As someone who tells stories for a living (a filmmaker), I’ve taken minor offense that the idea of “storytelling” has been co-opted into the lexicon of meaningless business words. It’s often used as a millennial-approved way to say “information dump”.
But storytelling actually has the power to facilitate so much more than just information transfer, which is why I’ve begun a (perhaps quixotic) crusade to rescue the idea from the jowls of bad business lingo.
I recently presented a Lunch & Learn on this topic at all three WeWork DC locations, and was asked to give a few takeaway points for anyone who is looking to tell better stories about their business, brand, organization, company, or self. A story holds tremendous potential to captivate your audience and get them emotionally involved with the characters and struggles in your tale.
What follows is (hopefully) a pretty easy step-by-step guide to help you build your own stories that will work for everything from 30-second ads to 30-minute speeches.
1. Identify your protagonist.
You may remember from high school that the protagonist is the good guy in a story. More accurately, the protagonist is whom your audience roots for; who the audience is down in the trenches with and will want to see struggle through to the end.
Now, your business may have very easy-to identify protagonist – like a CEO, or the Executive Director of your NGO. These types of people are great to build stories around. However, sometimes you need to tell other stories, so think about perhaps telling a story about an average employee in your company, a user of your product, or someone who your organization has helped. You can even use abstract ideas as protagonists.
2. Give this protagonist a “want” and make it hard for them to get.
If we have a character, Chris CEO, who has developed a great product, we don’t have a story. But if we have Chris CEO who wants to develop a great product, then our ears perk up. It’s even better if Chris CEO wants to develop a product but is having trouble overcoming a problem! Then you have an engaging story to tell.
There’s something about the human experience that makes us empathize with those who have spurned dreams and desires. That vulnerability creates trust and empathy, and so showing your protagonist with a need or want creates an emotional investment.
Even if your protagonist is you, your organization, or your company, that might mean showing your company without “everything all together” at the beginning of your story. No one wants to hear about how your company set out to do X amazing thing and then immediately did it. It’s not interesting and it makes you sound like an asshole because there’s no struggle. Struggle is the sort of thing that makes people lean in and ask “what will happen next?
3. Show your protagonist working towards what they want.
This is the Rocky “Eye of the Tiger” montage of your story. What is your process? What does your protagonist have to get better at? This is your story in-action, building towards the final resolution.
4. Resolve it.
In most stories about businesses or brands, your story will end with a victory – the problem solved, the product developed, the business built. However, it’s also possible (and unexpected!) to use failure to get across a point as well.
Here are some videos that I think are particularly great examples of this, and I’ll identify how some of these four steps work on each.
Here, we see very simply how a mom – a user of Google’s products – wants to be a good mother. When faced with a crisis, the product helps her achieve her goals. Note how the most pleasurable part of the ad is during the process of her surmounting her problem creatively.
Here, Dominos makes an employee a protagonist and turns the mass production of pizzas into a compelling story for audiences to root for.
Although Save the Children could have used a young Syrian girl for this ad, they chose to use a protagonist that was easier for their audience to relate to. By showing her and her family’s failure to live the life they want, we are given a powerful message.
Although you may think the process of this commercial centers around the sports, we experience all the children’s successes and failures the mom’s eyes – the protagonists of this ad. They want to equip world-class athletes, and P&G positions themselves (subtly!) to help these protagonists achieve their goals.
GE creates a compelling commercial by making an idea the protagonist – literally! All the Idea wants to be loved and accepted, which instantly bonds us to him and creates a connection, and an allegiance to GE when they help our protagonist become fully what he is.