Narrative Assets

Hollywood Executive Uncovers Four Truths to Storytelling

The art and craft of storytelling is gradually making its way into the business world. Once used primarily by novelists and moviemakers as a tool to connect plot and character with an audience, it is now being seen as an innovative strategic tool for companies to better connect with their customers.

The Harvard Business Review has published several stories on the subject, the most recent being this months article by Hollywood executive Peter Guber entitled "The Four Truths of the Storyteller." As a filmmaker and executive, Guber is in the business of telling stories. While he realizes the impact of storytelling on box office success, he also recognizes its power as a way to sway business audiences. As a salesperson, you'll have more success if you can tell a story in which the product is the hero. As a manager, storytelling can be used as a way of explaining how short term sacrifice can lead to long term business success.

A well crafted story and emotional narrative can also help CEO's attract investors and partners, set strategic goals and inspire employees and customers.

Whether in the entertainment or business world, stories have an incredible ability to connect with audiences in a way that more traditional business practices cannot. Market research and strategic planning are always important, but to establish a strong bond with customers requires the deep impact that storytelling can offer an audience.

How has your company used storytelling to connect with customers? Do you think more companies will be hiring people well versed in the fine art of storytelling? Do you see CEO's gradually becoming CSO's - Chief Storytelling Officers?

Storytelling and the Art of Persuasion

In business as in life, success often depends on our ability to persuade others to adopt our ideas. If we can't persuade consumers to buy our product or service, or convince shareholders to adopt a new plan of attack, then we won't move forward with our goals.

Simply put, stories are how we make sense of the world. We arrange information according to our experiences and interactions in the world, and stories help us locate our place in the grander scheme.

Storytelling offers a new and innovative way to engage people's emotions, and win their hearts and minds. For years, the word "storytelling" conjured up images of people sitting around campfires or dinner tables, passing along tales that lasted generations. Although this scene still has implications today, today's modern storyteller can often be found in the executive suite.

In 2003, Harvard Business School published an article called "Happy Tales: The CEO as Storyteller." In it, screenwriting coach and legend Robert McKee explains how he coached executives in the art of storytelling. He advises executives to toss away their PowerPoint slides, and engage their stakeholders through the fine art of story. Rather than focus on rhetoric, McKee suggests uniting an idea with an emotion through use of a compelling story. He says that a little imagination can go a long way in getting people to applaud you and your ideas.

According to McKee, a story "expresses how and why life changes", and may help people deal with the fundamental conflict between subjective expectation and often cruel reality. A good storyteller might inspire employees to "dig deeper" by presenting them with scenarios based on characters and principles often found in screenplays: protagonists, opposing forces, allies, calls to action, etc. This approach might help people with their decision-making when they're faced with challenges at work.

Cognitive scientists such as Donald Norman help explain the relationship between stories, consumer goods, photographs and other objects (or artifacts). From a human perspective, the fundamental element that makes an event or object memorable is the presence of emotion. Stories can help capture the context, as well as the emotion.

Remember Scott Bedbury's quote in Tom Peters book "the brand you 50"...."A great brand taps into emotions...Emotions drive most, if not all, of our decisions...It's an emotional connecting point that transcends the product...A brand is a metaphorical story that's evolving all the time...Stories create the emotional context people need to locate themselves in a larger experience."

The next time you're called upon to do a corporate presentation, ask yourself the question "What's my/our story?", and you'll go a long way in winning over people's hearts and minds.

Harry Potter and the Future of Business

In a recent post entitled "Heroes of the Future: we ARE Harry Potter", Fast Company blogger and Conversation Agent Valeria Maltoni uses Harry Potter as an example of how we use stories to process information and make sense of the reality around us.

Valeria's thoughts can be applied to the business world as well.

When we get tired of processing the vast amount of information around us, we use stories to help us understand what's going on. We also use stories as a way of predicting what the future might hold, based on the outcome of past events, our culture, and our interpretation of the actions of people around us.

Harry Potter's journey is not unlike that of many people in the corporate world. There are heros, and villains...opportunities, threats and challenges coming from both inside and outside of the company. In some cases, Potter is even threatened by incidents in his past that might hurt his current situation.

Through use of story, companies might get a better idea as to where they've been - and where they're going. World-class companies and brands are able to cut through marketing clutter by delivering a message that is engaging, persuasive - and able to affect customers at an emotional level.

As long as there are human beings involved in the business world, there is room for incorporating story into business strategy. In the future, a company's true assets, will be its Narrative Assets.

Business: It's About Motivation and Persuasion (and telling a good story)

Having spent years as a rep in territory sales, I realized that business was all about motivating people to take action. In order to convince someone to buy, I had to tell my story in a way that was both intriguing and relevent to the customer. At times, a little showmanship didn't hurt either. My job involved a combination of business strategy, psychology and performance art.

Whether you're a sales rep on the front line, an entrepreneur, an ad agency executive or a CEO trying to persuade and appease shareholders...successful businesses know how to motivate people to take action. They know how to harness information and present it in a way that tells a good story.

Perhaps the best place to look to learn how to engage and motivate an audience is Hollywood. As director Steven Spielberg once said: "I always think of the audience when directing - because I am the audience." How many times has a movie "moved you" to think, feel, or even act a certain way?

If proven tips and techniques used in the entertainment industry could be applied to the business world, how many more consumers would be motivated to say..."I want one - NOW!"

It's time to look beyond traditional principles used in business. The realms of Art, Science and Technology offer clues as to how companies can better improve their strategies and brand communications. If companies take measures to better understand their audience - what makes them buy, think, act, and react to certain media...then the world will be at their feet.

The company of the future will be a master at engaging and persuading mass and diverse audiences. In his book, Romancing the Brand, David N. Martin tells us that "Great Advertising is a storyteller, a romantic voice, an emotional persuader. It must have style and intrigue as it shines a bright light on the product, its advantages and value point. The brand and its uniqueness must be remembered when the TV set goes dark, or the page is turned. To do this, advertising must combine the thinking of a Claude Hopkins with the staging of a George Lucas. It must persuade in a way that romances and lures the customer unsuspecting into the brand's sticky web."

Hollywood couldn't have said it any better.