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The Real Reason Why the Mona Lisa is So Popular Will Surprise You

Have you ever really considered WHY The Mona Lisa is the most famous artwork in the world? A strong argument could be made that it’s not even DaVinci’s most impressive painting, I would consider The Last Supper to be a far superior work. Also, consider the works of his peers like Michelangelo’s The Sistine Chapel ceiling or his David sculpture.

I mean…The Mona Lisa is nice and all, but the best ever???  I just don’t see it.

And until 1911, the art world agreed with me. Critics in Paris acknowledged The Mona Lisa as a masterpiece of Renaissance art, but it was hardly known outside of France. In fact by August of 1911, no one outside the art world really knew of or about the painting.

All that was about to change, overnight.

On the morning of August 21, 1911, three Italian men walked out of the Louvre without so much as a notice. Which is odd, because they were carrying with them over 200 pounds of wood and glass, covered in a blanket.  The three men boarded a train and left the city at approximately 8 am in the morning.

They had just stolen The Mona Lisa.  In broad daylight.

And just like that, they were gone. A clean getaway. In fact, no one at the Louvre even noticed the painting had been stolen until 28 hours later!

In a weird quirk of fate, it turns out that the bare spot in the gallery where The Mona Lisa had hung stood bare for 28 hours. And even when the painting was discovered missing, it wasn’t assumed to have been stolen. At the time, the paintings in the Louvre were being photographed. The photographic technology at the time was primitive, so the only way to get a decent photograph of each work was to remove it from the gallery and take it to the roof where better lighting was available.

So 28 hours later, when an artist who was painting in the Louvre finally noticed the empty spot, he brought it to the attention of security. The artist assumed the painting was being photographed on the roof, and asked the security guard to check with the photographers and see when it would be returned.

That’s when the Louvre discovered that the photographers didn’t have it, and that it had been stolen.

This is the point in our story where things begin to get interesting. Media in France and then the world picked up on the heist. Again, at the time, The Mona Lisa wasn’t even the most famous painting in its own gallery, much less in the Louvre. But everyone loves a good scandal, and the French letting 3 men steal from the Louvre in broad daylight had all the makings of one. As media coverage intensified, conspiracy theories about the thieves began to emerge. One popular theory was that American business tycoon JP Morgan had commissioned thieves to steal the painting. Contemporary artist Pablo Picasso was actually considered a suspect in the theft, and was questioned.

A week later, the Louvre reopened and a mob of people flocked to the museum to see a bare spot on the wall where a week earlier, The Mona Lisa had hung. The same painting that none of them cared to see, but now all of them were willing to fight through a mob to see the space where the painting had hung.

Aren’t humans silly creatures sometimes?

Meanwhile, what seemed like a perfect getaway for the three Italian thieves, was quickly falling apart. Their intent had been to take the painting and quickly sell it for a nice profit. But the media coverage of the theft made it almost impossible to sell the painting. The thieves stored it in Paris, until 28 months later, when they attempted to sell it to an art dealer in Italy. The dealer verified it was The Mona Lisa, and contacted the police, who arrested the thieves.

The Mona Lisa was returned to the Louvre, and a mob of people again flocked there to see the return of the painting that was now viewed as being the most famous in the world.

Isn’t that interesting? The fame and notoriety of the painting really has nothing to do with the art itself, but rather with a theft over 100 years ago.  Just think, if those thieves had stolen another unknown painting and left The Mona Lisa there, we might today consider that unknown painting to be the greatest piece of art in the world.

There’s a lesson in that for your content. Take a topic that’s boring, and marry it to something interesting, and the boring topic becomes more interesting to your audience. We’ve all seen posts that compare something in business to a hit movie or book. Such as ‘Five Marketing Lessons Everyone Can Learn From Star Wars’, or ‘Ten Business Lessons You Can Steal From Watching Moneyball’. Such posts that connect the business and entertainment worlds are quite common among content creators. Hell I once wrote a post about social media monitoring lessons you could learn from Jason Bourne!

We write these posts because they work! Marrying the boring topic to the interesting one, if done correctly, makes the boring topic more interesting to your audience.

Additionally, we love stories. The Mona Lisa was a mostly overlooked Renaissance painting UNTIL it was stolen. The theft of The Mona Lisa gave it a scandalous backstory that interested people. Think about it, before the painting was stolen, it was unknown outside a few French art collectors. After it was stolen, it became the most famous painting in the world. The theft gave The Mona Lisa an interesting story, and that made the painting more interesting as a result.

BONUS: Want to really make your content more interesting? Tell a story with your content, and make your customer the HERO of that story! One of the best examples I’ve ever seen of doing this correctly is this long-form Pantene commercial from Thailand. It’s amazing.

Note from Mack: This post is actually an issue of my Backstage Pass newsletter that goes out every Friday morning. Want to subscribe so you get this Friday’s issue? Click on the form below and subscribe now.  See you this Friday!

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Marketing and Movies: Interstellar

I’ve never been a big fan of science fiction movies. The simple reason why is, I can’t relate to most of them. Most science fiction movies have plots and special effects that are completely untethered to reality. I need to be able to look at what’s happening and think “Ok, I can see how that’s possible”. When I was a kid, I wasn’t a fan of Superman or Hulk, I loved Batman. Because I didn’t think it was possible to be a superpowered alien from another planet or a radioactive giant, but I could totally see being an obsessed millionaire who was a hand to hand combat expert, and who could buy any crime-fighting toy he needed. I could RELATE to being Batman, I couldn’t relate to being Superman or Hulk.

Interstellar is the second Christopher Nolan movie I’ve discussed in the Marketing and Movies series. One of the many things that Nolan excels at is taking complex and potentially confusing concepts and making them relatable and easier for the viewer to understand. A couple week ago, I talked about how Nolan helped the viewer understand what life was like for Leonard Shelby in dealing with short term memory loss by altering the structure of the movie Memento.

With interstellar, Nolan, for the most part, does a great job of taking potentially abstract ideas and making them easier for the viewer to understand by tying them to something that makes sense for us. There’s a couple of instances where Nolan does this. The general plot of the movie is that blight, a plant disease, is killing the world’s crops. The blight will wipe out one form of crop, so farmers will rotate and start growing a new crop, but eventually the blight adjusts and destroys that crop as well. The end result is that miles and miles of farmland is reduced to dirt. This results in frequent and massive dust storms that plague the farmers and their families. These types of dust storms were actually common in the early 20th century in the heartland.  Early on in the movie, we are shown interviews with people who had survived these storms. It turns out, these were actual interviews from people who survived the dust storms during the 1930s. Nolan used clips from Ken Burns’ 2012 series The Dust Bowl which were actual interviews from people who had lived through these storms. So Nolan is already giving us a way to relate to what these farmers are going through, even though we’ve never experienced similar dust storms.

Later in the film, a wordhole is discovered that NASA has previously sent two crafts into searching for potentially habitable planets if it becomes necessary to leave Earth. NASA sends a second craft into the wormhole to visit two planets which show promise. This is another spot in the film where Nolan could have lost me, if the two planets that the crew visited seemed completely unrelatable. Instead, Nolan made both planets similar enough to Earth that the viewer can relate to them. Both environments contain enough Earth-like elements that the viewer can look at Nolan’s vision of what these planets are like and think “Ok, that makes sense to me”.

There’s a key lesson in this for marketers. When you are attempting to promote your products or services to customers, you need to help them understand how what you sell will improve their lives. A very easy way to do this is to talk about your product or service in terms of what those customers are doing now, and how your product or service will help improve their efforts. For instance, let’s say your company sells a ‘copper infused’ cooking pan. Your pan costs 10% more than the average cooking pan on the market. If you sell your pan as simply being ‘the future of cooking’, customers will respond with ‘what does that even mean?’ And asking them to pay an additional 10% more for features they don’t see the value in, kills the product.

But if you promote how the cooking pan will improve the life of your customer, that helps them see the value. If you promote that the cooking pan reduces cooking time by 23%, thanks to being copper-infused, and is 15% easier to clean than the average cooking pan, that’s real benefits that customers can see the value in. That helps justify the 10% higher price tag. Promote these features to time-strapped parents trying to get their kids off to school in the morning AND with a hot breakfast, and you’ve got a winning combination.

The key is to understand your customers, and help them understand how your product benefits them and improves their lives. This is especially important when you are dealing with potential customers who aren’t familiar with your brand. You need to speak clearly to customers and help them understand the value of your product or service. And speak in terms and concepts that the customer can relate to.

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Why Great Storytelling is So Important to Your Brand

I’ve been working with my friends at MarketingProfs this Summer to create a course for their Storytelling Summit for Marketers, which launches on September the 10th. As a way to give you a sneak peek at my course, Storytelling on Social Media, I wanted to talk a bit about why it’s important for your brand to tell stories.

Stories power Word of Mouth. By using story, you have a way to relate information to other people via a method (the story) which makes the information not only much more interesting, but you also increase the chance that other people will continue to pass that information along by sharing that same story.

I am an Alabama football fan, as most of you know. Recently, I was talking to a friend about the last two seasons, and Alabama’s starting QB, Tua Tagovailoa. If I had wanted to simply share information with this person, I could have said “Alabama beat Georgia the last two seasons.” While factually correct, both those wins were wrapped in incredible stories that make the information (Bama beat Georgia) far more interesting and memorable.

In 2017, Alabama faced Georgia for the National Championship. Jalen Hurts was Alabama’s starting QB, but Tua was the gunslinging backup that dazzled fans every time he played. Every time Hurts struggled, the fans clamored for Tua to come in, but he never did.

In the NC game against Georgia, the Bulldogs jumped out to a big lead by halftime.  Hurts was having a terrible game for Alabama. At halftime, the switch was made to start true freshman Tua in the second half, and he led Alabama to a come-from-behind victory, sealed by a 41-yard TD pass in Overtime.

The following year Alabama played Georgia for the SEC Championship and the roles were reversed. This time Tua was the starter and Jalen was the backup. And once again, Georgia jumped out to a big lead as Tua battled injuries. In the 2nd half, Jalen was put in and as Tua did the year before, he led Bama back to score a late win over Georgia. Jalen’s heroics led to a very emotional postgame interview with Nick Saban:

Now isn’t that a lot more memorable and interesting than saying ‘Alabama beat Georgia the last two seasons’?

Brand storytelling is about using story to communicate information to your customers. Ideally, that information will be both interesting and relevant to your customers, and relevant to your brand as well. When thinking about creating stories for your brand, think about what stories you can tell that will be both relevant to your customers, and also speak to what your brand stands for and is about.

A very simple way to do this can be by utilizing the stories of your customers, which you are probably already doing with testimonials. You can also let your employees tell what it’s like working for your brand, this can help streamline the hiring process, reducing hiring costs.

Also keep in mind when you are thinking about telling stories, that you can always use hypothetical examples in your stories. In fact, mixing real examples with abstract ones is one of the best ways to teach difficult concepts. You can tell a story about how one of your customers uses your product, then add a hypothetical “here’s how you could use our product” story to supplement the customer’s story.

Just remember that storytelling is a wonderful way to deliver information to your customers, and give them a way to easily relate that information to others, enhancing word of mouth.  Besides, who doesn’t love hearing and sharing a good story?

If you want to learn how to up your brand storytelling game, check out MarketingProfs’ Storytelling Summit for Marketers. Courses go live on September 10th, with additional live keynotes on the 17th and 24th.

 

PS: To wrap up the story with Tua and Jalen, at the end of the 2018 season, Jalen transferred to Oklahoma, where he won the starting QB job in the Spring. Last Saturday was the season opener for both Alabama and Oklahoma. Tua was amazing for Alabama, passing for over 300 yards and 4 TDs. But Jalen was the talk of the college football world, accounting for over 500 yards rushing and passing, and 6 TDs. After Week One, both are considered frontrunners for the Heisman trophy, given to the top player in college football.

 

BONUS: Well isn’t this awesome? Kerry at MarketingProfs has given me a $100 discount code to pass along to you, use code KERRYLIKESME to save $100 on the Storytelling for Marketers Summit!

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Creating Fans Through Storytelling

One of the best ways that brands can create fans is through storytelling. Specifically, through telling stories that relate to the brand, but that also tie into themes that are important to the customer. When done effectively, storytelling also helps the customer get a better understanding of what the brand is about. Think of it as pulling back the curtain and giving us a ‘backstage pass’ to see what goes on within the brand.

Last night I talked to the Advanced Social Media class at the University of Wisconsin – River Falls, and one of the examples of creating fans through storytelling was what Robert Scoble did years ago with Channel 9 videos while he was still at Microsoft. He would take a small camcorder and just go up to the cubicles of his co-workers and ask them to explain who they are and what they do. This was wonderful storytelling because it helped us understand more about the people who worked at Microsoft, and the culture at the brand. It made it a bit easier for us to relate to the brand once we could see the faces of the people that work there, and understand more about WHY they loved working there.

More recently, look at what Whole Foods did with wiping out its Instagram feed to raise awareness of declining bee populations around the world. This was powerful storytelling that tied into themes that relate to the brand (protecting the bees that help create the foods we love), while also giving us greater insights into what the brand is passionate about. Anything that a brand can do to help its customers better understand what it stands for, will always aid in creating fans.

Another instance of storytelling is what Maersk did with its archival photos. Kerry did a wonderful podcast with Maersk’s former head of social media, Jonathan Wichmann. Wichmann explained that when he took the job, he discovered that Maersk had an archivist who had thousands upon thousands of photos associated with Maersk and its shipping containers over the last century. He asked why no one ever used the photos and the brand’s response was ‘who would care?’  So Wichmann started posting the photos on Instagram and other social media sites and they were an immediate hit. These photos helped tell the story of the brand, and also helped us understand what they do, and for how long the brand has been doing it.  All of this also made it wasier to trust the brand, especially when you consider how long they have been providing the same services.

If your brand wants to experiment in creating content that helps tell the story of your brand, think about what stories you can talk about that tell what’s important to your brand, but that aren’t entirely focused on your brand.  Whole Foods talked about why we need to pay attention to declining bee populations.  Maersk by sharing its photos was also telling the story of why the work it does is so important. Yes, the pictures were mostly about the brand, but those pictures are also the history of shipping on the sea. It helps us understand what Maersk does, and what role in plays in global commerce.

And also, think about how you can lower your guard a bit and help us understand a bit more about what your brand does and who it is. Show us the people behind your brand, like Scoble did at Microsoft. GE does this with its employees, encouraging them to go on social media and talk about the work they do, as a way to increase the quality of job applicants. People better understand the culture at GE and why people love working there, and they are more likely to apply for open positions.

Above all, this is a potential competitive advantage for your brand. By engaging in storytelling with your customers, by opening your brand to them, you make it easier for your customers to better understand your brand, and relate to it.  Which makes it easier for your customers to TRUST your brand.

And when your customers trust your brand, then they can advocate for it. Interactions lead to Understanding which leads to Trust, which leads to Advocacy.

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Whole Foods Wipes Out Its Instagram Feed to Raise Awareness of Declining Bee Populations

Corporate storytelling can be a tricky thing to master. Brands often interject political and social news into its content, with mixed results. If the views are consistent with the company’s values, they will ultimately benefit the brand and strengthen ties to its core customer base.

Whole Foods gave us a great example last week of letting corporate values drive its storytelling. The brand deleted all its previous posts on Instagram, unfollowed everyone, and then posted this cryptic image:

Which, as you can see, is an image of…nothing. This immediately got people talking; was Whole Foods hacked? Then the brand followed Beyonce…was there a collaboration coming?  Then Sting, Jon Bon Jovi, Jerry Seinfeld.

Eventually, a few smart people noticed a ‘bee’ connection to the few people that Whole Foods had followed.  Then a ‘bee’ emoji was added to Whole Foods’ Instagram profile. Then after 4 more ‘blank’ images were posted on IG, Whole Foods posted this:

Which confirmed that the account hadn’t been hacked, but that there was a ‘bee’ connection here. Then, Whole Foods started posting videos of some of the common (and delicious) foods that we might lose without bees.

The goal of this campaign on Instagram was to raise awareness of the declining bee population around the world, and to support the Whole Kids Foundation in helping bring beekeeping materials and education to 50 schools and nonprofits around the country. Declining bee populations can have a huge impact on agriculture around the world, and Whole Foods is also helping to raise awareness of how “one of every three bites of food eaten worldwide depends on pollinators, especially bees, for a successful harvest.”

Some of the most engaging content that brands can create is content that’s focused on the brand’s core values and those of its customers.  Whole Foods sells healthy food and is concerned about the ingredients in those foods and how they are sourced and grown. This campaign helps educate customers and followers on how the food it sells is created, while also being true to the brand and its values.

If your brand wants to do compelling storytelling like Whole Foods did on Instagram, here’s what to keep in mind:

1 – Have a compelling story to tell that’s focused on ideas/themes/beliefs that are associated with the brand, but not about the brand. There are always exceptions to every rule, but in most cases, the most engaging content is related to the brand but not about the brand. Here, Whole Foods focused on the declining bee population and how that could impact the supply of healthy food. The potential impact on food supplies is the focus that’s related to the brand, but not about the brand. The topic is important to Whole Foods’ customers as well, which is why they paid attention. Patagonia creates content focused on protecting the environment, not its clothing. Red Bull creates content focused on extreme sports and athletes, not its energy drink. Pedigree creates content focused on happy and healthy dogs, not its dog food. All of these examples show the value of creating content that’s focused on the connection between the brand and its customers.

2 – Let the story develop on its own. By deleting its feed and only following a few people and then only posting a few blank images, Whole Foods left people speculating on what was happening with its Instagram account. That speculation led to a lot of extra media coverage and….’buzz’ about its bee-related content. It also led to people on Instagram trying to solve the mystery on its own.  Here’s some of the comments IG users left:

“but who has enough time and patience to hack into a supermarket’s social media and delete every single post one by one and unfollow people one by one ?”

“If you look up Beyoncé Whole Foods, you’ll see there’s a pic of her on their website”

“Bees!! Check out the 5 people WF follows! This is genius!”

“They are following Beyoncé and Sting. Bee emoji. You’re supposed to read between the lines. There are no posts about food anymore because WITHOUT BEES, WE WILL HAVE NOTHING.”

“None of the food they sell would be possible without the bees! The bee emoji, only following queen bee. Did I solve this ?!??‍♂️”

By letting the story play out or ‘breathe’ for a couple of days, followers on IG got more interested and invested in the developing story.  They engaged more, they speculated more, and they created more ‘buzz’ for what Whole Foods was doing.

3 – Let the benefits be obvious to the customer. If we lose the bees, then we lose our food. That was the simple message from this campaign, and everyone can immediately see the significance. This also communicates to Whole Foods’ customers that Whole Foods cares about how its food is grown, even down to protecting the insects that may play a role in the growth of the foods we all love. This helps build loyalty and brand advocacy among Whole Foods’ customers for the brand.

 

All in all, I thought this was a great campaign by Whole Foods and if you pay close attention to how this campaign was structured and executed, you can improve your own corporate storytelling efforts.

BTW, if you want to donate to the Whole Kids Foundation to support the Give Bees a Chance campaign, click here. As of this writing, the current sum donated is just over $64k, with a goal of $100,000.

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How to Mobilize Your Brand Advocates Through Storytelling

With the decline of traditional media and it’s effectiveness, brands have been turning to brand advocates to get their message across to potential customers.

Brand advocates are existing customers of a brand who are the biggest fans of that brand and who are passionate about the brand and its products. They don’t need an incentive to spread their love and ignite a word of mouth (both online and offline), because they are emotionally invested in brand’s mission and its story.

Neilsen’s 2012 survey of global trust in advertising found that 92 percent of respondents trust recommendations from people they know, and 70 percent trust consumers’ opinions posted online. And this isn’t the only data point that speaks to the power of advocates. At BRANDERATI we have put together a deck of the 26 stats marketers should know about advocacy that you might find interesting.

EkaterinaPic

The most powerful thing about organic advocacy is the story behind customer’s experience. And because the endorsement is not paid for by the brand, and the story is something others can truly connect with, it becomes a great motivator in getting others to act on the endorsement. Advocacy, done right, becomes true influence. And influence is what impacts behaviors. Because the ultimate goal of marketing is to not just to tell a great story, but tell a story that would make people want to get to know a brand and buy the product. And that’s what advocacy is all about.

Many brands have been turning to customers, asking them to tell their own stories and putting their own fans center-stage. By giving their most vocal advocates a platform to share their own experiences the brands are effectively turning their brand love into authentic influence. Brands are able to spark engagement around real stories from real customers in real-time, thus massively increasing the reach of their message and driving impact to company’s bottom line.

Let’s take a look at several examples.

Buick

Buick wanted to change perception of its brand, and they thought the best way to do this was to ask their own advocates why they love their Buicks and to share their stories. In only a few weeks, Buick advocates had written over 1,600 love letters and 16% of advocates had shared them on Facebook. The individual stories were magnified, thanks to the brand power of Buick – individuals were given a corporate platform and their stories reached further than they would have on their own.

 EkaterinaPicBuick.jpg

Google

One marketing problem that faces a brand like Google is that, although it is a truly massive, global brand, it is very hard to represent their services in a visual way. To give their marketing a human quality, Google asked customers to tell their own stories of the ways in which Google had changed their lives, their organizations or their businesses.

The results were commercials that were inspiring, touching and emotional – quite a feat from a software company. This one from Mark Kempton, whose survival of the Queenland flooding depended on his rescuers using Google Maps, has been viewed over 5.5 million times on YouTube, and brings an individual story to a global audience.

Weight Watchers

EkaterinaPicWWFor Weight Watchers, sharing customers’ stories is about inspiring others and giving credibility to their diet plan. They use celebrities for many of their campaigns, but they also give a platform to their ‘ordinary’ fans who have used their plan to shed the pounds. Their website, magazine and marketing all feature many stories of real people who have lost weight through Weight Watchers – so you can find someone just like you to use as a role model. The company is always on the look-out for success stories so that they can provide a constant stream of positive messages to inspire their customers through their online and off-line channels.

 

 

Conclusion

To tell customers stories effectively you need to connect with fans and ask them to tell you about the difference your product or service has made to their lives. Sharing their story widely can help their individual tales reach a much larger audience than they would ordinarily. Your brand platform combined with your customers’ inspirational stories can lead to a winning combination of advocacy and influence. But to do so effectively and in a sustainable way, you have to build authentic relationships with your advocates and fans long-term. Without that you will just create another short-term marketing campaign, whereas what you are really looking for is inspiring a movement around your brand, your mission, your story.

 

033Ekaterina Walter led strategic and marketing innovation for brands such as Intel and Accenture, and is currently a co-founder and CMO of Branderati. She is an international speaker and author of the WSJ bestseller “Think Like Zuck: The Five Business Secrets of Facebook’s Improbably Brilliant CEO Mark Zuckerberg” and co-author of “The Power of Visual Storytelling: How to Use Visuals, Videos, and Social Media to Market Your Brand.” You can find her on Twitter: @Ekaterina or her blog: http://www.ekaterinawalter.com/.