THE REAL BALANCE BETWEEN STORYTELLING & PERFORMANCE.
By Molly McDermott Walsh, Brand Executive
Every Thursday, THE BOARD brings you industry insights from our Members to your inbox.
TURNING LUXURY STORYTELLING INTO SCALABLE GROWTH.
As a luxury brand marketer, I used to resist tech and digital marketing. I loved brand and storytelling and doing interesting things that generated interesting press coverage.
Early in my career, I’m talking 2005-2015, it felt like a luxury customer would never…
Never be enticed by a digital ad.
Never purchase online (I was at LVMH when they said they’d never have facebook pages nor would a luxury customer ever purchase a Swiss watch online- ha!)
Never, never, never.
But I'm now here to tell you - they will. They absolutely will. But only with the right guidance.
And the right story.
As a brand marketer, with experience inside some of the most iconic luxury and design brands like - PANTONE, Farrow & Ball, Zenith Swiss Watch and Henrybuilt - I know it isn’t easy, but it is possible.
It’s possible… when you consider the importance of storytelling and brand EQUALLY to the power of data and performance.
It’s what we’re all talking about, right? As every single conversation about AI inevitably goes - garbage in, garbage out (sorry to say it again - I’m also so bored of this conversation). But it’s the exact same thinking.
IF YOU PUT THE STORY IN THE WRONG PLACE, IT WON’T LAND. IT WON’T RESONATE. IT WON’T INSPIRE ACTION.
And, too often, neglecting brand for the sake of performance will fail. You forget how to capture someone’s attention, and keep it. The story is good, but the creative is bland, or more often now, AI slop. You get a ton of eye balls, but then nothing. Because they were the wrong eyeballs.
And you likely just wasted a lot of time and money.
All marketers know this inherently, but with pressure to perform AND build a defensible brand, they’re left playing a compromise game. Do I get a strong performance agency, who may not “get” our brand or customer? Or do I work with a creative agency and get beautiful, inspirational, content…that may miss the conversion hook? Do I build a team - but what skills do they need? Today? and in six months?
So what are you to do?! Start by knowing who your customer is, full stop. And remembering that they don’t just purchase your product; they are full and complete people.
A story:
When I was VP of Marketing at Farrow & Ball, my NA marketing colleague, Ebbie, and I were tasked with launching a new floral wallpaper collection - while also trying to shed some negative perceptions we had encountered. Mostly, Americans loved the colo(u)r names but didn’t purchase the actual paint and didn’t really think much of wallpaper. Especially not hand-etched block-printed wallpaper. So, as older millennials, we leaned into florals for Spring (forever a TDWP fan) and partnered with Lewis Miller to do floral flashes - during NYFW.
Knowing that I was taking a big risk by putting budget behind guerilla stunts and wild, wheatpasting posters, I tapped my colleague Jon, who headed up the global F&B web and digital team. He saw the opportunity in what we were doing, knew the power of media coverage, and didn’t want that wave to crash.
Together, we created a savvy digital campaign (back in 2017) that kept the coverage going and linked interest directly to the products. We got a new audience interested in a premium item but putting it in a new and unexpected place - NYFW and Vogue. We leveraged the fashion set’s commitment to beautiful viral moments and found a partner that aligned that with the brand, the product and this unexpected moment. And then, we used digital to tell the story more broadly so that those who walked down 5th Avenue or Kenmare Street weren’t the only ones who got to experience that joy.
Look at this joy - Ripped from the guerilla marketing pasting agency case study here.
More recently, I have had the pleasure of building campaigns for luxury, heritage brands and helping them navigate going from in-person only launches to incredibly successful launches on Pinterest - without sacrificing what’s made them endure through so many periods of change.
So, let this be your anecdotal, inspirational reminder. Tell your story, tell it well, and tell it in the right ways, in the right places. The good thing about digital marketing today is that the data will guide you to make sure that this happens, while also opening up new areas and customers you may have overlooked.
If you’re reading this and thinking - I wish I had a Molly. The good news is that with The BOARD, you can tap brains like ours.
With experienced talent from some of the most inspirational and culture leading brands in fashion, beauty and lifestyle, BOARD members are rich with the wisdom gleaned from years of doing this. It’s how we’re able to take a step back and not get too caught up in the jargon. The new acronyms. The letter soup.
And as a community, we’re sharing our wins while discussing changing behaviors of consumers daily, so each brand marketer gets stronger with performance while growth marketers are continuously reminded of the power of storytelling.
Here’s your conversion hook to stop being suspicious and reach out to an expert that can help you tell your story even better.
Access to this expertise starts here: www.wearetheboard.co
THE BOARD sits at the intersection of Brand, Business, and Culture—offering fractional leadership, project-based experts, and curated teams to help you move faster, smarter, and with far less risk. info@theboard.community
