It Doesn't Matter What You Call Your Online Strategy!

Kevin Gibbons, November 9, 20128 Comments

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One thing I've always found surprising is the amount of strong opinions we seem to have around the nomenclature of SEO/SEM/content marketing, etc within the industry.

I ran a poll a while back asking what the best term to use was - content marketing or inbound marketing. This generated lots of responses and opinions:

It's always interesting to see the results, but when you think about it - does it actually matter?

Is looking at each individual channel really the best way to go?

1. SEO: If all you do is optimize a website for search engines, you'll probably have the most finely-tuned website with no links and no rankings on the internet. Congratulations! However, the SEO role obviously involves a lot more than just optimization, link reputation clearly plays a large role in 2012, which is very difficult to do without content/social/PR.
2. Search Marketing: Yes, you're marketing yourself to generate more search traffic online - but surely there's more to it than that that adds to the mix? For example, converting that traffic into customers, or engaging via social channels maybe?
3. Link Building: You're building links - what about the quality/relevancy of these links? And how does that affect your overall search strategy? On its own it doesn’t mean anything of value.
4. PPC: Do you optimize your paid search campaigns to pay for each click? Of course not – you want to maximize the revenue from your campaign. That requires content, call-to-action, email marketing campaigns, conversion rate optimization etc.
5. Content Marketing: I'm clearly more of a fan of this term than others, but if all you just focus on marketing great content - without any SEO knowledge or social media expertise, you're definitely missing the bigger picture.
6. Inbound Marketing: Likewise, there's much more to the content you create than the links that it produces. And this mixes in with your social and search strategies of course.
7. Social Media: Marketing yourself on social media without great content to share is far more likely to just be shouting, not that anyone will listen.
8. Conversion Rate Optimization: Again you could have the most finally-tuned website for generating sales, but no traffic!

I could go on, but you get the point!

And like anything, you can't just trust a single metric on its own - it doesn't matter what it is. If it's business, you can't judge performance by looking at revenue without considering profit. In sport, you can't just look at games won, without games lost etc…

Sticking it All Together = Marketing Gold!

Wouldn't it make more sense to integrate all of this together? That way you'll have an optimized website, a strong/natural link profile, it generates targeted traffic from keywords (both organically and paid), it's highly-converting and attracts new visits via social content, whilst engaging with customers. That sounds much more effective surely?!

I recently wrote about the need to ditch the silos when building a team.

For the best strategies you need to get everyone all involved from day one and get them working together - then they can all help each other out. I really like an analogy from Greg Boser, who said that it's like a Chinese food court - you just ending taking bits of each without worrying where they come from, and it probably doesn't work very well together!

So What Should we Call it?

Some people dislike the term "content marketing", even more seem to dislike "inbound marketing" - largely because they're both new and maybe considered buzzwords. Yet others are saying "SEO" isn't the most accurate name to use anymore either (which feels a bit like we're going round in circles, SEO was once a buzzword too!).

I think there's a strong argument that SEO has grown up a lot recently and that you no longer need to just specialize in search to succeed in Google. That doesn't mean SEOs can't adapt and involve social/content into their strategies though.

Likewise, for the reasons above - there are also arguments that any of the other suggested replacements are flawed too. There are just too many factors to consider in a modern online strategy. Perhaps we should just use an old term instead? Marketing seems to have worked pretty well for a while now!

But let's be honest - who really cares?

Do Your Clients Care What it's Called? No, You Take a Budget and Spend it Where it Works Best!

And that's the way it should be - CMOs are judged on generating revenue from their marketing budgets. What it's called when they report this is irrelevant. And if you look at the reasons above, it's clear that if you have an integrated search strategy - the whole is going to be much greater than the sum of all parts.

So you can focus on getting great results - and leave your competitors to argue semantics.

Do You Think it Makes a Difference?

I don't want to turn this post into a debate on what it's called - that's not what it's about. But do you think the name of your marketing activity makes a difference? And does that affect your day-to-day strategy?

http://searchenginewatch.com/article/2223233/It-Doesnt-Matter-What-You-Call-Your-Online-Strategy?wt.mc_ev=click&WT.tsrc=Email&utm_term=&utm_content=It%20Doesn%27t%20Matter%20What%20You%20Call%20Your%20Online%20Strategy%21&utm_campaign=11%2F09%2F12%20-%20SEW%20Daily&utm_source=Search%20Engine%20Watch%20Daily&utm_medium=Email

The Hope of a Link: Mashable Content Analysis

October 29th, 2012 - Posted by Kate Morris to Content & Blogging

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The author's posts are entirely his or her own (excluding the unlikely event of hypnosis) and may not always reflect the views of SEOmoz, Inc.

The holy grail: A link from Mashable. 

Don't kid yourself. We all want one. They are a content powerhouse with a mind-blowing community. Moz has that type of community, but Mashable touches on everything from kittens to major trends in the economy and technology. If it's interesting to the Internet community, they'll publish a about it. Their domain authority and homepage authority is a whopping 96. Of course we all want a link. 

The first thing any reputable SEO would tell you is that you need two things before you can even begin hoping for a link from Mashable:

1. Great content - it has to be beyond good by this point, it must be great
2. A relationship with Mashable

I'm not going to claim that those two things are absolutely necessary, but I would agrue that you need to know more about Mashable before you go pitching your content to them. Well, I've done some of that for you, and today I'll teach you how to do it for other sites as well. This is Advanced Content Analysis ... starting ... now.

The Brain Child

The idea to do Advanced Content Analysis on Mashable came from a conversation Carson Ward and I had one day about getting a link from them. He made the quip that all you really need to do is write a post along the lines of "7 Ways to Do X." I laughed because it's sort of true (list posts do well), but then asked myself:

"How many of Mashable's posts are lists?"

Once I dug into how to get the titles of as many posts as possible, I realized just how much more data was available and how much deeper the analysis could really go. 

Data Process

I thought I'd pull six months of Mashable posts; that is, until I started pulling the data and realized they put out almost two thousand posts a month. TWO THOUSAND. Holy content, Batman. Two thousand posts and one month was plenty for my analysis. If anyone wants to do more, I'd love to hear about six months of data.

I used three tools to pull the data necessary for analysis: ImportXML for Google Docs, SEOTools for Excel, and Microsoft Excel.

ImportXML

To gather the post titles, I used ImportXML for Google Docs. The linked guide will tell you more than I ever could about how to scrape content from a site using ImportXML. For those that are curious, I've included the formulas I used for Mashable. If you just want to see the forumlas in action, here is a document that is read-only for you to investigate. 

The first important part is the page to scrape. You want to get to the blog/site's archive pages. For Mashable, you can access them by hitting "next" on their homepage. This gives us the page to scrape. A1 below is where you input the page number you want to scrape. This forumla is cell A2 for me -- you'll need to know that in a minute.

=CONCATENATE("http://mashable.com/page/",A1,"/") 

Below that, you can complete the import. These three take up A3, B3, and C3. As previously mentioned, once I pulled the titles, I figured I'd just keep going. The URL is important for the things you can pull using SEOTools, so be sure to add that one. The date and comment number was important for in-depth analysis. The number of comments along with social metrics are the only real "success" metrics you can pull externally. I mean, unless Mashable wants to share the traffic numbers with me for each of the posts ... no? Dang. 

Titles: =importxml(A2,"//a[@class='headline']")
Post URL: =importxml(A2,"//a[@class='headline']/@href") (muy importante) 
Date, Author, Comment Count: =importxml(A2,"//p[@class='byline clearfix reviewer vcard meta']")

Side Note: Dear tech guys and gals at Mashable, sorry, I crawled tons, and others might, too. Though that is probably like .001% of your server traffic. :)

From here, you simply copy and paste into an Excel sheet, and keep going (change the page number in A1) until you get the number of posts you want. 

SEOTools

This is my new favorite tools for a number of reasons, not least of which is the ability to use Regex in Excel. Are you excited, too? Well, it can also return social metrics using a URL, return the canonical URL, and so much more. If you haven't downloaded it, please do. And donate. This thing is worth it. 

Alright, so I promise not to bore you, but I used SEOtools to do a few things:

1. Download the Facebook shares (Twitter wasn't being nice when I tried, but it's possible)
2. Return True/False if the post title included markers like Infographic or Video. Mashable is nice and gives us a marker in the title if the post is about something big like that. 
3. Return True/False if the post title included a number. More on this later. 

Microsoft Excel

This section is all in Excel. I did one more thing and checked to see what day of the week the post was made live. That's made simple with a formula like this: 

=TEXT(WEEKDAY([@Date]), "ddd")

The [@Date] references the cell in the table with the date. 

Content Analysis

Now I have the data, it's time to learn some stuff about Mashable and their content. After de-duplication (they post weekly recaps of videos, etc.), I analyzed 1,159 posts. Below is a look at the content types from what I could tell. Other includes smaller types like Audio and just plain text posts. 

It looks like in the last month Mashable has preferred videos over infographics, which is something to keep in mind when deciding what content to develop and pitch. But this is just in terms of the number of posts. We have answered our original first question: how many of Mashable's posts are lists? 13% in the last month (in the chart above I am referring to "# Posts"). Nothing to cough at, but not as many as Carson and I figured. But what about performance of these posts? What days are they posted? And for that matter what about video and infographic posts? On to dataland we go.

Note: the "other" category includes all other posts that are not lists, or are something different as noted in the title of the post. Mashable has a habit of marking posts with [MODIFIER] which I used to break these categories down. All other are smaller tags and any other "regular" posts. 

Lists, Infographics, and Video Posts -- Oh My!

How well do they perform? I'm picking on these because they are the content types that we all harp on so much. The results for comments on the post types and Facebook metrics. The most suprising find here is that while video posts have more shares and comments, there is a higher number of list posts. I think this has more to do with traffic and brand building than actual engagement. I theorize that if we could see average unique visitors to these posts, that lists would have a much higher view rate. Reason: people are lazy and just want to skim for data. Lists work well because they are easy to skim and give people information in just a few seconds. One day I'd love to see a study in which Mashable looked at the new visitors from a list post and watched how often they came back to Mashable, and compare that to other post types. THAT would be fascinating. 

Now to the more fun stuff - days of the week. This has little consequence in my book, but it's fun to look at. 

Above is the average for the site overall in the last 30 days. Fun factoids: 

• Mashable posts less on the weekends, but the audience is more active in comments and sharing. Weekend numbers are similar to Tuesdays. Tuesday is apparently the day that Mashable audience members are bored at work. But more likely, there are just fewer posts those days. Averages run higher when you have a smaller base. 
• Monday is the big post day. No surprise to me there. 
• Wednesday and Thursday are when intereaction drops off. 

What about by post type? How many are posted on each day? It turns out that the videos and lists are posted more on Mondays, and infographics on Wednesdays. Why do you think this happens? I have my theory, but I'd love to hear yours on this one. 

How did these content types perform per day? Let's just look at the "lists" category for this part as we are getting pretty deep, and this post was originally about lists. 

Remember my theory on boredom on Tuesdays? *points like Vanna White at the chart above* See?!?!?!? The count of total shares and comments back my theory up. Even though there are fewer posts on Tuesdays, they got more interactions on average. Huh. Maybe this is why we post on Tuesdays and Thursdays at Distilled. Will and Duncan are smart cookies. (No, really, I doubt that had a ton to do with it, but Will or Duncan can correct me later.)

Final Thoughts

• Content Analysis is much easier with tools like ImportXML and SEOTools for Excel.
• You should consider doing this with the content on your blog or a competitor. What's really working for them? Back up your analysis with hard core numbers of interaction with the audience, not just what you see them doing. Don't get inspiration (see I didn't say copying?) from something that isn't working. 
• Post awesome stuff on Tuesday.
• Develop great videos for Mashable, as infographics are on the way out. 
• List posts get attention, but not as much interaction. 

What else did I miss? This isn't fully scientific, but it is fun and gives us much more data to help make decisions than we might have had before. Take everything above with a grain of salt, pull your own numbers, and see for yourself. 

http://www.seomoz.org/blog/the-hope-of-a-link-mashable-content-analysis

How to Create Ads with the Best Conversion Rates

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The bane of most businesses when it comes to online advertising is the largely hit-and-miss tactic of keyword implementation. It is one thing to know which keywords should result in more click-through traffic and subsequently to more sales. However, keywords that should deliver do not always do so. The reasons are as follows, and they are surprisingly simple:

Why Keywords Alone are Not Enough

The goal of any online advertising campaign is to increase traffic that converts. Millions of page hits don’t do anything but drive up bandwidth usage if the click-through traffic does not result in sales once it reaches your site. Failed conversions usually revolve around some typical problems; for instance, many companies focus on keywords that don’t really add much content or traffic to their site, and they spend a lot of time, money, and effort to make something that is of little value.

Fortunately, there is a simple solution to this: rather than choosing keywords with high traffic volume in the hope that conversions will magically happen, choose more relevant ones, ones that add to your site’s image and credibility.

The Open Internet Exchange and You

There are several companies that specialize in maximizing your ads and internet traffic that you can use, such as Endai, HTP Marketing, and Phorm Inc to name a few (learn more about Phorm Inc for marketing strategies). Typically, they work with advertisers directly at the Internet service provider (ISP) level to more efficiently and effectively pair Internet users with advertisements that are relevant to their interests.

Each of the participating ISPs already keeps databases of anonymous user information regarding which sites users visit and when. This information is then submitted to the Open Internet Exchange (OIX). Advertisers create campaigns based directly on a product or service and submit those to the OIX from the opposite end.

When a user at a certain IP goes to a page that has advertising, the OIX matches that user with advertising campaigns that are relevant based on current and frequent surfing habits. For instance, there is no point in showing ads for camera gear to a user who accidentally visited a photography supply site once for two seconds. Conversely, someone who visits sites about camera gear frequently for longer periods is more likely to click-through and buy when they see an ad for camera gear on another site.

The OIX knows the difference. Sure, this type of targeted advertising may cost a little more than traditional services, but it is far more effective. Most companies find that their advertising budgets go further due to a rapid and steady increase in sales as a result of effectively targeting users.

Kevin Kaiser is a SEO enthusiast and current dental student. Follow him on twitter @kevinckaiser.

The Hidden Cost Of Cheap SEO & Social Media Labor

We totally agree with Jordan Kasteler below-we see sites every day that are cheap and social media sites that are just spammy. You will get what you pay for----

The Hidden Cost Of Cheap SEO & Social Media Labor

Sep 4, 2012 at 12:56pm ET by Jordan Kasteler

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Fact: All businesses, large or small, want to save money wherever they can.

I understand this. I sympathize with this. What I don’t understand, however, is why so many businesses try to take the cheap route and cut corners in their online strategy— and then are dumbfounded when they get scammed/receive terrible results/get blocked by Google.

I know how devastatingly costly it can be to launch, maintain, and grow a business. But there are certain aspects of building a business where it’s never okay to cut corners. You wouldn’t hire an inexperienced, too-cheap contractor to build the building. You wouldn’t buy discounted, bruised produce if you owned a restaurant and you wouldn’t buy day-old bread for your sandwich shop.

So why would you trust your website and your online reputation— the very first introduction your customers will have with your business — to an inexperienced amateur or a too-cheap scammer?

In life and online, you get what you pay for. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: solid, successful SEO and social strategies take time. Time is money. Try to save a few dollars now by hiring a cheap, inexperienced, or shoddy “professional” and you’ll guaranteedly pay for it later.

Still not buying it? Here’s a look at what suffers when you try to cut corners (or hire someone that cuts them for you).

Image Credit: ByronShell via Flickr

What Happens When You Try to Take the Cheap Route

1.  What You Pay For: Cheap links or linkbuilding campaigns.

What You Get: Google Penguin.

Google hates link spam. Google punishes link spam. In fact, Google punishes anything that even looks like link spam. On April 24th, Google unleashed Google Penguin, an anti-spam algorithm update that affected roughly three percent of queries. All controversy about the effectiveness about the update aside, Penguin proved that Google is actively going after sites with spam, and its history of shutting down link networks and blog networks further proves the point.

Buying links is the overt way to take the cheap-and-easy route in linkbuilding (and scheming link builders abound), but it’s not the only one. As I’ve written before, linkbuilding takes time. Connections aren’t forged overnight, and anyone who promises you major results overnight is a liar.

An experienced SEO may have a well-established network of connections to start a linkbuilding campaign, but you’ll pay for those connections. A bottom-barrel hourly rate is a surefire way to indicate shortcuts (buying links) or inexperience (laughable outreach emails).

Believe it or not, inexperience can be just as dangerous as a linkbuilder who overtly cheats the search engines, since an amateur “SEO” may have no idea what he’s doing looks like link spam to the search engines.

Don’t buy your links. Don’t fall for miracle-worker pitches, and be prepared to pay a decent price for a linkbuilding campaign. It’s the only way to ensure you’ll get results—real results that won’t get your site banned.

2. What You Pay For: Cheap Content.

What You Get: Google Panda

Google Panda probably needs no introduction, but I’ll give it one anyway: Panda was the major algorithm update from February 2011 that forced content farms into near-extinction. The age of cheap, shoddily-written content was over, and Google reminded us that not just any content could be king: only usable, quality (not keyword-stuffed) content could reign in the post-Panda wake.

But let’s take this a step beyond the obvious you-won’t-rank-well-with-terrible-content factor: cheap content does nothing for your business. Effective strategists use content to move people, to communicate, to grab attention, etc. Quality content compels: compels people to share, compels people to comment, compels people to buy.

Cheap, poorly-made content does nothing. It sits on a page, waiting to attract searchers (who, 9 times out of 10, will immediately get turned off by the content and return to the SERPs in seconds), and gets websites dinged by Google.

Hire a real blogger, writer, designer, videographer, professional. Look at their portfolio and really look at what they’ve done before (and if they don’t have a portfolio, run). If you’re going to put content on your site, it should be every bit as good as the site itself.

3. What You Pay For: Cheap Web Design and Development.

What You Get: Errors. Security vulnerabilities. Poor conversion rates. And, often, a pretty terrible-looking site.

Yes, you could pay somebody $50 to make you a website. And it will suck.

There are many amateurs out there who can slap together a GoDaddy-hosted site and make it look reasonably attractive (and millions more who can make an ugly one). But aesthetics aside, you don’t just need a site that looks pretty—you need one that functions.

Ask your developer how your site will be able to grow in the future. Ask if they know SEO (they should). Ask to see what sites they’ve designed in the past, and find out what hurdles they had to overcome when developing them. Ask what steps they’re going to take to increase conversion and lead your customers down the sales funnel.

Your website is the first impression you will make on potential customers. It’s also an extension of your physical business: it can take payments, answer questions, and show off your products and services like a virtual shop window.

With all the business your website can bring you, why leave it to an amateur that can develop a site that a.) crashes constantly, hurting your reputation; b.) confuses customers; c.) has little potential for growth?

Choose a Web professional that will stick around for the long haul: when it’s time to update or increase your site, you’ll want to return to the person who did an amazing job building it in the first place.

4. What You Pay For: Cheap SEO.

What You Get: Over-optimization, black hat tactics, zero results.

Professional SEOs are expensive. Like a lawyer or an accountant, they perform a function which most businesses need to exist but one that’s hard for most people to understand. They speak their own language, and they’ve built a reputation and results after years in the field.

If you want results, you will have to pay for them. And they will not come overnight.

When you hire an SEO (or social media marketer, linkbuilder, etc.), you are trusting them with your site and your online reputation. If you are not 100% clear on what they’re doing, you’ll have no guarantee they’re not doing something that could get your site penalized.

If they don’t stay updated on the world of SEO, they could be practicing outdated tactics that can get your site dinged for over-optimization. And if they can’t (or don’t know how) to measure their progress, you’ll have no idea if your SEO budget is actually doing anything for your site.

5. What You Pay For: Cheap Social Media Marketing and Management.

What You Get: Banned accounts and unauthentic results.

Social media may be free, but the hours spent managing your social accounts certainly come at a price. Any so-called social media guru should be advertising their people skills, marketing knowledge, and past experience running active accounts.

They should not be promising you hard-and-fast numbers of followers or fans. It’s one thing to promise to boost your numbers. It’s another thing to promise you 5,000 followers overnight.

Social media is built on relationships: showing your customers a different side of you, answering questions, getting feedback, and addressing complaints. You need someone who won’t just tweet three times a day (you could do that yourself, with considerably better results).

A talented social media manager will match your brand’s voice and build campaigns with clear goals— and that goal won’t be to simply nab you random followers or fans. It’s to build an audience based on people that will help your business grow. And they should be able to show you (in real numbers) how your social presence is helping your business.

You could hire an inexperienced college grad with 50 Twitter followers. You could hire someone who’s just going to boost your numbers with known follow-back accounts and accrue thousands of useless followers. Or you could  actually hire someone who knows what they’re doing—and actually see results.

There Are No Shortcuts. Period.

I don’t know if it’s hilarious or saddening that so many people fall for scams and get-rich-quick schemes from amateurs. I don’t know how many times I’ll have to keep exasperatedly saying, “There is no such thing as cheap SEO.” Because there isn’t.

No matter what low price you pay for Web design, SEO, or social media up front, you will wind up paying later on. Your site will get penalized. Your accounts will get blocked. And you will have to spend the time in the long run: whether it’s countless hours spent explaining things to a newbie, fixing a so-called “professional’s” mistakes, or working to recover your reputation, in the end, those pennies saved will cost you all the same.

So here’s a hint, a final plea, a last bit of advice: there are no shortcuts. Anyone who offers you one is a cheat, a liar, a scammer, or someone that has absolutely no idea what they’re talking about. It’s your choice: hire someone who knows what they’re doing and will take the time to do it right, or pay for it later. Either way, you will get what you paid for. To that end, paying moremoney does not necessarily mean you’ll get better results either. I’ve seen many expensive agencies offer awful services for your dollar, too. The same rules apply.

Opinions expressed in the article are those of the guest author and not necessarily Search Engine Land.

http://searchengineland.com/the-hidden-cost-of-cheap-seo-social-labor-131585

7 Basic Types of Stories: Which One Is Your Brand Telling? Creatives explore humans' archetypal plots By Tim Nudd

Droga5 turned Prudential's retirement story from rags-to-riches into one of rebirth.

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You think you're being all clever and original with your brand storytelling. In fact, you're not. From Shakespeare to Spielberg to Soderbergh, there are really only seven different types of stories, an Advertising Week panel hosted by TBWA suggested on Wednesday. The challenge becomes finding which one best suits your brand, and then telling it skillfully, believably and—if you're going to invite consumers to join in the story—extremely carefully.

TBWA's global creative president, Rob Schwartz, led the discussion, which was based around author Christopher Booker's contention, in his book Seven Basic Plots, that seven archetypal themes recur in every kind of storytelling. Booker looked at why humans are psychologically programmed to imagine stories this way. Schwartz and his two panelists, Droga5 executive creative director Ted Royer and novelist (and former agency creative) Kathy Hepinstall, focused on how the theory applies to brands—and how creatives can make use of it in developing persuasive stories for them.

Below are the seven basic plots—with examples from art and advertising of stories that fit each one.

1. Overcoming the Monster. This type of story goes back through Beowulf to David and Goliath and surely a lot further than that. It's the classic underdog story. Ad examples include Apple's attack on Big Brother in "1984" and American Express's attempt to dent the dominance of Black Friday with Small Business Saturday.





2. Rebirth. A story of renewal. It's a Wonderful Life is a prime example from the movies. Brands telling stories of renewal include Gatorade, whose "Replay" campaign gave aging members of high-school sports teams a chance to recapture their youth through rematches against old foes; and Prudential, which is presenting retirement as the beginning of a new chapter, not the end of an old one.





3. Quest. A mission from point A to point B. The Lord of the Rings is the classic example. IBM and Lexus are among the marketers who are on self-professed quests—making a smarter planet and relentlessly pursuing perfection, respectively.





4. Journey and Return. A story about transformation through travel and homecoming.The Wizard of Oz and Where the Wild Things Are are both journey-and-return stories. Corona is one of the brands that also encourages a trip, urging you to "Find your beach" and return refreshed. And Expedia has built its whole new campaign around the idea of changing one's perception through journey and return.





5. Rags to Riches. In literature: Charles Dickens and Cinderella. In the movies: Trading Places. In ads: Chrysler, which is rising from the ashes of Detroit; and Johnny Walker, whose entire brand history is about a simple Scottish farmboy's rise to global prominence.





6. Tragedy. From the Greeks through Shakespeare, these are stories of the dark side of humanity and the futile nature of human experience. Advertising has little use for such stories, except in PSA work, where shock tactics and depressing tales can get people to care about an issue.



7. Comedy. The flipside of tragedy, and the last of the great storytelling tropes, it's perhaps the hardest to do well but is hugely popular in both popular art and advertising—with Old Spice and Geico among the brand leaders in the space.




 

Schwartz suggested the seven plots can provide a blueprint for figuring out what a brand story should be when there isn't one, or isn't a strong one. During the panel, both Royer and Hepinstall talked about the importance of generating potent stories that ring true, and can't be hijacked or exposed as fraudulent.

"Ads most often are 'The husband's dumb, the wife fixes it, now he's better,' " said Royer. "They're these simple little stories that, I think, a lot of people react against. But if we do it right, we can tell some really beautiful stories. One of my favorite ads of all time was the Halo ad with the metal figurines. They beautifully portrayed what the game was about … I thought it was captivating and wonderful and amazing."

At the core of every brand, Royer added, is a good story waiting to happen.

"Brands are stories," he said. "They want to embody a story. When we start working with a client, we don't want to take a brief. We don't want to just say, 'What's your problem?' We want to go right back to, 'Why was your company started? What's your mission?' We talk about mission all the time, and it's just another way of saying, 'What kind of story are you on? What kind of story do you want to tell?' … Part of our job as an agency is to reignite that and really figure out what that story is."

A new wrinkle in the digital age is the hijacking of brand stories. "The hilarious thing to me is when a story is now taken over by the people," Hepinstall said. "It used to be a one-way thing, where the company would say, 'We're this,' and invite no feedback. Now, in the age of social media, that's impossible." She pointed to Shell's recent crowdsourced posters and the Walmart/Pitbull incident as evidence of disasters that can happen when brands lose control of their stories.

Royer discussed Droga5's "Day One" work for Prudential, which doesn't encompass merely the brand story but also the individual stories of many of the 10,000 people who retire every day—who harbor fears that Prudential would like to turn into optimism.

"It is a very dry category, and also absolutely terrifying. And you don't want either one of those," he said. "There's got to be a way, we thought, to find a middle ground where you can have an open conversation about what that period of your life is, what it can be, what you think it is now, and the potential of it. That's why we named it Day One. It is a label, but it's a fixed point that everyone owns. Everyone in this room has a Day One. And if you see it as a point moving forward, as a point where there can be optimism, there can be renewal, there can be bigger themes at work than just fear and confusion, then I think that gives Prudential a brand mission beyond just the products it sells."

So much retirement advertising has been rags-to-riches stories, he added, with lots of golfing and yachts in the imagery. Switching to a rebirth story gives the brand a more relatable platform, particularly in harder times.

The panelists also discussed the phenomenon of product utility as story—in particular, the Nike FuelBand. That product, developed by R/GA, embodies the Nike brand mission, which at its core is a quest story—the quest for the perfect body.

The seven basic plots might give creatives inspiration when it comes to crafting brand stories. But Hepinstall said it sometimes can help to focus outward, away from the brand, toward consumers—and figure out their experiences and their stories.

A "genius burst of energy about the customer's story," can ignite a campaign, she said. "The most perfect example is 'What happens in Vegas stays in Vegas.' I thought that was such a genius reframing of the customer experience."

http://www.adweek.com/news/advertising-branding/7-basic-types-stories-which-one-your-brand-telling-144164