Nowadays, when getting anyone to pay attention to your message is harder than getting a teenager off of Facebook, marketers continue to push creative boundaries to engage people using the newest innovations from games to branded content. While these emerging forms of communications are often based on the latest technologies, it’s ironic that the hottest trend in marketing today just might be the ancient art of storytelling.
So, what’s new? What’s going on in the culture that has elevated our interest in storytelling and made it so important to the business of marketing?
Let’s start with the obvious. A good story beats a good lecture. Great business leaders from Jack Welch to Steve Jobs have always understood how to use stories to create transformative organizations and sell products. Now events like the TED Conference have elevated storytelling as a sought after talent within the business community.
Advertising has also embraced the power of stories, whether they’re implied, like the heroism in a Nike ad, or more literal like the newest DIRECTV ads with their quirky logic of what happens to your life when you don’t get rid of cable.
I’d make the case that there’s a direct link between the Internet, social networks, content marketing, and storytelling. With more media channels for engagement, and greater consumer control over what they pay attention to, marketers have scrambled to make their content more captivating, and stories represent a natural evolution.
It’s no wonder that marketers continue to develop branded content, knowing that they’re competing with video sensations like Charlie Bit My Finger. At the Cannes Festival, the new Branded Content and Entertainment category is producing some of the most talked about work. Just last week, the fast-food company Chipotle won a Grand Prix for a short animated film that tells a moving story about sustainable farming.
In an environment where you don’t stand a chance to win anybody’s attention without some magic, a good story might save you and your brand from oblivion.
However, just as we have learned that owning a Twitter account does not mean that you understand social media, the fact that someone decides to tell a story does not mean that it’s interesting, or any good. A bad story can be as deadly as an overloaded PowerPoint presentation.
Like every other trend, this obsession with storytelling produces its share of misguided efforts. At two recent conferences, almost every speaker opened with the words, “I’d like to tell you a story.” My hope for entertainment soared – and then was dashed just as quickly – as I listened to one attempt after another to wrap a business point in an anecdote masquerading as a story.
In addition to his “DUHH” slide, Rob Walker made an insightful point about the marketing value of stories. He said that a good story is an end in itself. Whether or not it helps define a brand, sell a product, or make a point, a story must stand on its own. If it only exists to thinly disguise a marketing message, you’re not fooling anybody.
Few of us will join the ranks of Stephen King, or Flannery O'Connor, as master storytellers. But we can avoid a few common traps that make the majority of business stories tedious and dull. Whether you’re working on a brand story, an advertising campaign, or standing up to talk at a conference, here are three suggestions:
- If your story does not reveal something personal and unknown about the person or brand, it’s going to be boring.
- If your story does not tap into a specific emotion – whether it be fear, desire, anger, or happiness – it will not move people to action.
- If your story does not take people on a journey where there is a transformation between the beginning, middle, and the end, it’s not a story.
The best stories represent a simplicity of purpose and tap into the audience’s imagination so that they willingly go along for the journey. And the shortest ones can sometimes be the best. Ernest Hemingway famously wrote the six-word story: “For sale: baby shoes, never worn.”
Like any worthwhile endeavor in business and life, set the bar high. In the hands of a master, a financial spreadsheet can hold as much adventure as a treasure map. When you make the choice to tell a story, you’re competing with the best minds and writers in the history of the world. Make your effort count.
