Business Communications

Blogging Storynomics 4

May 10, 2018 by Richard

[dropcap]W[/dropcap]elcome to post numero quatro where we reveal some of what’s going on in Robert McKee’s new book, Storynomics: Story-Driven Marketing in a Post-Advertising World. So far we’ve covered marketing deception around rational and emotion communications. We’ve touched on what defines a story. Why is that different from narrative? And quite fascinating to me, we’ve touched on The Evolution of Story and the story-making mind. I was quite moved when I came across the notion of the dawn of self-awareness, the first sense of “me” and how story-making emerged to help early humans make some kind of sense of the world around them. What follows is material from Chapter 4.

THE DEFINITION OF STORY

Excerpt:

To master storified marketing, CMOs need solid working answers to fundamental questions: “What exactly is a story? What are its primal components? How do these elements interact within a story? How do I create a powerful marketing story?”

Me–> I’d say that it’s not only CMOs who need these answers, it’s every marketing writer, communications professional, PR person, startup entrepreneur, business owner. If the whole marketing narrative is broken, we all need to understand how to create and use stories. Onward into a list of what a story is not.

Me–> A story is not a process, or a hierarchy, or a chronology, and you can see McKee’s blood boil on videos when he gets to this, a story is not a journey.

Excerpt:

Euphemisms, such as journey, separate the mind from the unpleasant realities around it, and, like genteelisms we use when we toilet-train chidren, they have a place in polite society. But the protagonist of a well-told story is not a passive passenger; she struggles dynamically through time and space to fulfill her desire.

“I find that most people know what a story is until they sit down to write one. ”

~ Flannery O’Connor

Me–> Okay, now we have to pay attention. This has been wildly misunderstood by almost everyone, including yours truly.

Excerpt:

STORY IS NOT NARRATIVE

Many marketing campaigns have flopped because an ad agency didn’t know the difference between narrative and story. Narrative may sound academic, even scientific, but in a business context, the term is neither logical nor precise. It’s use commits a categorical error for this reason: All stories are narratives, but not all narratives are stories. The four misnomers above, process, hierarchy, chronology, journey, are narratives, not stories.

Narratives tend to be flat, bland, repetitive, and boring recitations of events. They slide through the mind like juice through a goose, and as a result, they have little or no influence on customers. Stories, on the other hand, are value-charged and progressive. The mind embraces a well-told story; the imagination is its natural home. Once through our mental door, story fits, sticks, and excites consumer choice.

The next time you’re bored to the bone by somebody’s ‘story,’ in all likelihood you’re not being told a story. If you were, you’d be listening and engrossed. Instead the guy is torturing you with a narrative, probably a repetitious recitation of “….and then I did this, and then I did that, and then I did the other thing, and then and then and then…”

[dropcap]A[/dropcap]s to the concept of narrative and story. I thought hard about this in a book I co-authored recently. The book is Established; Lessons from the world’s oldest companies. My chapter, The Brush, the Mallet, the Chisel, the Letter, was a kind of history, or chronology—a narrative, if you will—about the founding and survival of the oldest operating American company, The John Stevens Shop of Newport, RI. I kept fighting the exact problem McKee lists above, ‘and then this happened, and then that happened, and then this happened, and then that…” The way I solved it, I think, was to let my utter fascination and love for the entire story come through. I lingered on the space itself, the people in the story, and the incredible skill they have and the generational aspect, three generations of men, twice over, who owned and ran this shop. But it’s probably fair to say I did not storify this piece, mainly because to do that, felt not quite right for the material I had. As my friend Nick Parker has said, ‘there’s an open question as to which sorts of content or material are ripe for a storytelling structure.” Agreed.

Blogging about Storynomics 2

May 1, 2018 by Richard

[dropcap]I[/dropcap]n our last post, we talked a little about rational communication, rhetoric, and, emotional communication, and what constitutes the current problem. No one believes marketing and/or advertising anymore. The remedy, per Robert McKee and Thomas Gerace, in Storynomics: Story-Driven Marketing in a Post-Advertising World, is story.

Excerpt from McKee:
A well-told story captures our attention, holds us in suspense, and pays off with a meaningful emotional experience. Emotional because we empathize with its characters; meaningful because the actions of our protagonist deliver insights into human nature. The word itself, story, confuses many marketers. Some, for example, use the words content and story as if they were interchangeable. As as we’ll discover, that’s like conflating paint in a can with a masterpiece on a wall.”

The other, frequent point of confusion, is between story and narrative. There are key distinctions. Hugely important differences. Of which more, later.

Here we go, this bit is where our book gets in gear and begins to really move.

McKee excerpt: In short, story is the ultimate I.T. I in that storytelling demands information–a wide and deep knowledge of human nature and its relationship with the social and physical realms. T in that a well-told story demands skillful execution of its inner technology, its mechanism of action / reaction, changing value charges, roles, conflicts, turning points, emotional dynamics, and much more. A craft underpins the art.

Storify is the word that McKee and Gerace give us to describe marketing that encompasses story structure. You got to storify it!

Here is where we begin to see some clarity around what defines a story. Story involves just what has been said above. Action, reaction. Changing value charges. Roles. Conflict. Turning points. Emotional dynamics. None of which apply to narrative.

“After nourishment, shelter and companionship, stories are the thing we need most in the world.” Philip Pullman

For me, the interesting idea running through this approach to marketing is how to apply it. Where and how can you apply a storytelling structure in your business communications? What specific pieces of content can you storify? If we’re talking about content marketing which underlies all this due to Thomas Gerace’ role at Skyword, then there are numerous avenues to work with. Customer stories, also known as case studies, are prime territory. Ads can certainly fit that bill. Corporate history can definitely be storified.

I wonder? Can you storify home page content? Can you hook a reader on the home page with a brief story, maybe as brief as six words? Ten? Stay tuned for post number three coming your way soon. Should be good, ‘The Evolution of Story’ is chapter three.

Blogging About Storynomics 1

April 29, 2018 by Richard

[dropcap]T[/dropcap]his is the maiden voyage of a series of blog posts about storytelling in marketing. First up is Robert McKee’s new book on storytelling for business, Storynomics: Story-Driven Marketing in a Post-Advertising World. If you don’t know McKee, he is longtime screenwriting guru whose name is linked to a truckload of award-winning films over the past several decades. He’s an astute observer, a precise writer, and is wicked knowledgeable about how stories are put together, what constitutes a story and now, how the business world can put stories to work. The number one reason this book is important is trust. No one believes marketing anymore.

I’ll mark specific passages of the book with Excerpt and I’ll indent so you know where I’m pulling from the text.

Excerpt from McKee:
THE TWO TYPES OF MARKETING DECEPTION
Historically, marketers have driven sales through two types of pretense, one rational and the other emotional.

1. Rational Communication
Classical marketing theory asserts this premise: Human beings are rational decision makers who, when faced with an important choice, gather relevant facts, weight alternatives, then choose the best option. Therefore, to persuade consumers, present your claims in a factual, logical, scientific manner. That’s the theory. In reality, what advertising passes off as logic, is in fact, rhetoric. Science seeks the truth, rhetoric seeks the win. Now more than ever, marketing via rhetorical argument provokes skepticism in the mind of the customer and a negative attitude toward your product or service.

So we get to the problem pretty much right off the bat. Classical marketing theory asserts that human beings are rational decision makers. Ha! I think classical marketing theory has it backwards. We use our emotions to make decisions and use our reasoning powers to justify doing the thing we want to do. So let’s get to that.

McKee excerpt:
2. Emotional Communication
“At the heart of an effective creative philosophy is the belief that nothing is so powerful as an insight into human nature, what compulsions drive a man, what instincts dominate his action, even though this language so often camouflages what motivates him.” ~ Bill Bernbach.

One of the ideas that emerges in this section speaks to Bernbach’s approach to clients. He didn’t talk about advertising but the art of persuasion. ‘Ads needed to touch people’s basic, unchanging instincts — their obsessive drive to survive, to be admired, to succeed, to love, to take care of their own.’

We all know this, we’ve all lived with it, and worked with, and even succumbed to these ideas. The curious thing about all this is there’s a deeper thing going on. That thing says, Paul Bloom, professor of psychology and behavioral science at Yale, in his book How Pleasure Works is this: ‘What matters most is not the world as it appears to our senses. Rather, the enjoyment (or suffering) we get from something derives from what we think that thing is.’ What follows are citations from research and various experiments that demonstrate that our reactions are lashed to the mast of our beliefs. If we believe we’re drinking more expensive wine, we like it more. It works for pleasure and for pain.

The problem is that this sort messaging infrastructure, toying with people’s emotions, is manipulative and is a good part of the reason why advertising and marketing are in so much trouble.

Stay tuned for the next post. Thanks for reading.