I had a friend tell me this story last week and honestly, it gave me flashbacks to some of my own client disasters. He was working with this guy who ran some B2B project management tool. Normal business, normal audience, mostly team leads and project managers who just want their software to work. Client calls him up one day, super excited: "Dude, I cracked the code. Storytelling. That's what we're missing." Apparently he'd been to some marketing conference where the speaker said something like "Facts tell, stories sell" and it completely rewired his brain. My friend's like okay, cool, let's add some customer success stories to the sales emails. Makes sense. "No no no, you don't get it. EVERY touchpoint needs a story. People don't connect with boring transactional stuff." I'm listening to this thinking, oh god, here we go. I've seen this before. Client discovers one marketing concept and suddenly it's the answer to everything. Then he sends over this insane list. Password resets, billing notifications, error messages, everything needed to start with a personal story. My friend tried to explain that a billing email isn't exactly prime storytelling real estate, but the guy was convinced this was revolutionary. "Trust me, when someone gets their invoice and reads about my grandmother's advice on paying bills on time, they'll feel connected to our brand." The password reset email started with some rambling story about losing house keys as a kid. The server maintenance notification opened with a story about his car breaking down in college. But here's the kicker, the 404 error page got this whole saga about getting lost in a corn maze when he was 12. At this point in the story I'm shaking my head because I know exactly how this ends. I've been in those meetings where you try to explain context and appropriateness, and the client just doubles down. After about a month, their support tickets exploded. People were genuinely confused about whether they were reading newsletters or just trying to reset their passwords. Someone actually submitted a support ticket that just said "Why is there a story about your childhood trauma on my billing page? I just want to pay you." Another person unsubscribed with the note: "I thought I signed up for project management software, not your memoir." The breaking point was when one of their biggest clients forwarded the password reset email to their whole team with the subject line "Is our software vendor having a breakdown?" My friend had to spend weeks stripping all the stories out and explaining to confused customers that no, the software wasn't turning into a lifestyle blog. Client still thinks it was just "poorly executed" and occasionally brings up trying it again. This whole thing reminded me why I've started being way more direct with clients about why certain tactics work in some contexts but not others. Sometimes you have to save them from themselves, even if they don't want to be saved. Anyone else dealt with clients who think one marketing tactic is the answer to everything?   submitted by   /u/Shot-Sky7970 [link]   [comments]