Across consumer biotech, effective storytelling is a non-optional, required tool for building a new venture. Regardless of whether you are pursuing a business-to-business (B2B) or business-to-consumer (B2C) model, the ability to convey the benefits of your technology is of utmost importance to evangelizing newcomers to your venture. This remains true whether we’re talking about selling investors, consumers, would-be new hires, or potential partners.
The opportunity space for impactful storytelling in consumer biotech is still wide open as biotech is applied to new segments and industries from probiotics, to supplements, to personal care and textiles. In each vertical, strong storytelling is often the primary tool to achieve a first toe-hold of interest and validation from consumers or partners, persuading early-adopters to try a new biotech-enabled product.
From working with world-class founders that moonlight as master story-tellers, like Jasmina Aganovic of Arcaea, we’ve learned that the best CEO-evangelists both deeply understand the technology behind the products and also the psyche of their consumer. They can draw a clear through-line from the technology used, to the unique product attributes enabled, to the desires of the ultimate consumer. This skill-set requires being bilingual, translating from highly technical scientific concepts to often highly emotional consumer desires.
We’ve come to learn that this storytelling is an important burden for consumer biotech companies to take on themselves, as outsourcing it to downstream partners risks this work not being done or not being done well. As a consumer biotech selling new ingredients into an industry, relying on incumbent brands alone to tell your story risks leaving value on the table.
When companies are strong at this storytelling, that in itself builds a powerful source of differentiation. Bringing consumers along on the product development journey takes a storyteller that can span from the most technical aspects to the most value-based consumer desires. Connecting those two has the ability to open up the consumer's imagination to dream up and support a new genre of biotech-enabled products in the category.
Ultimately, we believe that the development of a new ingredient inherently must include the development of the brands and stories that are behind that ingredient. Whether delivering to a B2B customer or the end consumer, consumer biotechs are selling not just a new high-performance product, but also the story behind that product.
Jasmina Aganovic, CEO of Arcaea, masterfully bridges the languages of biotechnology, the personal care industry, and everyday consumers - See her in action on the Today Show: Link
We have the capacity to create everything we need to flourish – from food to medicine to new materials. As we adapt biology with compassion and care, the future is waiting to be written.
Let’s grow a new world together.
We have the capacity to create everything we need to flourish – from food to medicine to new materials. As we adapt biology with compassion and care, the future is waiting to be written.
Let’s grow a new world together.
