Chapter 3

It’s Story Time!

Admit it—ultimately we’re all in the business of persuasion. Whether you’re a salesperson, a teacher, a parent, a manager, a spouse, or significant other, aren’t you always trying to persuade someone else to do something? Persuading people to do something different is what we do—to get them go to the movie we want to see, to get that report in on time, to revise the creative that your team has been working on for three weeks, to go to that restaurant, or to vacation near Pebble Beach rather than Disney World. Or, in the mindset of an advertising or marketing person, to get people to buy your new product, buy more of your current product, or switch from a competing brand to yours.

One tried-and-true pathway to persuasion is to engage people in a story. Why? Because through stories and the related narrative, we become interested and engaged, and we process the message and the content contained within the story more willingly. Some have described storytelling as the “ultimate mashup of ancient traditions and new communication models.”¹ Around campfires, during long car rides, even on the walls of caves during the Aurignacian cultural period more than 25,000 years ago, storytelling has long been a central way of communicating.

In his book Start Something That Matters, the founder of TOMS Shoes and its “One for One Giving Program,” Blake Mycoskie states that “A good story transcends boundaries, breaks barriers, opens doors. It is a key not only to starting a business but also clarifying your own personal identity and choices.”² Mycoskie compares modern-day brands such as method (the ecofriendly cleaning products company spelled with a small “m”), and its ability to craft a compelling story about what the method brand stands for, with the more traditional approach to advertising portrayed on the television show Mad Men where brands were sold to us with unilateral messages about why they were so great and wonderful. Mycoskie goes on to argue that the old-school approach to marketing and advertising simply does not cut it today with our increasingly complex and fragmented media ecosystem consisting of digital, social, broadcast, and numerous other media platforms.

As highlighted in the previous chapter, we all relate to stories—fairy tales, mysteries, myths, and suspense novels—whereby many of these stories feature one simple common element—the concept of the hero, the protagonist who we feel for and who we want to see succeed. Central to this book, the one thing about good stories is that we like to share them with others.

Today, though, the telling of a story can be more complex than simply scratching charcoal on the wall of a cave or gathering friends around a campfire. The explosion of different forms of online and offline media, including social media, makes effective storytelling a much more complex task. Yet, given the rapid changes in communication platforms and technologies, the central point remains: We are hardwired to listen to, to tell, and to respond to content presented to us in story format.

Action Step #1

Drawing from Dr. Lisa Fortini-Campbell’s book Hitting the Sweet Spot,³ here is a quick exercise that we run with our undergraduate M-School students at LMU that helps show them that they are actually pretty decent persuaders and also what made their successful persuasive attempts successful. Try it with your team and apply the insights generated to your brand:

1. Think of three recent persuasion attempts by you that were successful and three that were not. These persuasive efforts could be related to your colleagues at work, children, spouses and significant others, friends, or even strangers.

2. Next, think about what it was about your successful attempts that made them so successfully persuasive and also think about your not-so-successful attempts; what seemed to be the dynamics taking place in both?

3. Create a list of insights that came from both the positive and negative attempts. Specifically, what was it that made your successful attempts so successful? What seemed to be lacking in your not-so-successful attempts?

What you might find is that your successful attempts tapped into some of the secrets of good storytelling: seeing things from the other person’s point of view, creating a level of excitement or tension or adventure, recognizing that people deep down generally like to be consistent in their actions and beliefs, and employing metaphors and comparisons to describe what you are striving for in your persuasive attempt.

A great example of storytelling was seen in October 2012 when the Space Shuttle Endeavour was retired and towed night and day from Los Angeles International Airport to its final stop at the California Science Center. Many thought the process of towing it down streets populated with trees and cluttered with signs and electrical wires, and over the infamous 405 Freeway, would be just short of impossible. The hero of the story? The Endeavour of course. Yet another hero in the story was the Toyota Tundra, the pickup truck that pulled the Endeavour in a journey of a lifetime that was seen in person by thousands of people along the course and by millions of viewers online.

In their book The Hero and The Outlaw: Building Extraordinary Brands Through the Power of Archetypes, the authors Margaret Mark and Carol Pearson talk about creating effective brand narratives through establishing a brand hero (e.g, Nike), a brand outlaw (e.g., Harley-Davidson), or an all-knowing sage brand (e.g., IBM). The Red Bull Stratos space dive project in which skydiver Felix Baumgartner free-fell from 24 miles in the stratosphere and parachuted safely to terra firma is a textbook example of a compelling narrative that thrived on social media—complete with the technical difficulties and postponements that went along with the project and the risk of possible death that made it real. Effective brand narrative also taps into brand headwind—where the brand truly believes in and is fighting for something worth achieving.

Hamsters Rule Social Media

You might remember a television commercial from back in 2009 launching Kia’s new Soul vehicle that portrayed three hipsterlike hamsters navigating a Soul around their less fortunate brethren stuck in numerous rodent rolling cages strewn throughout the street. As the übercool hamsters drive along the road in their new Soul, they open up the driver’s side window to reveal the bass-heavy thump thump thump of some equally cool music coming from the car. The hamster driver looks out the open window, nods his head nonchalantly to his fellow hamster spinning mindlessly (and going nowhere) on its hamster wheel, and drives on. This commercial, by the Los Angeles-based agency David&Goliath titled “A New Way to Roll,” provides a novel and unexpected narrative that connects with young car buyers and highlights the continued, and growing, importance of combining storytelling with advertising content. The campaign also fueled millions of YouTube views, fostered tens of thousands of fans on Facebook, and helped drive Kia’s year-to-date sales up 45 percent in 2010.⁴

Yet, more important than its social presence, the theme of the Kia Soul story is a classic one—and one that seeks to position Kia effectively vis-á-vis its bigger and stronger (in terms of media spending) competition in a brand-as-outlaw mentality: don’t simply follow the masses and do or buy what everyone else does; stand out, be different. This timeless theme, portrayed in past commercials such as Apple’s famous “1984” spot, speaks to the common woman or man (hamsters, after all, albeit cute are pretty unremarkable rodents) who wants to have fun and be cool and speaks to the idea that “you, too, can be somebody.”

Robert Rose and Joe Pulizzi write about the “brand hero’s journey” in their book Managing Content Marketing⁵ and the importance of creating your own brand story. And just like in any good story, the brand hero or protagonist becomes someone we root or feel for as it begins its journey (e.g., to make the world’s best computer, to make driving fun again, to rid local homes of termites), encounters challenges along the way, and manages to overcome those challenges.

Storytelling’s in Our DNA

In fact, experts argue that it’s our natural tendency to be storytellers and to want to listen to stories. Why? Dr. Pamela Rutledge, Director of the Media Psychology Research Center, argues that stories

• have long been a primal form of interpersonal communication;

• engage us through emotions, trigger our imagination, and connect us with others;

• are how we think and organize our thoughts through schemas, scripts, mental models, or cognitive maps;

• are how we persuade others.

In other words, we’re hardwired to listen to, to tell, and to process what we learn from stories.

Further, the stories that we tell tend to follow the same structure employed in novels, movies, the theatre, and even your favorite opera (ours is Candide). The first step in crafting your story is to begin with your organization, your existing customers, and your competition. What is your organization’s current reality—are your customers satisfied, are they loyal, in what way do they perceive your brand, what characterizes your competition? Second, based on your current state of business, what is your opportunity or challenge, your call to action, your BIG IDEA? Third, what are the challenges standing in your way to making this call to action, your big idea, a reality? And, who within, or external to, your organization can help with this? What weaknesses do you need to address before you go any further? Fourth, as you pursue this newly defined opportunity, you begin to enter uncharted territory. What is your plan to communicate this new “adventure” to your key stakeholders, namely, your employees, customers, prospective new customers, and suppliers?

Rose and Pulizzi go on and further distill this multistep process into what they call the Story Map, consisting of three acts; Act 1: Establishing the Hero, Act 2: Establishing the Vision, and Act 3: Victory—The New World. In terms of the content, in Act 1, the story focuses on various pain points, whether your organization’s or your customers’, and what your customers are putting up with or dealing with in the current state of affairs. It’s in this first act that you foreshadow what could be or what is coming from your company to help your customers. In Act 2, your story focuses on how you are going to meet, or have met, your challenge—this could be a new product, a new service, a renewed emphasis and clearer positioning, or communication of a current product or service—and how you’re ready to challenge the status quo. Act 3 is where and how, including social media, you publicize how you’ve met the challenge and succeeded in making your customers’ lives, in some way, better.

Action Step #2

Put on your screenplay writer’s hat and create your organization’s story map, its three-act performance. Who or what is your hero? Is it a new product or service, a new process, a renewed focus on customer service, or is it your new director of engineering? How will your hero win over your customers with your efforts and in what way are you really challenging your industry’s status quo? Finally, in Act 3, how are you going to communicate your heroic accomplishments via social media?

Liquid and Linked

As we’re hoping you’ve experienced thus far, all the three acts within the story map provide magnificent content with which to evolve a compelling company or brand story. Add to this the fact that online social media, ever since Facebook began as a way for college students to tell their “story,” has fast become a prominent stage for brands to tell their own story, and that the process by which brands develop and communicate their unique story becomes highly liquid and highly linked.⁶ Liquid in that brand stories fueled by social media are fluid, sharable, and ever evolving. Linked in that brand stories and the chapters within those stories are now connected across multiple online and social platforms (e.g., your website, Facebook, Twitter, Instagram). So, unlike the ubiquitous 30-second TV commercial that simply delivers a monologue and tells a one-way story, storytelling fueled by social media becomes dynamic and connected storytelling, where the brand hero’s journey and story occurs over time and across myriad online social platforms.

Social Fire Starters

In this chapter, we’ve gone over the importance of crafting stories and the act of storytelling toward building your brand, company, or organization narrative and story map via social media. A recent article published on the website Social Media Today⁷ outlined several ways that brands can turn uninspired company content into content that tells the story of who you are and what you stand for. Five social fire starters highlighted in the article include:

1. Create a character

2. Integrate your brand’s values

3. Take people behind the scenes

4. Recount your origins

5. Employ metaphors and comparisons

Let’s examine each of the five fire starters in detail.

Creating a Character

In 2008, the automotive insurance company Progressive created a quirky, upbeat and, to some, annoying brand character and mascot named Flo to help the company put forth a friendly persona. As stated in AdAge, “Consumers would rather interact with a cute or cuddly character than with a faceless corporate executive.” In terms of Flo’s effect on Progressive’s ability to reach and engage with consumers, it’s interesting to note that toward late 2013, Progressive’s Facebook page had generated just over 160,000 likes whereas Flo’s page had over 5,000,000 likes! “Like” her or not, Flo’s Facebook, Twitter presence (20,000+ followers), and YouTube presence (Progressive has a YouTube channel with almost 7,000 subscribers featuring Flo, with several videos generating over 1 million views each) has generated significant impressions and engagement among consumers.

In linking Flo’s character with Progressive’s recent revenue and profit growth, Progressive CMO Jeff Charney states that the brand’s efforts with Flo helped in part to deliver the insurance company’s positive results “by out-creating the competition, not outspending them.”⁸ Compared to the boring, uninspiring, and commodity-like insurance brands that we have grown used to, the Flo character and ongoing narrative helped Progressive forge an emotional connection where prior none had existed.

However, brands beware; although your mascot may never run afoul of the law (see Dell and its infamous intern⁹) or engage in immoral behavior, the person representing your brand, or as in Progressive’s case, the brand persona herself, may become attached to controversy simply because of its social media presence. This is where your storytelling needs to stop and where your corporate response needs to take over.

This occurred with Progressive in 2012 when it tweeted on its main Twitter account (with a smiling Flo as its Twitter picture) a series of canned responses regarding the tragic death of a Progressive customer in a car accident. Now, it doesn’t take a PhD in Social Media Marketing to wonder why Progressive didn’t replace Flo’s avatar with its corporate logo on its Twitter account as it dealt in court with subsequent claims related to the accident. So, Flo (the character and persona) sadly became linked to Progressive’s unfortunate and unwise handling of its social media responses and become the target of numerous emails slamming both her as well as Progressive. Lesson learned? Don’t mistake the cute and cuddly characters you may create to represent your company as actual company representatives when the context moves beyond branding, advertising, and storytelling.

Integrating Your Brand’s Values

Another social fire starter is to reflect on your brand’s values and what you stand for as a company and to apply this as an element of your brand’s social media narrative and presence. From The Body Shop and its focus on ethics and integrity in selling cosmetics, to (PRODUCT) RED and its partnership with brands such as Apple, Beats, and Starbucks to fund AIDS or HIV programs, to the ice cream brand Ben & Jerry’s, brand stories that move beyond purely functional or even benefit-driven appeals to higher level brand associations help foster more engaging and meaningful content. As much as we like facts and features, we love and even crave stories and the narratives that weave those facts and features within the fabric of the story.

Taking Us Behind the Scenes

Consider a third social fire starter: taking your customer behind the scenes. The online retailer Zappos does a magnificent job of allowing us, the prospective shoe buyer, to peek behind the scenes at one of the most lauded retailers in terms of its ability to deliver outstanding customer ­service. Zappos’ story originates with its founder, Tony Shei, and his passion for taking care of Zappos’ customers as well as its employees. For instance, Zappos has a YouTube channel that provides the company a platform for showcasing its employees’ dedication to servicing its customers. Many of these YouTube videos literally go behind the scenes into the Zappos’ office space, showing the energy and camaraderie that takes place among Zappos’ employees.

Taking people behind the scenes can also mean creating a level of transparency and confronting issues head on. This happened several years ago when two employees at a Domino’s Pizza franchise in North ­Carolina created a video of themselves doing disgusting things to the food they were supposedly serving up to unsuspecting customers and posted the video on YouTube. Within twenty-four hours, the Domino’s CEO was featured in his own YouTube video responding to the initial video, defending the company and its thousands of franchisees and conveying the seriousness with which Domino’s viewed the incident. Instead of hoping and praying the incident and video would be forgotten or issuing a standard press release defending the company, Domino’s figuratively brought us into the boardroom to hear the “guy in charge” respond and take action.

Recounting Your Origins

A fourth approach to fueling your brand story is to recount your origins and heritage as a company or organization. As successful (and big) as brands such as Apple, Starbucks, and Gatorade are, we sometimes forget that they once were actually small players in their respective markets. For instance, the sports drink Gatorade along with its agency TBWAChiatDay recently developed a campaign meant to take us back to the 1960s and the University of Florida where Gatorade began as a drink concocted to fuel the Florida Gators football players in the hot and humid climes of Gainesville. Another example involves Coca-Cola and its ability to foster nostalgic feelings for the brand based on its appeal across several decades. Taken together, these types of stories help us to ascribe deeper meaning and feelings of nostalgia to brands that we (no offense) may have begun to take for granted.

Use Metaphors

The fifth story fire starter—employing metaphor and comparison—involves a tried-and-true interviewing technique called projective questioning designed to elicit responses that go beyond surface-level answers. For instance, if we wanted to find out what the car brand Mercedes-Benz meant to you, we could ask you just that: “When you think of Mercedes-Benz cars, what comes to mind?” And, you might respond something like, “I think they’re really nice, yet they’re also kind of expensive.” However, what if we asked you “If you were to compare a Mercedes-Benz car to a [movie star, animal, pro athlete, etc.], which would it be and what visuals would represent the brand?” The point here is that by eliciting metaphorical comparisons, an approach pioneered and patented by Harvard Business School professor Gerald ­Zaltman with his Zaltman metaphor elicitation technique (ZMET) research methodology, we can generate deeper level and nonliteral meanings, insights, and thoughts (thoughts that we often find difficult to express in words) through images and projections related to how we perceive specific brands.

Combining our first fire starter (creating a character) with the use of metaphors and comparisons, an effective social narrative can also involve what we’ll refer to as the “Mr. Clean” approach. In case you were born in the 1990s or later, Mr. Clean was a character created with superhuman cleaning powers or at least really strong arms. He conveyed strength, dependability, and confidence—all the things a cleaning brand can communicate in words, yet not with the same effect. Or, imagine you are founder and CEO of Joe’s Termite Company. For example, perhaps you (Joe) could create a character with superpower, Justice League-type strength with which to combat those pesky, wood-eating termites and leverage this character throughout his social media presence. This could involve creating a Facebook page featuring the character; we’ll call it the Termite-inator, its own Twitter account, a big presence on Joe’s website—you get the picture. While we don’t really believe that such a character actually exists, the meaning behind the Termite-inator is clear—he or she will help you in your (Joe’s) battle for termite supremacy.

Action Step #3

Considering your organization or brand and what it stands for, which of the five social fire starters align best with your opportunities or challenges?

In short, engaging people (your customers, your employees, your children, for that matter) with stories and story narratives is a great way to connect with them. Particularly in this cluttered, messy, and complex world of online and offline media, if you can’t make that connection with your respective audience(s) on a level that goes beyond mere awareness, then you risk, at best, being ignored and, at worst, being irrelevant. Again, the act of persuasion is at the heart of getting people to take action, and one proven pathway to persuasion is to engage people in story.

Once upon a time…