How Do You Put a Value on a Story?

Stephen Foster is my favourite shopkeeper in the world. He owns my local book shop in Chiswick and I visit him most Saturdays, often to chat but usually to part with a chunk of my hard earned. I recently bought a book for ￡48 which turned out to be worth considerably more, and I have since wondered about the idea of what constitutes a valuable story. Chatting to him this weekend I was feeling particularly brave, so I decided to ask him that thing which you are not supposed to ask specialist shopkeepers ~ “How do you make your money?”. He looked at me curiously, wondering if I was joking, but fully committed I asked again, “No seriously… how do you put a value on a story?”.

I didn’t mean to be flippant because I was genuinely curious about how you value the in-tangible (something marketers try to do quite often, but we'll get to that shortly). I have some art-collector friends, so I also know the art industry reasonably well, and I suspected that rare book sellers operated in much the same way as fine art agents (or collectable toys, movie memorabilia, baseball cards...).

Value is perception. Perception can be altered". Lee Schlesinger

A piece might worth ￡100 to one person but could be worth ￡10,000 to the next. Ulysses by James Joyce (1922 first edition) could easily sell for over ￡100,000 to someone who wants it, but plenty of other first editions from 1922 can be found in Oxfam for slightly less. My rare find from 1857 cost me ￡48, and it was worth that to me when I first saw it, but to someone else it seems to be worth over ￡3,000.

So do stories get valued in the same way that art does?

Apparently not.

According to Stephen Foster, there is actually an art to valuing a story and it consists of five parts;

1. Economics?

Simple supply and demand. The internet is a great resource for shop keepers to see instantly what is valuable and what isn’t, and put an estimated value on it. The most crudest valuation could come from a simple eBay search to discover that a certain book ranges from ￡20 to ￡200. Has this been sold recently? If so, how much for? But that’s not enough...

A good book seller should never just look at how much a book sold for, as it is just as important to understand who* bought it. eg. It could be a collector operating on commission for an Arab business man who has a large budget and will pay over the odds to have “just the right books” on the bookshelf of his new London apartment.

• * Too many marketers look at the value or the direct audience (reach), but few dig deeper to find the value of an audiences audience. Something much more relevant if you want to assess a true value.

2. Condition?

Is it original? Has it been looked after? If not, does the book itself have a story? eg. Is there an important inscription from someone that adds weight to the book itself?

3. Edition?

Is it a first edition? If so, was there a second edition? Being an original does not always constitute value, unless the story itself resonated with a large enough audience of readers. (There are plenty of worthless first editions that never had second editions, simply because they were bad stories).

4. Fashion

Is it cool? Is it timely? Is it relevant to right now? Is there a trend for stories like this today? Stephen is currently lending his rare book collection of maritime and architecture books to Eon Production, for the set of James Bond’s flat in his next film ~ no doubt those books will now increase in economic value despite their condition or edition.

5. Nostalgia?

Might people want to buy this book because it touches them emotionally? Professional marketers operate on the pretext that people share emotions, not facts?—?and as a result, they often place greater social and intellectual capital on that which speaks to their heart of an audience, not their heads. Book buyers are no different.

eg. Was this book printed, published or signed in your hometown? Does it have local context? Does it speak to a subject close to your heart? Does it contain quotes from a by-gone era that seem relevant to something you are involved in at the moment etc…

This first edition of Leonardo Da Vinci's Codex Leicester is valued at $30.8m

One of the reasons that BuzzFeed is worth so much for example, and continues to get multi-million dollar investments, is because they can put a value on a story ~ they have a saying that "stories are more compelling than scoops", which explains a lot about the (valuable) content that they choose to publish.

This is all fascinating stuff, but what if we look at story-telling from a digital brand perspective ~ do the same principles apply? Many brands I work with spend vast amounts on content creation and marketing them, and it seems to me that these 5 principles for valuing a story, might not that much different in the world of content marketing.

Putting a Value on a Brand Story

Whether you are BuzzFeed, BBC, The Guardian, Red Bull, GoPro, Paddy Power or the Daily Mail (a few of the best content creators), much of their commercial storytelling success appears to follow a similar view to that of my book-seller friend;

Economics ~ Is the story going to deliver value to our audience? Will people click on it? Will they pay to click on it via a paywall?. Is it likely to increase traffic or subscriptions?

Edition ~ Is it an original story? If it is, do enough people care about it?

Condition ~ Where did the story come from? Is it valid? Is it true? With the internet providing so many fake stories and in-accurate accounts, many publishers are now spending more time searching for the source of a story, than they are researching the story itself.

Fashion ~ Is it timely. The story might be powerful and relevant today, but if somebody else published it minutes or hours before, the story will have different values to different publishers. This is the reason many publishers now use computer algorithms now sadly write content, just so that they can be the first to publish, if only by a few seconds.

Nostalgia ~ Will people look back on this story and associate us with the content? If we break the story, champion an alternative view or use our audiences data to personalise the content for each person, what will the likely outcome be? Increased reach, share-of-voice, improved sentiment, in-app purchases, subscriptions, uplift in reader loyalty...

According to traditional journalists, there are up to 8 factors which dictate the "news-worthiness" of a potential piece of content (ie. how valuable it is) ~ and those include; Impact, Timeliness, Prominence, Proximity, The Bizarre, Conflict, Currency, and Human Interest.

A Great Story is Not Enough?

I have always been of the opinion that having a great story is not enough anymore ~ certainly not in content marketing. There is too much noise. You need to understand your audience, what they want, and exactly when they want it. There should always be at least some level of science behind the storytelling.

From a brand perspective we must understand the exact value that said story is delivering to your business. The distinction we need to make is whether a story is simply a nice piece of creative writing, "a piece of art having no purpose other than itself" as my book collector friends would say. In which case, any valuation would be in-accurate.

Create epic sh*t is not a content strategy". Mark W Schaefer

If I speak to my advertising and marketing friends though, that view is seen to be verging on negligent. As marketers we often claim that brands should measure the exact value of every word, every positive tweet, every video view or every shared article. To suggest that it is not possible to put an exact economic value on every piece of branded storytelling does the entire marketing industry a dis-service. Just because you may not know how to do it, does not mean it can't be done.

Putting a Value on a Brand

I am fascinated by the Interbrand Top 100 Rankings and look forward to reading the report each September, but I have always been highly suspicious about the way that they measure the intangible. How do you put a value on what Coca-Cola really means when people hear, read or watch any of their branded content. Google "Mark Ritson Interbrand" and you'll read many outstanding articles covering the whole debacle. This one in particular is a great read.

The Interbrand story is interesting because it encapsulates a lot about how marketers think ~ often trying to put a value on something that seems impossible to measure. This point became a headline industry story in 2012 when Interbrand and Millward Brown measured the value of Apple. Interbrand said the company was worth $98Billion. Millward Brown (who actually had more consumer data to measure for their valuation) argued that it was worth $178Billion. In a world were we are trying to justify our creative work and measurement methods to executives, it makes me wonder...

Why should any executive ever trust a marketer when they can't even agree on the value of the world's largest company, to within $80Billion!?

Putting a Value on a Story

Agencies such as Bain have had a bit more success in valuing the 'intangible'. They worked with Dell tasked with helping the brand understand the value of their customer's conversations. One of the outcomes of their research was that they discovered that when they run certain campaigns, a positive tweet from a good customer is worth $12. In valuing brand conversations about @Dell on Twitter, they also discovered that they can understand the economic impact that negative comments have on both brand value and customer lifetime value.

Analysts even figured out that if somebody says something negative about Dell ~ it takes up to five positive comments to neutralise it. Dell have a famous case study about how they valued their content that was so powerful, a whole book was written about it. The book, Ultimate Question 2.0 explains how Dell added almost $168m (in sales not brand value) as a direct result of better storytelling and better customer service.

I haven't just read about valuing a story though ~ I have worked on campaigns where I have seen stories valued. One campaign I worked on for a large gaming company last year had an ROI of 1400% or 140:1. (For every ￡1 invested in branded content, the client saw ￡140 in direct sales). Even on Facebook, there are many brands who have gone to great lengths (like Rovio and Zynga) to put a commercial value on their Facebook audiences and the stories that they share. From a brand perspective, all of this proves that you can put a value on story.

Whoever tells the best stories goes home with the most marbles”.

Is it enough then, that Monty the Penguin is delivering an uplift of 908% in brand traffic for John Lewis? It's a brand metric (deemed worthless by many marketers). Or should John Lewis marketers ensure sure that every tweet from @MontythePenguin is published with just the right tracking code, enabling them to link to sales down-stream, and identify specific authors and influencers? One is a traditional brand view. One is an economic view. Which is correct?

Let's have a quick look at both views: Authentic Storytellers v Brand Marketers?

Peter Thiel debated this recently at Dublin Web Summit, when asked about the issue of valuing a start-up and monetising a new technology. Thiel suggested that our world view is actually wrong, and to illustrate his point, he asked what would we do if aliens landed tomorrow? Seriously...

If aliens landed we would not be concerned with economic questions like, can we monetise them, should we film the landing and sell the rights, will there be merchandise? ~ We would be concerned about the political questions such as what does this mean, why are they here, are they friendly, are we safe, will they kill us...?

In having this debate, Peter Thiel, the co-founder of PayPal and one of the world's most prolific tech investors was suggesting that the value of an entity can not, and should not, always be measured. Curious coming from someone who invests in things and values them for a living. In Peter's opinion, we are too quick to take an economic view and often too slow to explore a political (or humanitarian) one.

Many brands demand an economic level of analysis and accounting, and so they should. Their objective is in most cases to make money and deliver shareholder value. But I was challenged on this further when I met a large automotive manufacturer recently and I was surprised to learn that they were happy enough to just to publish fantastic brand creative. They believed that all engagements would have an impact on the brand upstream, somewhere, but they had no immediate plans to link that content to sales.

This was a short-sighted view in my opinion as a marketer, but one that works for them ~ as it is a view held by everyone in their organisation, right up to the CEO. If you have buy-in from the board and the organisation is doing well, who are we to suggest that a more commercial approach is going to add value? In this instance, it’s quite possible that trying to value every piece of branded content might have the opposite effect ~ creating silo’s, splitting opinion between content creators, and upsetting the unity between the different business units. In a quest to value content they could de-value their brand and employee happiness...

Conclusion?

It's a great debate and one I'd love to continue. I am always looking to put a value on a piece of branded content and find a way to measure it, but perhaps I should sometimes be less hasty when looking to value a story? Even Einstein, the king of measurement, once said,

Not everything that counts can be counted".

It seems to me then that the issue for content marketers and brand storytellers, is not whether we can measure stories and put a value on them, but rather whether we should?

Discuss...

• If you are interested in reading about how Dell valued their conversations and stories, a whole book was written about it. I highly recommend it ~ Ultimate Question 2.0 by Fred Reichheld. You can also read a short synopsis of it here. ultimate question