Lesson 6

The Narrator
Lesson 6. The Narrator
In the previous lesson, we learnt what the main charac-
ter of storytelling can be and what path awaits them.
We also discussed why it’s so important to know who
your customer is, and to create obstacles for the hero
in the stories — the real problems of customer. Today,
we’ll talk about the narrator, their functions in story-
telling, and other important features.
An vital element of the story and its style is the nar-
rator. People like it better when it’s not an abstract
company that talks to them, but a specific interlocu-
tor, person, or a fictional character. The easiest and
economical option is to make the owner of the com-
pany, or an employee the storyteller, however, there
may be other solutions.
THE NARRATOR IS THE BRAND
AMBASSADOR
The ambassador or brand ambassador, is a public per-
son who regularly talks about the company’s prod-
ucts and shares their values. They embody the image
of the company, and the lifestyle that the target audi-
ence seeks. The Ambassador works both as an unob-
trusive advertisement, and as your company’s mouth-
piece because this is the person who your audience
trusts and listens to.
The downside of having a brand ambassador is that
you have to pay for their services and endorsement.
As a rule, companies don’t enter into an employment
contract with ambassadors, but draw up a contract for
which remuneration is provided. The contract also stip-
ulates that the relationship between the company and
the ambassador must be unique and exclusive, so they
won’t work also with your competitors. The price of hir-
ing them may amount to tens of thousands, or even
hundreds of thousands of rubles for an A-list celebrity.
At the initial stages, you can find the brand ambassa-
dor among bloggers, influencers, who have from one
to 10 thousand subscribers — they’ll be much more
likely to agree to represent the brand for a more mod-
est reward, possibly even just for being the first to try
your new product, and freebies. To do this, you need
to analyse the subscriptions of your target audience and
find popular bloggers. This is best done on Instagram.
When choosing to work with a brand ambassador, it’s
important to consider how well they match the style
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of the company. For example, the story about the ben-
efits of yoga mats from a heavy smoker looks rather
strange! Ideally, the ambassador should share the val-
ues ​​of the company and be who the target audience
aspires to be.
The ambassador’s feelings towards the brand should
always be considered, but this isn’t a prerequisite for
cooperation. For example, Sberbank made blogger Wyl-
sacom his ambassador, who constantly criticised his
work on his page. In 2017, Sberbank signed a contract
with this blogger for a year, hoping for return a 250%
of the investments made in the project. Judging by the
fact that the contract was extended, the bank succeeded.
NARRATOR — A FICTIONAL CHARACTER
A fictional character is much more predictable than
a real person, and of course the good news is that you
don’t need to pay them. The drawback, of course, is that
you need to pay a writer instead, or, indeed put the time
and effort in and write it yourself. The budget option
is to come up with an abstract character that’ll exist
only as the author of texts, letters, and social media
posts. A more expensive option is to draw and animate
a fully-fledged mascot. Let’s consider both options.
A fictional abstract character is a very good strategy for
emails. It’s a nicer experience to read a friendly email
from a ‘living’ person. If you think through the charac-
ter well, you will peak the interest of the customers, and
they’ll become interested in hearing what your charac-
ter has to say. Indeed, they’ll open the email just to get
news about your character’s life. For example, Burger
King sends emails on behalf of the invented charac-
ter ‘Kolya.’ Of course, the recipients realise that Kolya
is a work of fiction, but he’s well liked as a character.
Moreover, he’s rather prone to getting upset and tak-
ing offence if the recipient hasn’t responded to him for
some time, and, after all, who’d want to hurt the love-
able Kolya’s feelings?
Kolya might even
fall in love
Kolya’s chosen one is Dasha from Aviasales, a fic-
tional character from a partner company. They con-
duct indirect correspondence through subscribers, and
each answers in their own style, with characteristic
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Lesson 6. The Narrator
intonations. The situation is very recognisable, inter-
esting, such advertising causes a smile and involves
people in the interaction.
Mascots are the same characters that are interest-
ing to watch, but they have a significant difference —
the visual image. The name comes from the talismans
of sports teams (people in costumes of life-size pup-
pets) who support them at matches. Surely you’ve
come across mascots: rabbits from the Duracell bat-
tery advertisement, Ronald MacDonald, characters
from the M&M’s advertisement, and so on... Mas-
cots are good in that it is a visual image with which
the brand is associated — people both recognise and
love them. These characters are very popular with chil-
dren, and therefore with adults (because adults are
often the as same children at heart, but they simply
don’t express their emotions so openly).
If the brand ambassador doesn’t have to love your
product, then the character must be loved. The person
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who writes his story should be most interested in —
what does Kolya from Burger King feel now? Will he and
Dasha get along? — so the characters come to life and
become interesting to customers.
A QUICK SUMMARY OF THE LESSON
Today, we’ve learnt what a storyteller should
be like in storytelling, how to turn a storyteller into
an ambassador for your brand, and when it’s appro-
priate to use a storyteller — a fictional character.
In the next lesson, we’ll move on to digital story-
telling and discuss SMM (Social media marketing)
and visual storytelling topics. Also, we’ll talk about
trends in the digital world of stories and learn how
to find topics relevant to the reader.
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