Five Stories Project

We empathize with characters because they are driven by the same things that drive us

Client: CMME, London. Art Direction and Design

The construction of personal stories responds to the fundamental people’s life-long task to give meaning to their lives. The most important brands’ task today is offering meaning, culture and values developing a narrative able to position themselves as meaningful for customers. My background in Psychology trained me in understanding the importance of human emotions in establishing which piece of experience deserves cognitive attention as well as space in the working, short and long-term memory.

Similarly to emotions, customers' interests and values mark their experience determining what is relevant to them. Their values and cultural archetypes guide their daily reality making them choose pieces of information that respond to their needs, values and lacks, and discard all the rest as 'noise'. I turn raw marketing data into beautiful visual stories that make brands relevant to their target audience connecting customers to a brand at an emotional level.

CMME offers mortgages to indipendent professionals. They briefed me to enhance quality and consistency integrating their new visual identity with new contents during their rebranding. This moodboard outlines a focus on entertainment (TV Series and Comedy) and sport on Facebook Customers' likes. I worked on integrating visual storytelling in the new creatives based on their interests on Comedy and TV series proposing stories able to entartain besides to deliver brand values and financial information.

Based on real contractors and independent professionals I outlined five main characters and their stories, tracking their life from their first contract to the moment they decided to buy an house. All the most important moments become contents for Advertising, communication, and social post. We empathize with characters because they are driven by the same things that drive us. Thus, stories speak personally to the customers besides to enhance brand engagement. They also permits to make difficult financial information and data easier to digest.

Every colour represents a main character and his personality and altogether they represent the full brand colour palette. Every character is also associated with a particular archetype (e.g. Emma, the Cancer Researcher with the archetype of the Hero) relevant for the target audience. The Climax is the most important element of a story - the hook that make people want to discover more and more to solve the conflict - strong stories hold our attention by waiting to reveal what happens next.

CMME became an useful helper on the moment of conflict of the five stories. Every story is articulated in 20 autonomous but interconnected episodes. Every episode is the content of marketing material making all the marketing production highly consistent. The same episode with adjustment on the length of the copy can equally became a social media post like a print ad.