Five Stories Project
We empathize with characters because they are driven by the same things that drive us
Client: CMME, London. Art Direction and Design
The construction of personal stories responds to the fundamental people’s life-long task to give meaning to their lives. The most important brands’ task today is offering meaning, culture and values developing a narrative able to position themselves as meaningful for customers. My background in Psychology trained me to understand the importance of human emotions in establishing which piece of experience deserves cognitive attention as well as space in the working, short and long-term memory.
Similarly to emotions, customers' interests and values mark their experience determining what is relevant to them. Their values and cultural archetypes guide their daily reality making them choose pieces of information that respond to their needs, values and lacks, and discard all the rest as 'noise'. I turn raw marketing data into beautiful visual stories that make brands relevant to their target audience connecting customers to a brand at an emotional level.
CMME offers mortgages to independent professionals. They briefed me to enhance quality and consistency integrating their new visual identity with new content during their rebranding. This moodboard focuses on entertainment (TV Series and Comedy) and sports on Facebook Customers' likes. I worked on integrating visual storytelling in the new creatives based on their interests in Comedy and TV series proposing stories able to entertain besides delivering brand values and financial information.
Based on real contractors and independent professionals I outlined five main characters and their stories, tracking their life from their first contract to the moment they decided to buy a house. All the most important moments become content for Advertising, communication, and social posts. We empathize with characters because they are driven by the same things that drive us. Thus, stories speak personally to the customers and enhance brand engagement. They also permit to make complex financial information and data easier to digest.
Every colour represents a main character and his personality and altogether they represent the full brand colour palette. Every character is also associated with a particular archetype (e.g. Emma, the Cancer Researcher with the archetype of the Hero) relevant to the target audience. The Climax is the most important element of a story - the hook that makes people want to discover more and more to solve the conflict - strong stories hold our attention by waiting to reveal what happens next.
CMME became a useful helper in the moment of conflict of the five stories. Every story is articulated in 20 autonomous but interconnected episodes. Every episode is the content of marketing material making all the marketing production highly consistent. The same episode with an adjustment on the length of the copy can equally become a social media post like a print ad.
