The Seven Habits of Highly Effective Storytelling Habit Two: Using Data to Tell a Story

By Chris Terry

Vice President, Communications Strategy

Telemetry

In this second installment of our “Seven Habits of Highly Effective Storytelling” series, I address how to bring sales and marketing data to life. This technique is obvious, yet underutilized: use data creatively to tell a compelling story that underscores messages to key stakeholders — in this case, analysts, pundits, stockholders, dealers, and buyers.

To reiterate an idea noted in my first piece in this series: a great story only starts with interesting data or knowledge of larger trends; it’s the job of the PR professional to engineer a story that the company wants told and that reporters, editors, and their readers would find interesting. 

Back in 2013, Ford leadership was trying to promote its sales strategy and brand new products in what it called the “supersegment,” which was the combination of subcompact, compact, midsize cars, and compact SUVs. These four segments comprised roughly half of the U.S. retail auto market and were dominated by import sales, especially on the coasts. We were tasked with promoting the new vehicles in this segment and finding ways of bringing attention to early successes with the latest products.

I had the good fortune of working closely with Ford U.S. Sales Analyst Erich Merkle, a kindred spirit with whom I had an excellent working relationship (he was the only guy I could go to lunch with and have wild conversations about John Locke, WWII aviation, or the Laffer Curve).  We co-developed story ideas based on his analysis of retail sales data.

At that time, baby boomers were retiring and downsizing vehicles just as millennials, a much larger cohort than we Gen X’ers, were buying their first new vehicles (hint: everyone likes stories about generational differences).

Erich flagged several news nuggets: In February of that year, the Escape and Fusion — by far Ford’s two bestselling vehicles in the super segment — were outselling the Honda Accord and CR-V and the Toyota RAV4 and Camry (!!) for the first time. Furthermore, in the first two months of 2013, Ford's super segment sales were up by over 30% in the Western and Southeastern U.S., two regions largely dominated by import sales in these segments. The Miami “gold coast” market, in particular, was a standout success.

Lest anyone accuse us of cherry-picking one month’s sales, we also noted, as part of their sales strategy, that from 2005 to 2012, Ford’s sales in the supersegment were up 123%.

Any one of these data points alone did not make a story, but combined and well told, the data could be pitched into a real business feature about Ford’s strategy and sales success, which was very real. 

Erich, I miss you, Chief; we were a machine. Say to everyone at Bangkok 96.