Stories That Stick: How Storytelling Can Captivate Customers, Influence Audiences, and Transform Your Business

New
York Times
over a cup of coffee. How dare they exploit child bereavement! Who
needs two parents when you have Filet-O-Fish?! The ad was pulled shortly after
it aired, and McDonald’s issued an apology.
Although I had not seen the ad before reading the article, I had two distinct
thoughts. The first was of my own father and tomato juice.
When I was in college, I was on a flight with my mother. The flight attendant
asked for our beverage order and I requested tomato juice. My mom looked at
me abruptly.
“What?!” I responded. “I didn’t order a Bloody Mary. I just asked for tomato
juice.” (It’s amazing how quickly we can revert to our teenage selves when
we’re with our mothers.)
“No,” she said. “It’s not that. It’s just that your dad always orders tomato
juice when he flies. He doesn’t drink it anywhere else, only on planes.”
I’ve never forgotten the deep sense of pride I felt in that moment. Yes, it was
about something as simple as tomato juice, but I still feel the unique sense of
daughterly joy and connection to my dad I felt in that moment.
At this point, you might suspect that my father passed away when I was a
child. Which is why something like tomato juice can mean so much to me. But
that’s not true. My father is very much alive, and I talk with him often. And yet
his aliveness didn’t in any way dilute how meaningful it was to know an instance
of how we are similar. So I could see how a boy who 
had
lost his father might
cherish that connection, even if it was over a fast-food sandwich.
A freelance journalist for 
The Guardian
echoed this sentiment, although

---

from a different experience. Her mother had passed in 1985 when the writer was
young. She said, “I am still eager for crumbs of information about my
mother. . . . Unearthing a new fact, or hearing an observation about our
similarities from someone who knew her, feels like a wonderful kind of
archaeology.”
5
That was my first thought: my dad, tomato juice, and how much pride I took
in knowing we were alike in that way.
My second thought: I wonder if that McDonald’s ad was a real story? Was
there really a boy who discovered this random similarity with a father he lost,
and somehow McDonald’s UK heard about it?
Maybe his mom told them the story, and the ad agency was touched by it and
realized they had stumbled upon marketing gold and decided they would tell that
story! It would have identifiable characters and emotions (of course, they
wouldn’t call it that, because our research hadn’t been completed yet, but you
get the point). Then they wrote the storyboard and cast the characters, and even
though the whole thing was a true story . . .
They told it as a value story rather than having the boy tell it himself, as a
customer story. They ruined it without knowing how or why.
Yes, the source matters, for better or worse.
The Details Matter
As the saying goes, you can’t make this stuff up. Carolyn D.’s customer
story is filled with tiny details that help the story ring true. Her teenage
granddaughter leaving the deodorant out on the bathroom counter (typical
teenager), the specific activities Carolyn enjoys (bicycling, paddleboarding).
Even her age was specific: seventy-seven. And did you notice something else?
In her review, Carolyn duplicated the word 
or
. A small thing, but an important
one.
When it comes to customer stories, stories coming straight from the source,
the ring of truth is critically important. While it may be tempting, whether in
print or video, to airbrush your customer stories, sometimes the giggles, the
bloopers, and the imperfections are what make them more real. Certainly, you
should guide the stories to fit the framework and include the necessary
components. And if the aggrievances are big, spare your customer any
embarrassment. But don’t edit them beyond recognition. The beauty of a
customer story is its raw, imperfect realness.
You can put a hundred copywriters in a room for a week, and nothing they

---

write will make us believe that a real person exists behind the words as well as
Carolyn does. Her details fill out the story and make it more believable, but they
also do double duty by informing others about the kind of person who uses
Native. They are adventurous, vibrant, and full of life, no matter their age.
The devil may be in the details, but so is the delight and so is the credibility.
Going Native: How to Get the Customer Story
Yes, collecting reviews is old news. Amazon’s been doing it forever, and
companies were doing it for a century before that. But Native does it better, and
you can too. Here are two simple rules for following their lead and curating
customer stories of your own.