“Stories of imagination upset those without one”
Terry Pratchett
Storytelling Quote
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Storytelling Makes Superhero’s
Game Transfer Phenomenon is an interesting observation that people who play Nintendo or other games consoles and develop skills that become potentially useful in the real world. There is the example of a man driving and hitting a patch of ice unexpected for the morning he was driving on. The ice caught the tires and the traction was gone from the wheels. All of a sudden his car was spinning and sliding towards the on coming traffic. In the split second he became aware of the dire consequences this unresolved situation would end in if he didn’t do something quick. But his hands and feet were already responding, bending the car out of the spin. As the car lurched out of danger he started to think. How did I do that, where did I learn how to drive like a professional. After all he had only just passed his test. Then a familiar memory came over him, he had made that move before. In fact he had made that move so many times in the driving game he had been playing for a couple of months. Yes there is muscle memory from learned task but this and other examples have started people thinking what is the learned experience from playing games.
On a second look its not that unexpected that we learn from games because we have a longer history of learning from stories and other experiences. Books and movies create the same kind of learning experience but maybe not as acutely. Perhaps in games the story is enhanced by the muscle memory learnt. I wonder if good stories well told can effect similar adaptation and reaction.
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Batman and the Storytelling Map
In my last post I wrote about the Story Map I used to analyze stories and search for ways to incorporate brands into well known narratives. By using the same tools as Hollywood its possible to effectively place your brand inside a well known story which takes very little energy (and money) to communicate its core idea to your audience.
In this post i’ll demonstrate the principles of the story map using the well known comic strip story and Hollywood blockbuster Batman. First, here is the story map in table form. Its easier to use on a computer this way but the four circle version lends itself to brainstorming and classroom formats. Choose the one that is easier for you to use.
Batman’s Premise
A wealthy businessman who as a boy who sees his parents killed becomes a masked avenger of Gotham’s evil criminals. He battles for justice and a better society while risking his real identity becoming known.
I got to the premise by writing each of the nine lines to define the story and choosing the voice words from each of them to get to the premise. Now I know its easy to do this for such an iconic story but I’ve also used it to generate the stories for my brands at work and some of the best know Pharma brands. I’ll post some pharma brands in the next posts.
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Filed under Branding, Marketing, Pharmaceutical, Storytelling, Uncategorized
Storytelling Maps- Storytelling Creating Tools
What is a story made up from? Over the last few years of writing about storytelling in Pharmaceuticals and other major branding genres I have always struggled to answer the question in a simple way. Plato suggested that all stories have a beginning middle and end and Aristole wrote about pathos, logos and ethos. Others have shown that stories can be boiled down to seven major themes and its fascinating to see that Cinderella was told in Europe, India and China at the same time even though there was no possibility of the story having been passed from one region to another. Like the other stories this was a “Universal Story” an understanding we are born with supported by our cultures and our humanity. Part of the universality of stories was explored by Carl Jung with his work on archetypes as universal characters who behave in well known and expected patterns.
Even knowing these elements of stories and what makes them good and bad, I still find it difficult to explain to people what the essence of a story is. Perhaps the story premise or long line is as close as you can get to the real essence of a story. It’s the boiled down content that everyone can easily digest. But this still doesn’t help me in the way I need to explain the ideas of storytelling and how they apply to building great brands. To help me I created the “Four Circle Story Map” as a way to breakdown the contents of a story into its building blocks. The Story Map can be used to either dissect story into its components or to build a compelling story from scratch. As all brand architects know get the brand story straight in the early days is vital to create effective brand communication and sales.
The Four Circle Story Map is based on Michael Hauge’s observations of how to pitch stories and plays to Hollywood. As I sat in my Swiss holiday chalet with the kids playing Memory behind me I stole a short time go over the Michael’s advice and read through many of my old Moleskin note books that go with me everywhere. I saw four circles overlapping to capture the interplay between elements Hauge suggest are key to pitching and therefore creating a story that leaves people wanting to learn more. The four major circles represent the key elements of a story. If it doesn’t have these then I don’t think you can tell a story. The are the hero or protagonist; the conflict; the story set up and the deep issues the story tackles. As you can see in the picture below those circles overlap in certain places like a Venn diagram. Where they intersect they cause interactions that define the hero’s opportunity; the story tension and the hero’s arc. Further overlaps define the protagonists motivation and the empathy that the protagonist employs in the story and of course the overlap of all these is the essence of the story.
A good story is defined by how a protagonist moves to resolve a conflict in its journey, employing empathetic traits to engage an audience and live true to its outer motivation. To make it easy to use as a tool the circles can be used as a list of question that create all you need to know to understand your story. I use this now to capture the elements of other people’s stories and the elements of great brand communications (stories) for Pharma and beyond.
- Story Set Up: What we need to know in the stories history
- Protagonist: Who is the protagonist
- Conflict: What conflict faces the protagonist
- Outer Motivation: What is the motivation for the protagonist (to win, to return, to grow etc)
- Deep issues: What larger issues does the story deal with ) poverty, injustice)
- Opportunity: What prize is on offer to protagonist
- Arc: how will the protagonist change over the course of the story (Frightened bystander to confident activist)
- Empathy: In what way will the protagonist take (humorous, powerful, likable)
- Tension: What is the unspoken feeling feeding the conflict based on the deeper issues the story talks to
By working through the nine elements you are forced to thing about the different interactions the elements have in the story. It will help you see if everything hangs together well and will help you get at really concise premise that you can use to catalyze your communications. When i’m creating brand stories I use this to see where the brand will be used. What role does it play in the story and to keep the brand in the story relevant and authentic. I think this helps you focus on who your audience is. How your brand will fit into their narrative and how you might want to tap into that life narrative with your communications.
To get started, try it on a film and then a brand you know well. When your set make some notes about your brand and have a go with the circles or list. Let me know how it goes.
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Filed under Branding, Marketing, Pharmaceutical, Storytelling
Storytelling – Happiness Project
Inspired by Gretchen Rubin‘s Happiness Project, I wrote my own storytelling version.
- Tell stories about new things you learned to do
- Go deep on one or two things and tell stories about what you learned
- Research and Investigation is important to me. It helps me tell stories of who I am
- Feel free to think of ideas and tell stories about them. Even if your ideas are wrong you will improve on your number 1
- Sunshine is makes me happy
- Exercise makes me happy
- Giving is more fun than receiving but receiving well and telling stories of receiving allows others to give and tell stories of your giving (I learnt that from Bob Burg and John Mann in the Go Giver)
- I’m happier doing things today rather than tomorrow but I tell myself stories of the opposite and i’m a good storyteller!
- Even ideas that seem to be obvious should be told by you because you might make them accessible to others.
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Filed under Authenticity, Innovation, Marketing, Pharmaceutical, Storytelling
The Value of Storytelling in Sales
Continuing on my mental model month I tried to summarise the value I see in stories. At its simplest when people communicate they are trying to get across and idea. The audience can be transported by the communication to understand the idea, getting to a shared understanding. On the other hand the audience may fail to get the idea.
In both these paths, storytelling is an effective communication method because stories create triggers that transport you to the shared vision of the idea faster than any other form of communication. On the other hand stories can miss their mark but still be useful in overcoming issues in the audience’s mind that stop them getting to a shared vision. In both paths are supported by storytelling.
The stories we are talking about are not fairy tales. The more I speak about storytelling the more I have learnt to add this paragraph. For some people its natural to think that we mean the type of story that we tell children. While that is a possibility and the simplicity of children’s stories is worth looking at, I am really talking about the small bites of communication that we can use. The style of narrative allows meaning and context to be understood. Stephen Denning in the Springboard ignited my interest many years ago with his observation of telling a story about knowledge management at the world bank. He found that when he opened his presentations with a small description of an event in Africa and the way his organisation could manage knowledge management better, people quickly understood the whole of his presentation and it was easy to speed across the organisation. His African springboard story transported his audience. I had the same experience in communicating the value proposition for an antibiotic. By looking for a universal story about the antibiotic, I was able to communicate quickly and effectively. The more I look, the more I see storytelling supporting great brands.
In pharmaceutical sales, this model just as valid. Stories communicate the value of the therapy, how and where to use it. There are may times when the story doesn’t transport the audience to the shared idea. Objections are the classical way sales teams work through discussions with physicians, using evidence based medicine to discuss concerns and build confidence. Storytelling helps here too. Case studies, narratives and stories of how other people overcame similar issues are effective at getting across the evidence for your brand.
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Creating Brand Happiness with Storytelling
It struck me that happiness at any level is the result of many other feelings and actions. The diagram below is the simplest mental model I could create. It says that happiness is created from Trust, Choice and Freedom. I think brands are able to create happiness when they help us tell stories of trust, stories of choice and stories of freedom. If we want customers to tell happiness stories with our brands as actors in the story we have to focus on getting brands stories to overlap around trust, choice and freedom. That’s not to say people won’t be moved to buy brands without these stories but its likely they will move quickly to other brands. Creating happiness allows you to create fans and generate long-term relationship.
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Filed under Branding, Knowledge transfer, Marketing, Pharmaceutical, Storytelling
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