, Texas. This episode was produced by the Griffith Media team. Find out more about our agency, how we can help your business grow through marketing, video and design at www.griffith.media. Or find out more about the studio at bigscreentx.com.