E97: Sacha Gorelik

Richard Hill:
Hi there, I'm Richard Hill, the host of eComOne. Welcome to our 97th episode.

Richard Hill:
In this episode, I speak with Sacha Gorelik, copywriter and chief at Sacha Gorelik Copywriting. Sacha's focus is brand storytelling and copywriting for eCommerce stores. A fantastic topic that I know quite usually gets skipped over when store owners have to talk about themselves and their brand, and even more so when they have to break down their products and finally write a unique persuasive on brand copy for their products, especially if you have thousands of SKUs.

Richard Hill:
In this episode, Sacha talks about brand storytelling and why it's so important for your store, personalizing your copy for your audience, how brands can pinpoint their brand voice. And we dive into companies that are using storytelling to their advantage. If you enjoy this episode, hit the subscribe or follow button wherever you are listening to the podcast, so you're always the first to know when a new episode is released. Now let's head over to this fantastic episode.

Richard Hill:
This episode is brought to you by eComOne, eCommerce marketing agency. eComOne works purely with eCommerce stores, scaling their Google shopping, SEO, Google search, and Facebook ads through a proven performance driven approach. Go to eComOne.com/resources for a host of amazing resources to grow your paid and organic channels. How you doing Sacha?

Sacha Gorelik:
I'm good. Thanks. Yeah. And yourself?

Richard Hill:
Great. Yeah, I am really good. Really good. It's the first episode I've done for a little while. So really looking forward to getting stuck in. I know we've had to postpone a couple of episodes recently, because of the dreaded COVID unfortunately kicked in at my end a few weeks ago. So I'm back on it now. So looking forward to getting stuck in, so.

Sacha Gorelik:
Sounds good.

Richard Hill:
I think let's get into it. So how did you get into this crazy word of entrepreneurship?

Sacha Gorelik:
That's a great question. Well, it kind of all started after I was expecting my second kid and I wanted to start my own business. So I had this crazy idea of building a Etsy style website for Israeli artists. And honestly, like it was a huge failure in terms of the financial aspects, but it was a huge success, because what it kind of taught me was that I is amazing at telling stories and telling the artist's stories and writing descriptions about all their beautiful products.

Sacha Gorelik:
And at the time I was really down on myself, like I'd wasted all this money and wasted all this time. But then someone said to me, she's like Sacha, "You're a really amazing writer." So I was like, oh, okay. And then just kind of set up an Upwork profile. And then I grew from there. And now have sort of my own boutique agency and work primarily with Amazon sellers and eCommerce store owners. Yeah.

Richard Hill:
That's a great story. Isn't it? I think started out doing one thing and you know, you learn a lot on the way I think is the short version.

Sacha Gorelik:
Definitely.

Richard Hill:
Yeah. I could write a book about failures, if you want to call them failures, but obviously they, some amazing learnings along the way and you find your strength, don't you? I think we, I think that really resonate with the listeners. I think probably the sooner you find the things that you're good at and understand the things that you're great at, and the things you enjoy and maybe the things that you're maybe not so enthused about, or maybe get other people to help you with those.

Richard Hill:
I think the sooner you sort of can spend time in your flow as people call it. Yeah. It's a fantastic. So copywriting then I think that's something that's definitely not in my flow, if I'm honest. I say that. I'm okay. But I have some lot smarter people that help me with it, I think [crosstalk 00:03:25].

Sacha Gorelik:
No, it's good. You got to know your strengths, so I'm sure you're brilliant at other things

Richard Hill:
That's, that's it. So obviously eCommerce copywriting, eCommerce stores listening. There's a lot of things we can dive into, but I think let's talk about storytelling, on brand storytelling. I think the stores that are listening in, that will ... tell us about that and what you're thoughts are on brand storytelling.

Sacha Gorelik:
So this is what I love and the fact that you've said the word storytelling is perfect, because I think what a lot of people get caught up on is a brand story. And a story is something that has a beginning, a middle, and an end. And it's very closed ended. And if you just have a static kind of brand story, your customer is more of like a viewer, as opposed to a participant or part of your tribe.

Sacha Gorelik:
What I really think is brand storytelling is projecting like a view of the world or like a set of values that people can believe in. Something that's bigger than the actual products that you're selling. And it's really just about, brand storytelling is creating an experience for customers. So it's in everything that you do. It's going to be in your website or emails that you send out, or the packaging that you create. Everything you do is going to tell a story.

Sacha Gorelik:
And I think that's one of the things that makes Apple stand out, is that they don't have a specific brand story. Okay. We all know about Steve Jobs and the things he said, but really Apple's story is this immersive experience they create with everything that they do. So that's basically in a nutshell, what I believe brand storytelling is. It's something that's happening all the time. Yeah.

Richard Hill:
It's organic, it's happening, it's everything within your organization. Every touch point is sort of contributing to that sort of business. So it's almost like when I think about, when we say about our brand, from the moment maybe you walk into your physical store or the moment you hit that website in our case more so, in every touch point from then onwards, it's sort of part of that brand. But then brand storytelling will be more so that in connection with sort of maybe his brand is sort of modern day brand, but what people will say about you.

Sacha Gorelik:
Yeah. Exactly. It's like keeping that consistent message, so it's always recognizable and people will always know who you are when you put stuff out, because they're like, "Oh I know that brand voice. So I know that personality." Or you just enjoy buying their products.

Richard Hill:
Yeah, yeah. So the guys that are listening in and thinking, great, that also sounds quite straightforward. But how are our listeners and what would you say about people that try and incorporate brand storytelling into their business? Give us some sort of actual ideas of how you can implement that.

Sacha Gorelik:
Yeah. Ideas of how you can do that. So, I mean, I always just think that you need to really start off by creating like a brand promise. Like what is this big overarching purpose or promise that you want people to kind of believe in. That's one side of things. So just to give an example, let's say you sell some kind of mineral makeup that's like really natural. So obviously the product you're selling is for people that want to like sort of go away from chemical based products and all that kind of stuff. But really you can go deeper than that and think about what's this overall promise that you want to make? And maybe it's that mineral makeup is better for your skin. And it's actually some kind of like beauty treatment for your skin, that not only makes you look beautiful, but also imbues your skin with like good stuff.

Sacha Gorelik:
I'm just making this up as I go along. But I'm just saying that it's really about going deeper. But then on the other side of creating a narrative, is really listening to what customers want. So like asking yourself, what role does my brand play in the customer's life? So there's actually a sort of urban legend about Pampers versus Huggies. Okay. We're going down the nappy.

Richard Hill:
Okay. Yeah.

Sacha Gorelik:
But basically they both sell exactly the same product. They're both selling nappies or diapers for our American listeners. And they were going head to head with trying to capture more of the market. And Pampers at one point, I think in their campaigns was going on about how theirs keeps your baby dry. And they kept going on at these features. But then eventually they spoke to parents and they asked them, what do you want? What is it you want from us?

Sacha Gorelik:
And what parents really wanted was for a brand to help them through all those different milestones and help them with sleep training, and help them with what to feed your baby, and when to feed them. And if you go on Pamper's website now, you'll actually see that they have way more on there than just the nappies that they're selling. They've got all these different apps and quizzes and helpful sleep trainings and stuff like that. And apparently they actually have more market share than Huggies, which is really interesting because Huggies still kind of focuses on just the actual product, whereas I think what Pampers managed to do was create this sort of story and this narrative for people to fall in love with. And that's what customers wanted.

Richard Hill:
Yeah. I think that's so going to resonate with our listeners. Obviously it's not just right, we're just buying a skew, a products. It's a ... I don't know a description for a nappy, but I'll try. Ultimately a medium nappy.

Sacha Gorelik:
Exactly, exactly.

Richard Hill:
It doesn't sound that great, but if you're going onto the site, it's explaining things that really resonate with you, as a mother or a father obviously, when you're going through the different, from when the baby's born all the way through to when he's out of nappies. And obviously the different types of nappies and educating them through, from when it's a real young newborn, all the way through to a toddler, to then going off to school and soon after that maybe. I'm sure there's a lot of education or pieces clearly, that will be a lot of pillar and clusters that you can discuss and various content.

Sacha Gorelik:
I mean, just like a completely different brand example. If you look at a brand like Alo Yoga, they're like one of the biggest yoga brands in the world right now. And what they did was really kind of create a narrative for people to believe in. So they have their studio and they have their yoga training. They don't just sell ... they're not just another brand selling leggings. They really ... and they've got tons of brand ambassadors, and yoga teachers online, that really tell the story as well. And that people love it, because they want to be part of that tribe. And I think that's something that people ... it's definitely, you have to do a lot of in depth, like strategy on positioning and all that kind of stuff. And it's not something that's going to come together overnight. It's going to be like a process.

Richard Hill:
So maybe let's dive into that then. So we are sort of incorporating storytelling, but how can a business sort of really incorporate that sort of personalization, really make it personal for their audience?

Sacha Gorelik:
Yeah. That's a great question. So, personalization is something that is becoming much more popular, I think, on like different Shopify websites. And there's a lot of technology that people can use to really personalize the experience and find out what customers want. So for instance, quizzes that come up on websites to find out exactly what you are looking for. Or even different ... what a lot of brands do, is they get ... you go on their website, you start shopping and then you have a popup, "Oh hey, take 10% off."

Sacha Gorelik:
And you're like, "I don't want 10% off yet. I didn't even look at the website. I don't know what I want yet." But if brands really started more listening to the customer and then personalizing those emails that you send out to them, you're going to find that you're going to connect so much better and really understand what customers want. Another example is, that I saw was a really good example was Marks and Spencer's recently because the shipped to Israel. And every time I added something to cart, another cute message, like another popup came up and it said, "Sacha, we love your style."

Sacha Gorelik:
So it was like so cool, because they were making it very personalized, as if I'd made like a really good choice. And I think that a lot of brands can incorporate that very easily in their marketing, like on their websites. You just need like Sleeknote or one of these tools that creates popups. And then you can create these really nice messages. Well, let's say somebody added like clothing to cart and they added a sweater. Imagine if the brand then said, "Oh, do you need a pair of pants to match that?" Or you know, "What event are you going to?" Like, what are you looking for? So those kind of things can really help people, help brands connect better with their customers.

Richard Hill:
Yeah. I think gone are the days where you sort of go to the site and bang, 5%, 10%. It's just so sort of crude, isn't it? Yeah, of course everybody likes a bit of cheeky discount and we can figure that out I'm sure. There's a right time for it, but I think, yeah, definitely the smarter brands, like you talked there about, some sort of clothing type brands. There's obviously a lot of potential to cross sell, up sell. We know that.

Richard Hill:
Occasion. Talk about that. What's the occasion? There's a dress for any occasions, but they're very, very different dresses, aren't they, depending on whether you're going out for a party night out or a work type thing, or that personalized piece. Asking the right questions at the right time. Obviously a lot of different technology there. You mentioned Sleeknote. I'm not familiar with that actually. Is that something you recommend?

Sacha Gorelik:
I just looked into that recently and they seem to have some really cool possibilities of like customizing these popups and messages that you send on the site as people are browsing. I'm not really a techy person, but I just thought it was really cool. So yeah. I always like imagine, just talking about the personalization, like imagine if you walked into a shop and you were like accosted by the sales assistant. Like here we have sales, we have sales, come to the sales.

Richard Hill:
It's 10% off. It's like, whoa.

Sacha Gorelik:
But really in real life, when you go into a shop, they usually let you browse for a little bit. And then the sales assistant comes up to me and says, "Oh, can I help you with something?" So I think that we really need to sort of humanize our brand more and think of it in like a real way, as if it's a shop. But yeah, it's happening virtually, but you can still have those personal touches.

Richard Hill:
Yeah, no, that's great. So obviously I'm looking at your sort of profile. You've been working with Amazon and Amazon product owners, and obviously selling products on Amazon. And I think that's something that we get quite a lot of questions about at our agency. We specialize more so in SEO on the websites and not on Amazon. But talk to me about product descriptions and how can a business use sort of copy. We're talking about copy. So let's jump over to Amazon a little bit.

Sacha Gorelik:
Yeah. Okay. Yeah. Amazon has definitely been my like sort of specialty over the last five years. Well the way brands can really stand out, is by doing a lot of, I'd say work before you start writing, before you get your listing up. You need to really have a strategy as to how you want to position yourself in the market. What kind of personalities do you want to have? Do you want to be ... there's the 12 archetypes in marketing, where it's like you have the hero brand, the explorer, are you more rugged, or are you more of a tranquil, calming, caring brand? There's different ways to really position yourself.

Sacha Gorelik:
And obviously the visual identity is super important as well. But in terms of actual product descriptions. So I always like to understand what a brand's tone of voice is? Do they want to be funny? Do they want to be entertaining? Or do they want to be just more formal and educational type of products? And it really depends. And I think it's super interesting, because you can have two products that are essentially selling the exact same thing, for instance like with supplements. You have a company that's very formal, very scientific, because that's the type of persona they want to have online.

Sacha Gorelik:
Whereas there's another supplements company I've seen online, that's called the Happy Hippie. And they're going for the more earthy, organic, crunchy community. And so obviously it's like they're essentially selling the exact same thing. But yet they're going after two completely different audiences. So I think if you do that work, you'll going to have, first, you're going to have so much more success, because you are speaking to a specific audience. You're going to resonate with them and your tribe is going to want to buy from you, because they kind of see themselves in your brand. Yeah.

Richard Hill:
So not sort of just diving in and, "Oh, we're selling ..." I quite often have my Prince mug with me on most episodes.

Sacha Gorelik:
I love it.

Richard Hill:
It's quite apt actually, because the super bowl was on yesterday and the best ever halftime super bowl performance was Prince so many years ago, for those that don't know. So yeah, just trying to think then. So I think, yeah, quite often I think a lot of companies are guilty of, "Oh we've got our mug, we've got our Prince mug." Right. So this Prince mug, obviously that brand element, that brand angle, that edginess to the brand or not if the first piece of work you need to look at.

Sacha Gorelik:
Yeah, 100%.

Richard Hill:
That sort of style. So what would you say about Amazon product descriptions versus sort of eCommerce store descriptions? How do they differ? Or do they differ?

Sacha Gorelik:
With Amazon you have quite a lot of limitations, I would say, in terms of like the character count that you can use and the words that you can use can trigger all sorts of things when selling on Amazon. Get listings taken down. Whereas if you have your own website, you have much more control yeah of what you can put on the page. So for instance with Amazon, you have to apply for what's called a brand registry, if you want to add the a plus content, which is sort of like enhanced images, it's extra content that you can add below the main product description.

Sacha Gorelik:
And that is really cool. And I love doing that for clients, where we add ... I would say it's sort of like a landing page kind of thing, where you have a set of like five to seven images, [inaudible 00:16:53], and you can add different texts below. But it's very limited, because you only have the modules available from Amazon. Whereas if you have your own Shopify store, there are all sorts of plugins that really let you customize the page. You can add video content, you can add different infographics.

Sacha Gorelik:
A lot of Shopify stores really do stick to the basic layout, where they have the image on the left hand side and then a little bit of text on the right hand side. But there are companies and brands now that are really, instead of just creating a boring product page, they're more turning each product page into a landing page. And just adding, making it sort of like a journey for customers to go on until they hit add to cart, as opposed to just giving them, "Oh, here's a little bit of information. And I don't know whether or not you're going to buy it or not," but really turning a product page into more of a landing page. And then yeah.

Richard Hill:
Yeah. I think for the listeners, there's so much opportunity. I think what we're saying is, and what you're saying, obviously on Amazon a little bit more limited, but still obviously it's ... obviously there are sort of a lot of volumes are just sitting right there on the Amazon product page. But for your stores, you obviously you can do so much more. And it's so important to do so much more than just the standard ... gone are the days where you can sell a set of products, import your maybe manufacture or product descriptions, and think that you're going to sell product.

Richard Hill:
That's sort of the basic requirements. You think about those product pages. There's so much more to them now, whether that's the price, the discounted price, the element, the upsell, the cross sell, the related products, the videos, the multiple images, the multiple zoom on the images, options to pay, very clear.

Sacha Gorelik:
Exactly.

Richard Hill:
Gone are the days where you can just do maybe, just show, "Yeah, we take MasterCard and Pay Pal," which is 10 years old sort of thinking. There's a lot of different things we can do.

Sacha Gorelik:
Exactly. And now a lot of brands are doing user generated content as well on their product pages, which I think is brilliant, because it just builds so much trust. When you have pictures from your Instagram feeds on there or even video testimonials from customers throughout sort of the landing page. Yeah, it just builds like really a lot of trust.

Richard Hill:
Yeah. That's a great one, isn't it? I think the content you can get from product reviews and whether that's video more so now seems to be very a lot of the ... all of the review companies that we work with all have obviously that function to then do a video review. That video review can be placed. All that fresh content coming through from your social, with people are using different hashtags. You can obviously highlight those hashtags and pull those through. If you've got relevant hashtags for those product pages.

Richard Hill:
Yeah, product description. I think it is one of those as an eCom store owner, I think they ... I know there'll be a lot of people listening that are marketeers, store owners, agency owners as well, where you've got that sort of 50,000 SKUs, 20,000 SKUs, 10s and 10s of thousands of SKUs. Obviously it's a big project.

Sacha Gorelik:
Yeah, definitely.

Richard Hill:
Do you have any additional sort of tips around, or maybe frameworks specifically to share with the audience, that will maybe help with that piece?

Sacha Gorelik:
So, I mean, when you work with thousands of SKUs, I would say that that's definitely ... it's going to take a while to really get everything looking polished and everything like that. And I don't think it's something that people need to freak out about and overnight fix everything, which is just not going to happen. You need to be realistic about stuff. So in terms of like framework. I have a framework for storytelling and how brands can really create sort of a narrative, that I would like to share.

Richard Hill:
Yes.

Sacha Gorelik:
It's not really helpful though for people with thousands of SKUs. I would just say that, that is going to be a work in progress that can be done over time. And again, what I see is that brands can still succeed without some of these elements. There are people who sell millions of dollars worth of products and their stuff is garbage, because there's always going to be two types of customers.

Sacha Gorelik:
You're going to have customers that really care about the brand they're buying from. And there's going to be who don't give a crap and they'll just buy whatever's cheapest. So it depends what kind of brand you want to be and which kind of customer you want to attract. So that's what I have to say about that.

Sacha Gorelik:
But anyway, this framework that I created it's, I kind of had created it because I was reverse engineering brands and brand narrative, and trying to of figure out how people could create that for their own companies. And I like to call it the rainforest story layers. And I haven't really put this out online anywhere yet, so your audience is probably going to be one of the first people to hear it.

Richard Hill:
Thank you.

Sacha Gorelik:
So if you imagine in the rainforest, you have actually different layers. You've got the top layer of the forest, which gets the most sunlight and that's called the emergence layer. So I like to call that, what brands need to do, is that they need to have this big overarching brand promise. And that's the way that they view the world. And that is going to help them kind of stay on the right path and create content that's very consistent with that brand promise.

Sacha Gorelik:
And then in the rainforest you have what's called the canopy layer. And the canopy layer is apparently in the rainforest, it protects from strong winds and storms, and all that kind of stuff, but those are your brand values. That's what I think. And I think that keeps you very strong and consistent even in the face of competition, because if you are consistent about your values and you really believe in them, let's say sustainability is important to you, or transparency in how you make your product, or fair trade, whatever it is. Stick to those values and don't let anyone else sort of bring you down.

Sacha Gorelik:
And then what you have in the rainforest is it's actually called the under story layer. Which is funny that it's called story, but that's what it's called in science. So the under story layer is of like an underlying layer of vegetation. And I think that for brands, this should be where your static brand story gets created. So once you have your big overarching brand promise, then you have your values. Then you can create your brand story.

Sacha Gorelik:
A lot of brands go straight for this hero story that they want to create with the hero's journey. And they make their customer the centre of the story, all the rest of it. Yeah. You know what, when you create a brand story and you put it on your website, I don't know if people really see it. Even if they see it, are they going to even remember it? That I don't know.

Sacha Gorelik:
I don't know how they give an impact it's going to have on your sales, but if it's consistent with your emergence layer, with your narrative and with your values, then it's a good thing to have. But it's sort of a very static piece of content. And then the next layer in my rainforest layers is the forest floor. And on the forest floor, this is like a whole tangled jungle of life happening. If you went on a journey just now through the Amazon jungle, you're going to be backing your way through bushes and all the rest of it.

Sacha Gorelik:
So on the forest floor, I think this is where sort of the active storytelling comes into play. And that's where you can tell stories through email campaigns, on packaging text. It's where customers are telling stories as well. It's the content they're posting online and talking about your brand, and this sort of layer of your brand story, you might not always have control over what people say about your brand, but you can sort of direct them with your narrative, and with your values, and all those things. So that's the way I see brand storytelling. I see it in layers and I don't see it as this one static brand story that all of a sudden, somehow people are going to believe in. I think it's just definitely something that [crosstalk 00:24:38].

Richard Hill:
Yeah. I like that a lot. I like that a lot. Because obviously you've got that overriding, but it's all the different layers, how you're doing different elements of your business, whether that's on the store, how you're interacting on the packaging, the delivery process, the service. Yeah, that's brilliant. All right.

Sacha Gorelik:
Yeah, thank you. [ Crosstalk 00:24:56]. I'm going to create like a download for people that maybe you can send out to your audience afterwards, like with the graphics, so that it's more understandable.

Richard Hill:
Yeah, that would be great. That would be great. We'll add it to the episode when it launches [crosstalk 00:25:09].

Sacha Gorelik:
Awesome. Okay.

Richard Hill:
So what other opportunities do you think brands are missing out on when it comes to storytelling? I mean, obviously you went through a lot there. There's a lot of different things.

Sacha Gorelik:
Yeah. I did.

Richard Hill:
Some opportunities. So an eCom store owner, marketeers is listening in right now. What are maybe some actionable things that maybe you've seen consistently that brands are missing out on, when it comes to sort of getting that brand storytelling and brand across? What opportunities do you think, oh, they're not doing that, they're not doing that? What are things maybe quite actionable where they're going to pause the episode now, after you go through this bit, and maybe go and go have a word with the people that are responsible, probably themselves in reality, to go and get some action?

Sacha Gorelik:
Yeah, definitely. So I think that one of the biggest opportunities that people might be missing out on, is the post purchase phase, where I think people put a lot of effort into the marketing, into getting people onto their websites, getting them to go through the checkout. But then afterwards, that sort of post-purchase phase, following up with customers and really listening to what they have to say. And also just the actual packaging experience. I feel like having really, really nice content and copy on your packaging, really surprising messages can really, it's exciting for the customer.

Sacha Gorelik:
So for instance, I once bought a pair of shoes and when I opened the box, inside the box it said, you can never have too many pairs of shoes. And then it said, well healed since, I don't know what year. And I thought it was so cute and so funny, because honestly you don't want to have buyer's regret. You want people to have to get the product and then feel like this was a really good decision. And I think you can do these really cute messages and tell stories, not stories with a beginning, middle and an end, but like tell very, very micro stories or just message that embody your brand. And I think that's really cool.

Richard Hill:
That really resonates. During lockdown, I think like a lot of people or one of the lockdowns, I signed up to quite a few subscription things. And one of them, I bought myself a well, a fancy sort of grinding coffee machine, probably about 18 part the beginning of lockdown.

Sacha Gorelik:
Nice.

Richard Hill:
Yeah. And then it's like, right, okay. So we need to sort out the coffee beans to go in it and signed up for the various subscriptions and the coffee bean brands or the subscription brands. Some of those really got it down, I feel like.

Sacha Gorelik:
They do.

Richard Hill:
And so I'm subscribing and my first package comes beautifully packaged. And it's quite a low value product. I think it was like 12 pounds, 13 pounds. And that was for two coffees. So it's like seven pounds-ish per coffee, a little bit less delivered. So it's really quite low value, but a subscription. And each coffee was immaculately packed and it states down that it was ground like yesterday or the day before. So it's uber, uber fresh. And then there's a little card with each coffee talking about the family of growers, or that grower.

Sacha Gorelik:
See, that's beautiful. That's beautiful storytelling.

Richard Hill:
Yeah, and it talks about the family and the heritage. And then obviously the specifics of the coffee. So then you become a bit of a coffee nerd. And you got all the different tones and flavours in the coffee. And then you can adjust your subscriptions as a little bit more maybe chocolatey, or a little bit more ... and then each, and I've been a member of that one for probably 18, 19 months now.

Sacha Gorelik:
You sold me. Now I want to get it.

Richard Hill:
Yeah. And it's sort of ... yeah, it's brilliant. Yeah, I can think of a few examples. It works really well with subscription, because obviously ultimately, and obviously getting those people to come back to your stores. The guys that are listening, if you want to get people to come back, this sort of brand storytelling is obviously a huge part of it.

Sacha Gorelik:
Yeah, definitely. I think that's a brilliant example that you just gave. Yeah.

Richard Hill:
Yeah.

Sacha Gorelik:
That was really good.

Richard Hill:
Yeah, so I've got a lot of coffee in the cupboards.

Sacha Gorelik:
Okay. I'll come around next time I'm in England.

Richard Hill:
So brand voice then, so I think-

Sacha Gorelik:
Oh, this one. Yeah.

Richard Hill:
Yeah. What would you say? People are listening in, I think, and think, well, how do we really get to the nitty, gritty of our brand? I think quite often this is the bit that I think people struggle with.

Sacha Gorelik:
Yeah.

Richard Hill:
What would you say about that?

Sacha Gorelik:
What I would say actually is this is kind of not really conventional advice, but when you listen to people talking on the street, or on the radio, or on YouTube, or whatever it is, do you want your brand to sound like that? Do you want your brand to sound like that comedian? Or do you want to sound like the guy that runs the corner shop? How do you want to come across online? And really thinking of it in terms of like a real person can really help brands, I think nail their voice, because you're really ... you're not thinking of your brand as this like entity or company. You're thinking of it and more as a person.

Sacha Gorelik:
So that's one way of doing it. And then another way is really looking at your competitors, because obviously you're going to have people in the market selling similar solutions to what you are. But if they're all really dry and boring, maybe you can be the brand that's funny. And that way you can really stand out. So really just looking at what other people are doing and then really trying to position yourself differently. You can also take a sentence and write it in different ways, and see if it fits your brand. So I like to do this as like a exercise, but you can write one thing and then try and write it in a funny way, in a very formal way, in a very salesy way. And then see kind of which one you think is good for your brand. Yeah.

Richard Hill:
Yeah. That's a really good idea. I like that. Yeah. So you're saying the same thing-ish, but in a edgy way, a funny way, a very professional way, a comedy way.

Sacha Gorelik:
Or a flirty way or whatever you think it might be. Whatever suits your brand, whatever it is that you're selling. Some brands, I think it's just obvious what kind of voice they should have sometimes. For instance, if you're like a yoga brand or a brand for new mothers, you're going to want to have that kind of calming effect on people and you're not going to be like hyper energetic voice, whereas for a sports brand, you're going to definitely want to have more motivational, energetic kind of voice. That's what I think.

Richard Hill:
That's great. So obviously you've worked with a lot of brands. You've written a lot of product description, I imagine.

Sacha Gorelik:
I have.

Richard Hill:
We always joke about this at our agency, because I think ... I don't ... if we had a count on it, it would be ... we've been doing eCom, well I've been doing it for 20ish years.

Sacha Gorelik:
Wow.

Richard Hill:
So I think in terms of product descriptions, I haven't written any for quite some time. That's for sure. But I know as a company, we're writing them every day, every day. So yeah, it's quite an interesting topic for us in the agency. But yeah. So tell us about some brands that you think are doing that storytelling really well, and they're sort of really embracing it, and it really has helped them to grow.

Sacha Gorelik:
Yeah. So one of ... I mean, I can't really give examples from my own clients, because I have to protect their privacy obviously, especially with Amazon community. Everyone's really like protective of their ideas and their products and everything. But just in general, I was recently shopping. I wasn't shopping, sorry was on Pinterest as women do. And I was looking at my dream kitchen and then all of a sudden this dress popped up onto my feed and I wasn't shopping for a dress, but I was really interested, because it looked really nice. And it was really like my style. I don't know how they know that, but they know. Yeah. And it led me to the Free People website, which is actually, I wasn't really familiar with the brand, but apparently it's owned by urban Outfitters, which is a really big brand.

Sacha Gorelik:
Anyway. So number one, the brand name intrigued me, Free People, because it's obviously going after free spirited people. And then I clicked on the dress. And dress itself had a name. It was called Love of my Life, MIDI dress. So I love that, because it already tells a story. And then it was part of what was called their endless summer collection. And I'll just read you what they wrote for their product description, which I thought was amazing. It said, "Whether you live the beach lifestyle year round or dream of making the great escape, the endless summer collection, it is full of our most effortlessly ethereal styles under the sun."

Sacha Gorelik:
And I thought that was brilliant, because it's just taking you from where you are, on your couch, doing nothing, to the beach.

Richard Hill:
The summer.

Sacha Gorelik:
To that summer vacation that you're like craving. And you think that you can get that. You tell yourself this story that you're going to get that by buying this Love of my Life dress. So I thought that was a brilliant example of storytelling on a website itself.

Sacha Gorelik:
And then just a completely different example. This is from a food brand, Dorset cereals, a very famous UK Muesli brand. So they don't just sell you a box of Muesli. They're selling you a lifestyle actually. They're selling you this very slow paced, Dorset lifestyle. And if you go on their blog, they have like this ... just all these different pub walks and just different things of selling you this ... it's not just breakfast, it's way more than that.

Sacha Gorelik:
But on their packaging, they've got this little text, which is something that people might read over breakfast. They've got, it said, "Go on, get to know your neighbours, learn to kayak, cook something brilliant, turn off your phone for the day, because when you savour the present, life suddenly becomes far more delicious." So I thought again, that was a brilliant example of storytelling. It's not a story with a beginning, middle, and end with characters in it. It's a story about the customer eating breakfast. They're telling you, go on, take life slower, turn of your phone. And then you start to like believe in-

Richard Hill:
You're there, aren't you. You're there.

Sacha Gorelik:
Yeah, you're there.

Richard Hill:
I actually went there slightly when you said that.

Sacha Gorelik:
Yeah, exactly. It really, it triggers that imagination and I think that, that's what ... there's so much room for creativity and brands can really do that.

Richard Hill:
No, that's brilliant. That's a couple of brilliant examples, guys. I think, yeah, really have a think about how you're going to incorporate that into your sort of brand storytelling descriptions. I think both of those examples, I'm thinking summer, I'm thinking, I'm thinking ... it's funny. We are actually as a family, very busy trying to organize various holidays at the moment. We booked a few things last night and that made me think, because you mentioned a place that we've been looking at going to. And it's like, yeah, it really makes you think doesn't it, which is what you're trying to do. You're trying to get them away from just thinking of it as a product. It's taking them to a different place potentially.

Sacha Gorelik:
Exactly. Yeah.

Richard Hill:
Well thank you Sacha. It's been an absolute blast. It's absolutely flown by.

Sacha Gorelik:
I know, right.

Richard Hill:
I do like to end every episode with a book recommendation. Do you have a book that you'd recommend to our listeners?

Sacha Gorelik:
I do actually. I have two book recommendations. One of them is the famous Seth Goden and he has a book called All Marketers are Liars, but then he has it crossed out and says, Tell Stories. So that is a really, really good book just about brand storytelling in general. And then another book, which is similar, is called the Fortune Cookie Principle. It's by Bernadette Jiwa. I think. If I'm pronouncing her name correctly. And that is also just another brilliant book full of really, really good examples of brand storytelling and yeah. And I've definitely been sort of impacted and learned a lot from those stories.

Richard Hill:
Brilliant. Well, we'll hook both those up in the show notes. So for the guys that are listening, what's the best way for them to reach out to you and find out more about you, Sacha.

Sacha Gorelik:
Yeah. So you can look up Sacha Gorelik Copywriting online, or I have another website called eCommcopywriter. And they're going to link to each other. So whichever one is easier to remember for people, but we can also put it into the show notes. Yeah. LinkedIn, Facebook, wherever is easiest for people to find me, ask me questions, or help them with their brand strategy and brand storytelling. Yeah.

Richard Hill:
Fantastic. Well, thanks for being a guest on the show. I look forward to catching up with you again soon.

Sacha Gorelik:
Thanks for having me.

Richard Hill:
Thank you. Bye, bye.

Sacha Gorelik:
Bye.

Richard Hill:
Thank you for listening to the eComOne eCommerce podcast. If you enjoyed today's show, please hit subscribe and don't forget to sign up to our eCommerce newsletter and leave us a review on iTunes. This podcast that have been brought to you by our team here at eComOne, the eCommerce marketing agency.