A short story about the value of story-telling in advertising and my barber, Carlos.

I’ve been going to my barber for a while; nearly 3 years now, once every 6 seeks or so. It’s a Dominican place that offers good, cheap cuts only 3-minute walk from my apartment. I don’t like to talk much during a haircut. I’m not there for a therapy or gossip session, I just want the job done. This isn’t because I’m a cold person by any stretch, I’m just an introvert by nature; while I like conversation and getting to know people, I like the safety in agreed-upon, comfortable silence even better when it comes to the person cutting my hair. And that works out just fine for Carlos, my barber – his conversational English isn’t that strong so he’s perfectly content chatting away in Spanish to the other barbers instead. He’s also known my cut since my third visit, so the routine is pretty simple: I walk in, say hi, sit down, and wait for him to finish so I can pay him. A simple exchange of cash for service.

I currently live in the Lower East Side of Manhattan, but I’m moving to a new apartment next month and it’s possible I’ll wind up in a different neighbourhood. The thought occurred to me as I sat down for my cut tonight that ‘this might be the last one I get from Carlos’. It wasn’t super sentimental or anything, but I did sit there as he set things up thinking I would tell him at the end that I was moving and thank him for being so great the past few years.

So, he starts to cut, and I guess I was in a good mood tonight or something because for some reason this time we actually got to chatting. We talked about his summer vacation with his family, what had been going on with his friends in the DR, a wedding I’d been to recently, and he recommended a place to go for a spa day on the west side. It was probably 10 minutes of solid conversation, as well as a few laughs. And while this may not sound like much, it was the first time we’d ever held that type of sustained, interesting, properly warm conversation. In that moment I felt a genuine fondness towards Carlos – like an old friend I’d only just met.

As he rounded out the haircut I returned to my earlier thinking, but the idea now seemed strange. What did it really matter that I was maybe moving further away? At most I’d be two neighbourhoods over – that’s not so far. And besides, I could always schedule something after work and drop in on the way home. No big deal. Something subtle but significant had changed in my perception of Carlos. He had become a friend.

The thing is, until this point, Carlos had very much represented to me a capable barber who could help me achieve the explicit goal of cutting my hair, efficiently. The cost – both from my wallet and in miles – was minimal, so I liked that. But until tonight, if I’m being frank, he was expendable.

So, why was it different all of a sudden?

At the very heart of it is story telling. Stories that create a path-in for emotional, human connection. Something that goes beyond the inherent value of the service. See, the haircuts I get from Carlos aren’t likely to change a whole lot (I’ve had the same haircut now for 10 years), but friendships grow. When you connect with someone you aren’t just providing value in the moment, it sets the foundation for something you can potentially build on over time. It’s the promise of future, long term value. A relationship.

This is what advertisers regularly get wrong. When they focus too much of rational persuasion, product features, and promotions they aren’t building true value into their consumer relationships that can improve and deepen over time. Maybe I initially came for the cheap, convenient, reliable haircut (the product features), but I’ll become a loyal customer who comes back – even when it’s not convenient – because of the relationship with Carlos. In the same way, rational-focused campaigns might be effective at bringing customers in over the short term, but they don’t strengthen the brand long term. In fact, as we know from the godfathers of research on this topic, Les Binet & Peter Fields, emotional campaigns are 87% more effective than rational campaigns at delivering very large profit growth over +3 years. Relationships create invaluable value. Value which, once created, has a lasting effect and can be built on incrementally. Value that helps you overcome consumer perception of cost, enabling brands to command a price premium or more easily convince consumers to go out of their way. Value that protects you from the risks of price elasticity at times of economic or category instability.

Just like Carlos’ telling me about his family, stories have always been the way we’ve connected. Stories form the very basis of human culture. And just because we invented selling things, or the internet, or social media that doesn’t mean we’ve fundamentally changed the way we build emotional relationships. Advertising has, in fact, only hi-jacked existing ancient brain structures and put them to a new purpose. To leave out story-telling in advertising is like removing culture. Like meeting someone who can’t speak your language – all the they become to you is what they can do for you, not what they can mean to you.

So, thanks, Carlos. And sorry it took us so long to have a good chat. See you in 6 weeks.