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Tension and struggle, heroes and villains are the stuff of great movies. As it turns out, they are also key to selling one’s ideas.
In the new film Steve Jobs, Oscar-winning screenwriter Aaron Sorkin divides the film into three acts with each act taking place backstage prior to three momentous product launches in Jobs’ career (the Mac in 1984, NeXT in 1988, and the iMac in 1998). The conflicts in Jobs’ personal life attracted Sorkin to the content. In an interview for Wired, Sorkin said he had an idea to “identify five or six conflicts in Steve’s life and have those conflicts play themselves out in these scenes backstage.” In an interview for TIME, Director Danny Boyle described Steve Jobs’ career as “Shakespearean extremes. You have tremendous unbelievable ambition, thwarted and failed, and then you have this comeback. And that is the stuff of drama.”
On January 24, 1984, Steve Jobs took to the stage at Apple’s annual shareholder meeting to introduce the first Macintosh. Jobs’ first words upon approaching the microphone set the narrative and introduced the villain. The antagonist in Jobs’ script would be played by IBM. The narrative is brilliantly constructed. Steve Jobs began,
It is 1958. IBM passes up the chance to buy a young, fledgling company that has invented a new technology called xerography. Two years later Xerox is born. IBM has been kicking themselves ever since. It is ten years later. Digital Equipment Corporation and others invent the mini-computer. IBM dismisses the mini-computer as too small to do serious mini computing and unimportant to their business…It is now ten years later. The late 70s. In 1977 Apple, a young fledgling company on the west coast invents the Apple II the first personal computer as we know it today. Apple dismisses the personal computer as too small to do serious computing and therefore unimportant to their business…It is now 1984 [Jobs slows down his rate of speech and adds a dark, ominous tone to his voice]. It appears IBM wants it all. Apple is perceived to be the only hope to offer IBM a run for its money. Dealers, initially welcoming IBM with open arms now fear an IBM dominated and controlled future. They are increasingly turning back to Apple as the only force that can ensure their future freedom. IBM wants it all and is aiming its guns to its last obstacle to industry control. Apple. Will Big Blue dominant the entire computer industry? [the audience shouts ‘no!’] The entire information age? [no!] Was George Orwell right? [no!]
Steve Jobs worked up the audience because he crafted the product in terms of good and evil, an irresistible combination. In the Steve Jobs narrative, the villain is a force that is aiming its guns at its last obstacle—the hero who is the last entity that can protect freedom. Is this a product launch or a script for a Star Wars-like movie? It’s both, and that’s why a Steve Jobs presentation was a mesmerizing experience. Jobs intuitively understood what great screenwriters know, what great works of literature are made of: heroes and villains are the fundamental building block of compelling narrative.
The Macintosh launch was especially dramatic, but Jobs introduced heroes and villains in nearly every product launch. One of my favorite examples is the 2007 introduction of the iPhone.
Before Jobs unveiled the new phone and explained its features he spent three minutes introducing the antagonist, the adversary. In this case the villains included the current category of smartphones—the “usual suspects,” Jobs said. “The culprit,” according to Jobs, was a bad interface. “The problem,” according to Jobs, was that the culprits were not too smart and not easy to use. “They’re really complicated,” Jobs said. According to Jobs, the iPhone’s interface wasn’t just an improvement; it represented “a revolution.” This was classic Steve Jobs. First the problem (villain) followed by the solution (hero).
The brain is wired for story; it doesn’t handle abstractions well. Story is the stuff of drama, the stuff of award-winning screenplays, and the stuff of great presentations.
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