This superb short film from Doctors Without Borders has all the narrative, imagistic, and emotional pieces in place.
The drama is ushered in through a suspenseful opening shot, and the close-ups of the patients eyes draw the viewer into an intense scene of medical urgency. When the lights go out, turning on the switch is one cut away—an excellent use of video’s capacity to link space, time and action, producing a powerful direct appeal.
This Land documents the Canadian Army's most extensive patrol of the Arctic since 1947. In March 2007 seven Canadian and Inuit Rangers, riding in a convoy of snowmobiles, covered more than 2000km from Resolute to the northernmost tip of Canadian soil - 412km from the North Pole.
Watch -and listen to!- the beautiful story of photo journalist Dianne Whelan.
How are you doing with going from deadly boring content to emotionally engaging content?
Consider making your content like a gift!
What do I mean by a “gift” in this context?
• Don’t try to sell anything or provide “empty calories” that just waste people’s time.
• Give your content freely.
• Make your story their story.
• Make your story emotionally engaging.
Having a human story gives others more reason to care about you.
And don’t forget that the impression you make often depends on how much you reveal about your self.
The trick is, just like a Christmas gift, you need to give content that is of value to your audience and has the potential to help them forge an emotional connection.
Most marketing content rarely connects with an audience. You know why? Because it doesn’t make them feel anything. People join a story when they “feel” your story is credible and when they “understand” where your messages are coming from. They will make your story their own if they can identify with the elements within the story, respond to the narrative emotionally and have it serve their interests and agendas.
What makes great content spread is how compelling and inspiring the message is, not how it slants into a direction that ultimately positions your company as the only one to buy from. Content should make connections. I would even go further: content follows connection. First you need to engage, build rapport and make your audience trust you. And pure information or marketing messages do not make that happen. All these new forms of storytelling cannot change the fact that if you communicate in facts and figures, you communicate “brain to brain”. To be successful in any kind of communication, you need to go human to human, heart to heart, emotion to emotion.
I believe the most trusted people and organizations in this new experience economy are the ones that treat content like little gifts we can connect with.
Over the last years I have tried to walk the talk myself, and here are some of the ways I have been telling my story:
• Archiving dozens of blog posts and their comments
• Sharing 3-5 posts by other writers every day for more than a year on Twitter
• Initiating regular discussions with my network on LinkedIn using my LinkedIn
• Sharing presentations via Slideshare and Prezi.
• Sharing all the research for my book “No Story, No Fans” on Delicious (there
are more than 200 valuable articles, videos, reports, etc, on information related to storytelling).
And what is even more important than the sum of all this sharing, is that in telling my stories on all these channels I have been showing my audience that I am not a faceless “box house” simply taking orders blindly and shipping thoughtlessly. I have demonstrated that I am passionate about what I do and what I do it. My stories have given me and my company a human face that show I care. And from the reactions I have got, I can tell my stories have become little gifts to my network.
Now let me give you a simple example of how stories have been creating value for me.
I give a lot of keynote speeches and presentations of that sort. Before I was conscious about my storytelling, I would talk about the facts and figures of good communication: this much faster, that much productivity improvement, etc. After a typical speech, I’d get one or two people who wanted to speak with me. Now that I’m telling real stories that exhibit real emotion and real humanity, I have 20 or 30 people come up afterwards. Some of them say things like: “That’s the first time I ever really connected with a speech.” Those types of responses have helped me gain confidence in the process and have added a humble dose of mo-jo into my story work.
I experience the same thing when I communicate through other channels.
On Twitter for example I started interacting online with more people. In the beginning I could not understand why people were being so nice to me, sharing information with me and providing me with resources. Now I know it’s because I was earning their trust by communicating like a human being, and not like a content marketing machine. I now have a network of people, few of whom I’ve met in real life (yet), with whom I exchange value on a weekly basis. My twitter account went form 0 to more than 1300 followers in less then a year.
And what has all of this brought to my business? Everything. My own business took of once I started really connecting with people. All of my clients today come from my social content network. And what is more, when people contact me we mostly hit it of right away. Our stories connect even long before we start a project together.
What’s your story?
(In my next blog post I will show you how it works to create a story in the concept of a “gift”).
I just read some of the most popular blog posts on content marketing.
It seems that we all agree that good content should be Findable, Readable, Understandable, Actionable and Shareable.
So that's it? Well, not in the least.
And by now you're thinking “Okay Raf, get to the point!"
My point? Many companies have no clue what the difference is between good content and boring content. I would go even further. Many organizations are not even aware that their message has lost all connection with their audience.
At least that is my experience after four years of accompanying organizations, brands and their leaders in their communication efforts. Many seem to excel at finding ways to render their content marketing completely pointless. You can follow as many checklists and steps as you want, but without engaging content that makes your audience stick like superglue, your content marketing is doomed.
The strange thing with all this is that the solution is so obvious: stories and storytelling.
Stories are how we convey our deepest emotions and talk about the things we value the most. Everyone has a story to tell. I believe stories are the most effective vehicle to drive the heart of a message to the heart of an audience. And exploring these stories should be at the core of every organizations' content marketing strategy.
In my book ‘No Story, No Fans’, Mitch Joel (President of Twist Image and Author of Six Pixels of Separation) puts it like this: “Stories captivate people’s attention. It happens when it comes to The Bible and it happens when it comes to Star Wars.” So true.
Now let me ask you this: Do you think that you or your business is in touch with its own stories?
Do you need to reinvent your story to connect it with a hyper-connected world? Do you need to put the story back in your storytelling? I believe you do if you have trouble answering any of the following questions:
• What is the story that really defines you?
• In which way is your story emotionally engaging to your audience?
• How does your story connect with the existing culture of your organization?
• Can your audiences retell your story?
• In what ways do they trust your story and act upon it?
In my next blog post I'll try to bring some of my trials and errors -and my own storytelling experiences- together in one simple storytelling principle. Following this principle will lead you from deadly boring content that nobody is interested in to highly engaging stories that connect with your audience.
Believe me, I know how challenging it can be to produce smart, highly targeted and truly innovative stories. But I also believe companies today would be able to connect better with their audiences if they would start using stories as little gifts to the community. If they would start to use these gifts as a means to reconnect with their audiences and regain trust. Making your content little gifts is (or has to become) the new “business as usual”. I like to call it “the New Trade”.
And this brings me to my key storytelling principle for you:
Only use content that can be regarded as a little gift to your community.
Here is a company that has been following my 1 simple story principle and succeeds big time in connecting with their audience on an emotional level. For Patagonia (an outdoor clothing company) environmental documentarian Bridget Besaw travels to Chile to this beautiful story of the rugged people living in an area that would be changed forever by five proposed dams on the Baker and Pascua Rivers.
(In my next blog post I will explain the concept of “gift” a little more. And show you how your organization can use this principle in catching, creating and connecting your story.)
This is a very powerful story (I thought why not share it with you…)
The lack of affordable housing and people dying on the streets stand out. I hope Steen’s story of people dying grabs you as it has me. Nothing more to be said here.
I met Steen while walking through a park in Vancouver, British Columbia. Local Vancouver homeless friends call the area “The Bird Sanctuary” because of the growth of trees in an urban area. I would have never found the place if it wasn’t for Vancouver homeless advocate, Judy Graves. I am honored and grateful Judy took the time to give me a tour of the city.
Steen is a colorful character. You can see years of street life in his face. Steen tells a very real story about life and death on the streets of Vancouver. He tells us a very detailed story of how he ended up on the streets this time.
Steen says he has been promised housing before he has to survive another winter, but bureaucracy keeps delaying the local housing project under construction.
Steen says his friends are in and out of the emergency rooms. He is concerned about two of his friends he believes are close to death. When I asked Steen how many of his friends died last year he responded “conservatively six. It could have been a couple more”.
More stories of invisible people here.
Since writing my last post on the Old Spice campaign I couldn’t stop thinking about storytelling and branding.
It opens a question I find hard to answer:
is connecting with millions of potential customers through a fake funny story not useful?
Some people would say that these campaigns are great (Hollywood) storytelling creating fans and followers (probably not friends… but who believes the difference is important?). Can you blame them? I also like the entertainment factor of these ads, so shoot me! Still I am not considering bying the product… which makes me think of a fantastic cartoon of Tom Fishburne I tweeted the other day.
Yes, finding real engagement with your audience (employees or customers) starts with sharing authentic stories … with tapping into conversations….and all of that digital content marketing stuff I like a lot.
Still I have always found it hard to argue that broadcasted advertising stories like Old Spice are not worthy of your attention. Most of today’s customers enjoy a “good” Old Spice Story and are not necessarily looking for in-depth connections with the company or trying to establish deep relationships.
I believe it would be all too easy to say that brand storytelling still is all about ‘the power of the big creative idea’ and that the power of true storytelling and narrative only works for b-to-b communication (hey, does that name actually still exist?) and internal branding.
is connecting with millions of potential customers through a fake funny story not useful?
This weekend I tried to forget all about this question and decided to go for a run. Trying to clear my head. I usually do a 45 minute work-out. Unfortunately I discovered Mitch Joel’s latest podcast (an interview with Avinash Kaushik) on the “Extinction of the Marketing Dinosaur“) just 10 minutes before I wanted to start my run. Mmmm…. I decided trying to clear my head with Mitch Joel on (read: in) it. A good choice for my inspiration, a bad choice for my head.
I did do the 45 minutes but I constantly regretted not having brought pen and paper. So when I got home I immediately re-listened some parts of the episode and made some notes:
“…put your stories on many channels so they become symbiotic…”
Mitch discusses with Avinash the split of broadcasted advertising and content/digital marketing. Listen to the podcast, you’ll enjoy it.
I listened to it with storytelling-ears. These were some questions I came up with after my run:
-Does your brand suffer from a split between the brand advertising story and the conversational stories around the brand?
-Does your brand have a clear core story?
-Does story show the real DNA of the brand?
And for the Old Spice campaign; does the advertising campaign show what the brand is made of? And do customers care about this?
I believe they do.
On the Mitch Joel podcast Avinash tells this short story of how he had a really bad internet experience with a big airline he frequently uses for his international flights; how this experience colors his feelings about the whole brand; and how he feels like telling the world about what he just had gone through.
Just like that. Today anyone can challenge carefully constructed brand stories online by sharing their experience online. Today there is a shift from brands broadcasting to consumers to a position where brands listen to the stories consumers are already telling.
Can brands no longer sell products and services by broadcasting their cleverly designed messages?
Of course they can. After my run I decided to spend the rest of the afternoon on figuring out how. Here is what I have been brewing on; it is the start of a brand-story-model (please have a go at it and mail me what you think about it).
Working your Brand Story: Catch, Create and Connect Stories!
Is all about “experience”: how stories reveal themselves in moments/things that happen and in the bigger story around it. Through Story-listening you can uncover the stories that live inside or outside the brand.
Is all about “entertainment”: how does the story make you feel about you, the brand and its values and beliefs. Through Story-design you can bring your brand to live.
Is all about “engagement”: how does the story foster participation with the community? Through Story-telling you can engage with your community (communities are a web of stories).
Which brings me back to me original question:
is connecting with millions of potential customers through a fake funny story not useful?
And with my little Catch-Create-Connect-Model in mind I can easily and honestly answer: no, it still is useful! But if you want to go all the way make sure your brand not only works on the “design” of the story (CREATE/) but also on the “experience” (CATCH/) and the “engagement” (CONNECT/).
Let me give some examples from brand who I believe have been working all three C’s:
The award winning Gatorade Replay campaign is a brilliant example of not only “designing your story” (CREATE/) but also working the two other C’s (CATCH/CONNECT).
It uses multiple channels to tell stories around a central theme. Like all the best stories the premise is simple yet compelling. But what makes the campaign so extraordinary is the level of audience engagement and how the audience participates in the creation of the story.
I believe it is a great example of brand storytelling. It is one of the best practices from the ad agency TBWA\Chiat\Day, LA, USA and winner of the Cannes Lions Grand Prix for PR and Promo and Activation.
Here is the campaign
The makers of this story wanted to weave the DNA of the brand into the DNA of culture to find more authentic connections with their audience. With the story they wanted to allow people to experience what Gatorade stands – A Catalyst for Athletic Achievement. And they wanted to demonstrate Gatorade’s bigger story – Fueling Athletic Performance.
What becomes clear to me with these examples is that brands need to reject the approach of only broadcasting a story for the sake of it. Stories are not toys that a brand can use to position itself into. Building brand value through storytelling does not happen with 1 single ad campaign. And like anything good, it takes trust to create something meaningful with your customers. But if you can make real connections and go to the heart of your community, you can build a better brand.
Malcolm Gladwell once said: “You can’t become a chess grand master unless you spend 10,000 hours on practice”. The good men and women of Cardigan have spent that and more learning their trade. In some cases, they have spent 30,000 hours. They have practiced their skills until they have become ‘Grand Masters’ of jeans making.
