Storytelling

All good marketing is essentially storytelling.

Marketing at its essence is connecting with people and since the beginning of time, one of the best ways to connect with others is through telling stories.  Whether you call them fables, tales, parables or pictographs, storytelling connects  us emotionally with what the speaker is saying.

Marketing is about sharing how you can solve a customer's problem.  Often, however, you need to convince the customer that you know what you are talking about.

Therefore, the following rules, originally tweeted by Emma Coats, Pixar’s Story Artist, have relevance, even if you aren't crafting the script for a major studio animated feature.  I would be interested to know what rule or rules resonates most with readers.  For me, number 2 is an important, and often challenging,  rule to keep in mind.

1. You admire a character for trying more than for their successes.
2. You gotta keep in mind what’s interesting to you as an audience, not what’s fun to do as a writer. They can be very different.
3. Trying for theme is important, but you won’t see what the story is actually about til you’re at the end of it. Now rewrite.
4. Once upon a time there was ___. Every day, ___. One day ___. Because of that, ___. Because of that, ___. Until finally ___.
5. Simplify. Focus. Combine characters. Hop over detours. You’ll feel like you’re losing valuable stuff but it sets you free.
6. What is your character good at, comfortable with? Throw the polar opposite at them. Challenge them. How do they deal?
7. Come up with your ending before you figure out your middle. Seriously. Endings are hard, get yours working up front.
8. Finish your story, let go even if it’s not perfect. In an ideal world you have both, but move on. Do better next time.
9. When you’re stuck, make a list of what WOULDN’T happen next. Lots of times the material to get you unstuck will show up.
10. Pull apart the stories you like. What you like in them is a part of you; you’ve got to recognize it before you can use it.
11. Putting it on paper lets you start fixing it. If it stays in your head, a perfect idea, you’ll never share it with anyone.
12. Discount the 1st thing that comes to mind. And the 2nd, 3rd, 4th, 5th – get the obvious out of the way. Surprise yourself.
13. Give your characters opinions. Passive/malleable might seem likable to you as you write, but it’s poison to the audience.
14. Why must you tell THIS story? What’s the belief burning within you that your story feeds off of? That’s the heart of it.
15. If you were your character, in this situation, how would you feel? Honesty lends credibility to unbelievable situations.
16. What are the stakes? Give us reason to root for the character. What happens if they don’t succeed? Stack the odds against.
17. No work is ever wasted. If it’s not working, let go and move on – it’ll come back around to be useful later.
18. You have to know yourself: the difference between doing your best & fussing. Story is testing, not refining.
19. Coincidences to get characters into trouble are great; coincidences to get them out of it are cheating.
20. Exercise: take the building blocks of a movie you dislike. How d’you rearrange them into what you DO like?
21. You gotta identify with your situation/characters, can’t just write ‘cool’. What would make YOU act that way?
22. What’s the essence of your story? Most economical telling of it? If you know that, you can build out from there.

Happy storytelling!

• Read More About The Story Spine: Pixar’s 4th Rule of Storytelling

A Coke By Any Other Name...

What we name things matters.  What we call things impacts our perceptions of them and our perceptions impact how we react or don't react to a product or a service.

Marketers typically spend a lot of time and resources on selecting an appropriate name for new product or service.  The marketing trash bin is full of good products that failed because they had a name that didn't connect with customers, or worse, had unintended connotations!

I wonder, for example, how much the famous flame-out of New Coke would have differed if the marketers in Atlanta had chosen a name that didn't remind everyone that the formula for their beloved Coca-Cola had been changed.  Would a wholly different name made New Coke a success?

Renaming happens a lot in politics.  Recently, Republicans realized it would be hard to drum up opposition to the new health care law if they used then formal name of The Affordable Care Act.  First of all, it is a boring So they dubbed the new law Obamacare.  This made it seem more like an ego-driven project of one man, not an affordable national health care program.

Sometimes, a rose by another name is just a thorn bush.

A Parable About Leadership

Leadership is a subject that seems to continually confound us.  A Bing search for "leadership books" generates 39 million results.  It seems to me that there are at least that many different perspectives about leadership and how to be a good leader out there.  

That is one of the reasons I like the story I am about to share with you.  I first read this story on Michael Josephson's excellent blog, "What Will Matter" and am reposting it here with his permission.  

Listening to politicians’ nasty rhetoric, one might think that leadership has to be aggressive and confrontational, but consider this parable about leadership.

A student assigned to write an essay about an effective leader wrote this story:

“I’ve been taking a bus to school for years. Most passengers keep to themselves and no one ever talks to anyone else.

“About a year ago, an elderly man got on the bus and said loudly to the driver, ‘Good morning!’ Most people looked up, annoyed, and the bus driver just grunted. The next day the man got on at the same stop and again he said loudly, ‘Good morning!’ to the driver. Another grunt. By the fifth day, the driver relented and greeted the man with a semi-cheerful ‘Good morning!’ The man announced, ‘My name is Benny,’ and asked the driver, ‘What’s yours?’ The driver said his name was Ralph.

“That was the first time any of us heard the driver’s name and soon people began to talk to each other and say hello to Ralph and Benny. Soon Benny extended his cheerful ‘Good morning!’ to the whole bus. Within a few days his ‘Good morning!’ was returned by a whole bunch of ‘Good mornings’ and the entire bus seemed to be friendlier. People got to know each other.

“If a leader is someone who makes something happen, Benny was our leader in friendliness.

“A month ago, Benny didn’t get on the bus and we haven’t seen him since. Everyone began to ask about Benny and lots of people said he may have died. No one knew what to do and the bus got awful quiet again.

“So last week, I started to act like Benny and say, ‘Good morning!’ to everyone and they cheered up again. I guess I’m the leader now. I hope Benny comes back to see what he started.”

I think that the student who wrote this essay hits the mark on so many levels about leadership.  Leadership is about attitude and perseverance much more than title or position.  Leadership is transformational.  Leadership can be transferred.

In my opinion, you don't need to buy any of the 39 million books on leadership.  All you need to do is read about Benny and the bus!

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Lessons Learned

It is easy to dismiss those that have gone before us.  They operated in a different world, when the rules were different/easier/not relevant.  The lessons they have to share, it often seems, do not apply to today’s world which has been turned on its head and inside out by the internet and the innovations it has wrought.  What relevance could the gray hairs have to today’s wired world?

So really, why bother?

The easy answer is to recite the quote "Those who ignore the past are destined to repeat it."  That, however, is not the point of this blog.  Rather, I think that the lessons learned are more subtle and much more valuable.  

Those that have gone before can share with us the lessons they have learned.  They can talk about the mistakes they have made, and the challenges they have overcome.  They can tell us where the skeletons are buried and which sacred cows to steer clear of.  Those that have gone before you have walked the same walk you are.  They have been there.  

Because, you see, things haven't really changed all that much.  Certainly there are new tools and new rules for how things get done.  Absolutely some processes and products and services have evolved and changed.  Definately things are different, in some aspects.

But people are still the same.  People still make decisions emotionally with pretty much the same motivations (acceptance, success, avoidance of pain) that they have for centuries.  Organizations, which are comprised of people, haven't changed how they operate that much.  Sure, they use email instead of messengers and LinkedIn to recruit candidates instead of a headhunter.  But at the end of the day, things run pretty much like they have for at least 50 or 60 years.  

Which means that old guy at work who can never figure out how to work the scanner, might just be able to teach you a thing or two if you take the time to listen.  

Face to Face

Try as we might, email and Skype will never replace all of our face to face interactions; webinars and conference calls will never be the same as sitting across a table from someone and solving the world’s problems; Facebook and LinkedIn will never take the place of grabbing dinner and drinks with friends.

Don’t get me wrong, conference calls and webinars serve a valuable purpose, but they don’t do a good job of establishing relationships, which is the basis for any successful business or marketing effort.  I have run successful events almost entirely by conference call, but I believe that worked because most of the people on the conference call already knew each other.  We had met many times in face to face meetings and networking opportunities and had worked together before.

What is it about face to face meetings that make them so powerful and important?  There are the obvious benefits.  You can read body language and facial expressions.  The fact that someone took the time to meet in person denotes a value to the meeting.

The real benefits of meeting in person are more subtle.  With apologies to all the online dating sites out there, I think it is nigh impossible to develop a solid relationship entirely online, regardless if the relationship is business-oriented, platonic or otherwise!  There are too many nuances and subtleties that are not a part of communications when you are separated by screens.   

I also think that promises and commitments made in person are more solid and harder to ignore than those made online.  This is especially true if you’ve only known the person online.

I think that there are wonderful tools out there that allow us to improve our productivity, increase our connections and talk to more people for much less investment (in time and resources).  I think these tools are most effective as supplements to existing relationships.  I also think that there will never be technology that truly takes the place of a face to face conversation. 

If only because it’s harder to share an appetizer that way!

The Life Cycle of a Mediocre Product

"You marketers," a friend of mine angrily said to me the other day, "need to give those of us that actually produce something a break!"

She was upset, but not really at me.  It turns out that a manager where she worked had made a comment that quality marketing (I'm sure he was referring to promotions) could take the place of quality product.  He indicated that the organization didn't need to put out a high quality (in his mind more expensive) product.  He suggested that they could still get customers with high quality promotions.  Customers, according to the erroneous manager, can't tell a good product from a bad one!

After I quickly explained to her that product WAS a part of marketing, I cautiously told my friend that the object of her scorn was right.  Marketing CAN generate sales with a poor product or service.  But only for one or two business cycles.

Often times, customers have no reasonable way to assess the quality of what they are buying until they buy it.  This is particularly true with services.  Usually, the customer who doesn't have past experience has to rely on word of mouth and the trustworthiness of the marketer.  If I am planning on hiring a neighbor kid to mow my lawn, unless she has mowed it before, or I have seen her work on other lawns, I have only her reputation to guide my decision.  After she has mowed my lawn once, I have a lot more information to inform future buying decisions.

I suggested to my friend that she only needed to wait out the object of her ire for a short while.  Mediocre products, after all, tend to have very short life cycles.  So do managers who eschew quality products.

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Do you have an Oak Marketing Strategy?

Last weekend, my daughter and I were discussing the trees in our backyard.  Specifically we were discussing what to do about a Burr Oak that we planted several years ago and a Maple that had grown nearby. I was touting the benefits of the Maple, because it had gotten so tall, so fast.  My daughter called it a "weed tree" and complained that it was crowding out the Burr Oak, keeping it from getting the sunlight and water it needed.

Burr Oak tree, West Dundee, IL.
Diameter: 49.7". Estimated age: 300+ years.
(Photo credit: Wikipedia)

It struck me that the debate we were having was a good metaphor for the debate marketers have all the time between short term promotional campaigns and brand building; between short term and long term marketing.

Just like the trees in our back yard, short term marketing has the potential to crowd out long term marketing and brand building.  Opportunistic one-shot advertising and promotional campaigns have their place.  They can be very effective and useful...in the short term.  Like the maple tree, they are nice to look at and it is easy to see their benefits.  But if those campaigns aren't managed, and carefully used within the framework of a larger, long term marketing strategy, you run the risk of using all your resources, all your sunlight and water, on something that grows fast and then is gone.

For those of you who don't have an arborist nearby, let me explain. Burr Oaks are slow growing and long lasting trees.  Burr Oaks can live to be 300 to 400 years old.  That means there are Burr Oaks around that could have provided shade for a young Benjamin Franklin.  Maple trees grow fast and last an average of 75 to 100 years.

Like the Burr Oak, a strategic marketing plan provides long-lasting benefits.  It takes a long time and a lot of patience to build a lasting brand image.  But if you give it the resources it needs, and manage the other activities competing for those resources, your time and efforts will be rewarded with something truly special. You develop something long-lasting and awe inspiring.

You develop an Oak Marketing Strategy.