By New Zealand Story
The importance of telling your New Zealand Story
New Zealand Story provides businesses with free tools and resources to help communicate their unique attributes and value to international markets. David Boyd, founder of Foot Science International, says it’s been vital to tell a compelling story about Foot Science International and to spend time figuring out what makes their story stand out from others.
In today's world where our company comes from is increasingly important. Customers want to know about us. They want to know where we come from, how we work and what it means to be part of Foot Science International. By telling our story we deepen our relationships, grow loyalty and position our products as premium.
“In every market around the world, there are thousands of choices for a clinician. Therefore, the quality of how we tell our story is becoming more and more important. We have to really lift our game. For example, imagery has to be professional and most importantly it’s got to link back to our story and what’s relevant to our customers.
“There’s no point putting up a beautiful tourism image of New Zealand when we’re marketing to our medical market. For them the scientific background and efficiency of what we do is all important – so we’ve got to emphasise messages about New Zealand’s fresh thinking and resourcefulness,” says David.
Standing out at trade shows
The three New Zealand Story chapters – Open Spaces, Open Hearts and Open Minds – give businesses a framework to craft their own business story about the value they offer and how they are different. David Boyd says this is particularly important for his business when they attend trade shows around the world.
“Trade shows are a key part of our business strategy. They’re a highly competitive environment and trying to stand out from the thousands of much bigger companies is tough. So we're looking for every possible way that we can compete, to show our difference and tell a better story.
“The New Zealand Story is a very important part of us being able to differentiate ourselves. The New Zealand Story framework gives us a great starting point for how we talk about being from New Zealand. From there we add information specific to our business and make the story our own.
“We have edited our own version of the New Zealand Story brand video and often play it on our stand. We also use New Zealand Story imagery. The New Zealand Story asset library is great for us. It is a cost effective way of having quality images and videos. It means we can spend our money elsewhere,” says David.
The next iteration of Foot Science’s New Zealand Story
David Boyd is a firm believer in having a long term outlook when building his brand. In his view, businesses have to tell the same story over and over again to achieve cut through. But businesses also need to dial up different messages for different markets and sectors.
“We know that when most of our customers think of New Zealand they think of our beautiful open spaces and we’ve got to play on that. But we also know that for our distributors the reason that we’re in their top tier of suppliers is because of the people in our team. So we’ve got to make sure we’re also talking about what it means to come from New Zealand and our reputation for being open, accessible, down to earth and good to work with.
“Lastly and usually most importantly in our business, we’ve got to make sure that everything is underpinned by the Open Minds chapter. We do have world-class innovation in this country. We’ve got to talk about what this is and what this delivers for our customers. In our case we’re selling a therapeutic product, so we have to show how our products can be used as part of a treatment to solve a patient’s problems with their feet.
“The New Zealand Story did a lot of work surveying people to form the story we’re telling. Which has been fantastic. We've then taken our best guess at what our customers would be interested in and modified that to suit different markets.
“Next we’ll ask those customers what they think of it and what they would like to hear more about. Then we need to create different New Zealand Story assets for specific markets based on what resonates with each of them,” says David.