Transcription:
Telling a Better Story

We know what you want. You want to reach more customers and grow your business.

But the marketing and PR landscape is murky and confusing.

Now, you can gain clarity with Straight Talk on the latest marketing and fundraising trends in technology from two agency pros.

Bryan Earnest and Mark Mathis from Amperage Marketing and Fundraising.

Now, amp up your marketing with the Amp Up Podcast.

Mark Mathis: Hello, I'm Mark Mathis and I'm with...

Bryan Earnest: Bryan Ernest.

Mark Mathis: And our topic today is on storytelling. So, Bryan, let me tell you a story. It goes like this. Once upon a time, there was a business. It did everything right. The end. Where's the struggle?

Bryan Earnest: I think I've heard that story.

Mark Mathis: Where's the antagonist? Where's the surprise? Where's the moral of the story? Needless to say, it's not much of a story. But that's exactly what we hear most people doing when they try to market their company or organization.

So storytelling has been a part of our entire adult life, yet it seems like storytelling is the new buzz word of the marketing world. So, Bryan, why do you think there is this new emphasis on storytelling and marketing?

Bryan Earnest: That's a good question, Mark. I think at the most basic level, we have more and more conversations with marketers today about being authentic. I think that's part of it, connecting with their customers in a much more authentic and real way. I think it's also the way media has changed. There's so many media options out there, so being highly targeted in that audience. But, you know, I think storytelling goes back so much further. Marketers are moving away from that feature benefit, speak of the past perhaps.

And you said it was new, a new emphasis. You know, storytelling's been around forever. You said all of our adult life, but it goes back way into history. It's the way info has been shared for years. Parables were used to share lessons. Stories were told to share history. It's an easier way to process information and commit ideas to memory. I think about, we tell our children stories so that they take away lessons and learn from that story.

So, stories are such an effective way when the listener can really see themselves in the story., they can see themselves a character in the story. They can walk in the shoes, the hero, the guide, and they will get into that stuff. But stories have always been a way of just connecting with each other.

You know, I think about ads today. I think some of the best ads that speak to me are the ones that reach me. And I can see how that product or service will fit into my own life story. I can see myself wearing that shirt or buying that golf club or using that iPhone or driving that car or eating a meal in that restaurant. I want that to be part of my story.

Mark Mathis: It's so true. I was just reading this morning that the Washington football team is bringing in what it says is the first creative and digital officer, and it's a first for the NFL. And he's going to be in charge of leading an effort around -- get this -- creative storytelling for the NFL. So, you're right. It's been around forever. But for some people, we're just getting around to it, right?

Bryan Earnest: Mark, you bring up a great point. You and I both follow sports and we follow football. But I think about in our days of working for NBC, they had the Olympics. And for a lot of us, you know, those are sports that we don't all follow every day, the triathlon or the biathlon or downhill slalom giant ski jumping or whatever. We don't follow that.

And so sitting around one winter or summer and watching the Olympics, I'm sitting here and the top three people are from Russia and China and Australia. Why do I care? Well, NBC did a great job when they took on the Olympics back-- I don't know when that would have been, probably the '80s, maybe even early '90s. And they took a completely different approach. They started telling stories about the individual athletes. And we started to learn the names like a Nadia Comăneci, who is a gymnast from Russia, or we started to learn about maybe a downhill skier from a Scandinavian country and what they had been through to get there to the Olympics.

And suddenly, viewership went up. People started to care about the Olympics, not even if they were red, white, and blue. People just started to really engage in the story around that Olympic athlete. And so, absolutely powerful.

Mark Mathis: Yeah. I just think the days of creating advertising that's a faceless entity that just has no soul, it doesn't connect with people and it doesn't connect people where people can know that they align with a particular industry's vision. And if they don't know that, they're just not interested in it. It just doesn't seem to sell the personality, the values of a brand. And that makes people a fan of the brand. I mean, that's the whole idea. It's great to have a brand, but you want one that people really like. And without stories, I just don't think it happens.

And you've got to have great storytelling. And one of the greatest story tellers to me, know are a fan of this person too, Bryan, is Donald Miller, who wrote the book Building a Story Brand. And he talks about that a company is not the hero of the story. And that kind of reorientation of perspective seems so hard for organizations and companies to achieve. It just has me wondering why is it so hard to kind of repurpose your idea and make a great story and how Donald does it? What do you is happening in this modern marketing world now?

Bryan Earnest: I think a couple things are all baked into that question, Mark. And one is just a common approach you and I have to the idea of brand first and foremost. And we talked in one of our other podcasts about brand. And so often, people think about brand of name and identity and logo and the colors they use and things. But brand is so much more than that. It's really about experience. It's about emotional connection to an organization or a product or a service. It's also about that experience.

And so when you think about brand that way, the best way to convey that is it is in the form of a story. And it's not your story. And I think that's what companies make a mistake. So often, it's not about-- you started with that, your great little illustration at the beginning, this company was formed. It did a great job. The end. It's about you, the customer. It's not your story as the company. It's the story of your customer and how you as an organization come alongside that person, invite them, how you're a part of their story.

So Mark, you certainly have worked with a lot of organizations on them telling their story. What's the best way for an organization to start becoming an authentic storyteller?

Mark Mathis: I'm afraid. This will be a very long answer.

Bryan Earnest: We have time. We've got all day.

Mark Mathis: Because you're going to hear later, if we talk about what are the important parts, I always think the beginning is the most important and starting with this is important. So you've got to have a reorientation that you're not going to tell people your story, like you were saying, Bryan. You're going to share the story of the people that are experiencing your product or service.

And I think Patagonia does a great job of that. They really don't tell you about their clothing. Patagonia takes you on an adventure with the people that are using their clothing. I just love it. I mean, you can watch these and never buy a Patagonia shirt or never be a mountain climber. But you want to be after you watch it. You want the clothing to be a part of kind of person that they're featuring. And I think that's where the storytelling really does a better job of selling, than even just saying, "These are all the benefits that are available."

So storytelling to me has a structure or, using my example before maybe we should call it story sharing, it's not just a list of benefits anymore. You've got to have that engaging part so that people know the soul of your mission or the soul of your brand. And I think it starts with conflict or a problem. It moves to a climax. And then there's the resolution. That's pretty common in every single story you'll see, every movie you'll see, every book you'll read, same situation. But unfortunately, we tend to jump from, "I want to tell a story" to "Here's the resolution. Here's how you fix that."

So I think you've got to bring all your creative thinkers together. Sometimes you might need help for that. Here's a little plug for the agency like ours. You might need someone outside to come in and help you do that and begin finding the soul of your brand. What makes you human? What do you do that positively dents society? Or are you just a simple product that just exists? You're not going to have much of a story. I think you're not going to survive.

So stories help you move beyond that kind of the mindset, the mechanisms of simply selling a product or a service. And it moves you into a mindset of like story-centric thinking. That means you've got to move away from yourself and you've got to move toward the people that use your products. So you've got to be more thoughtful, maybe more memorable, definitely a lot more real.

So, when I was thinking about this whole topic, I was watching some videos that I've liked in the past. And Intel has created this story series they call The Beautiful Inside. It's a nice metaphor for what a chip does inside a computer. It's what's inside that matters. And so they tell the story of an individual has a different outside every day, but he's the same person inside.

So they featured all these people that decided that they wanted to send in their pictures and be a part of this whole effort. So there was this great engagement part for them. But the stories just capture you and pull you in and you can't help, but watch this particular story. And then you realize that's basically what a chip does. It's got the basic insides and it helps all these different outsides of computers. How does this thing do it?

It has tens of millions of views. They've done a lot of episodes, so you need to add them all together, but just the impact of that, telling those stories two people about something that really is much like the carburetor of your car. It's just fascinating how it has engaged people and that they care about what the chip is inside their computer.

Bryan Earnest: Listening to you a little bit, I think organizations struggle if they want to start with more authentic storytelling is not really knowing thyself where they struggle with an organization, learning about itself and understanding why people really buy from them and engage with them.

It takes reflection. It takes reflection on who your customers are, what their motivations are, what their lifestyle is, how you fit into their lifestyle. But it's also knowing yourself as an organization, knowing your core, knowing your own personality, how people see you, holding a mirror up to an organization. How can it be an authentic story If it doesn't feel real, the story you're telling me isn't genuine, that it isn't really who you are and how you deliver on your brand and brand promise. I think so often organizations skip over that step and don't really understand who they are.

You talked a little bit about some of the structure of storytelling and talking about conflict. Who are the characters in a story?

Mark Mathis: Well, really the characters at the beginning of the story would be the hero. And if you think of the hero of our story as an advertising agency, it's our clients. They're the ones going through the journey. They're the ones going through the struggle. They're the ones with the issue. We're really the guide. We're going to help them along. We're going to be helping the protagonists of the story in meeting that goal and then taking up a challenge at the end and then being successful.

So really I think that the character is what people get wrong sometimes. They think we're the heroes. We should have the capes on. We should be the ones coming to the rescue. And a lot of times the guide does come to the rescue in some ways. But the true hero is always going to be that main focus, that main character. And the interesting character is not really us, it's the people we serve

Bryan Earnest: Yeah, I think you just nailed this. But my question was going to be, what do you think is the most important part of storytelling and that whole process?

Mark Mathis: You know, to me, this is where everyone blows it. And if you're a smart marketer, here's what you're going to do. You're going to spend 90% of your time on the intro. That's the important part of a story. Think of all your favorite movies or anything that you enjoy watching from a video, it's got a great beginning. From Star Wars, with the way the words come in and the big music, how they start with Darth Vader. They start with problem first.

Think about a two-minute video, a typical two minute video, a hundred percent of your viewers are going to see the intro to your video. A hundred percent of the people who are going to watch it are watching the intro. And then all of a sudden, you're going to lose them. These are natural statistics. You're going to lose about 33% of your viewers after the first 30 seconds of a two-minute video. You're going to lose 45% by 60 seconds. So by the time you get halfway telling your story, half your audiences left. So you've got to make sure that that first few 30 seconds, 10 seconds, are outstanding and really draw them in so that you can increase people that watch to the end who want to watch to the end.

So the intro to me also sets the tone, the mood. It sets everything for the entire video. It builds excitement, builds expectation. And here's the real problem, I think most organizations start their story with themselves. Like even presentations, think of a lot of presentations you go to. Usually they start with, "Let me tell you a little bit about myself and then we'll get to real meat of what I'm talking about." They should say, "At the end of this, I'll talk about myself. But right now, I'm going to get right into the meat."

So it isn't "Let me tell you about me and then we'll get to your problem." It's "Let's get to your problem. And then we'll talk about me later." So I still think too that maybe start strong, but I think the second most important part is that you've got a clear villain. If you don't have a problem, you don't have a good story. If you don't have an antagonist, you don't have a good story. Many times our antagonist is something thing that is an issue that people are having. So you meet Darth Vader, you know, the problem long before you meet Luke Skywalker and know who the hero of the story is. You know what the problem is.

So we did a fundraising video for an organization called Holy Family Ministries that worked with people in this really dangerous housing project called Cabrini-Green. I believe it's now torn down. But the villain in that story was the pull of the streets. And that included gangs and drugs and poverty and hopelessness, but it was really the streets, that was the villain that our hero was fighting. And the hero was Holy Family Ministries, and they were trying to help people pull their lives up and out of that, away from that villain. That's a story, right? People love the underdog.

So I think you've really got to think of what your problem is for your organization and how are you fighting against it. What are you doing? How can people cheer for you? So when you have got a great villain and a powerful open, you've got a great story. It's probably going to just tell itself as you go along.

As people are probably listening to us, Bryan, I think they're probably going, "Well, that's all great. Yeah, that works for nonprofits. That probably works for healthcare industry. But what about business to business?" Does storytelling work in the business to business world? What do you think about that?

Bryan Earnest: Yeah, absolutely, it fits. We work in that each and every day. Telling a story is really a way of illustrating to a customer how a problem is solved. It's a metaphor of sharing for them how a problem in their business could be solved through someone from the outside providing that service or that product to help them move the needle.

B2B marketers offer solutions to problems for their customers too. The key is to humanize the business though. You talked about that with your example of Holy Family Ministries, but it's really humanizing that business to engage in that transaction, engage in that commerce. Businesses are made up of really soft stuff that do matter and contribute and add color to the story. It's the people, the culture, the values, their solutions, the things like growth and goals and winning. Those are all part and parcel to business-to-business transactions as well. The right story wraps all that together and makes it personal.

Mark Mathis: When you really think about it, that part where you said a story humanizes the organization, well, I think business-to-business needs it just as much as anyone else. Maybe they need it more because it's still a relationship that you're establishing with-- its people to people,

Bryan Earnest: Businesses look for a way to trust each other, right? To trust in the way, "I'm going to do this for you while you're doing that for your customers." It's all about connection. It's about how our business plugs into your business, your business plugs into another business. That kind of connection happens through stories of examples of how others have done that and had success because they've plugged into us and we plugged into them. And that connectedness, that is at the core of what storytelling is all about. So that's what B2B business is all about today.

Mark Mathis: Yeah. Even listening to how we're talking about storytelling and we talk about storytelling all the time, but sometimes you don't package it quite like this, where you've got it in a nice tight 30 minutes or so. And when you start thinking about it, you go, " Why can't more organizations just jump on this storytelling train?" I'm struggling with why they're struggling? Why do you think organizations struggle this? Why do they struggle with storytelling so much?

Bryan Earnest: I think it comes down to one fundamental thing, Mark, is I think organizations are so excited about what they want to say, that they want to tell their story. They have a new product. They offer a new service there. "We're really good at this. We know we can help you." They have so much to tell people and it's that, "Stop. Listen to what the customer needs and create a story around them." And I think so often, they just get wrapped up in their goals and objectives of their business, what they're trying to promote, so offer whatever it might be, that they just need to stop and think sometimes about the motivations of that client or customer that they're trying to serve.

Mark Mathis: Yeah, absolutely. You know, you said earlier in this podcast that storytelling has been going on for a long time. I'd like to quote Plato because that makes me sound so much more intelligent. Plato said a couple of years ago, "Those who tell the stories rule society." I think most of us would be happy if our stories just lifted our brand efforts, made us closer to our stakeholders.

So I hope you've enjoyed the story we've been telling. That's today's episode of Amp Up podcast. If you liked what you heard, the insights and the things we were talking about, if you're interested in more, please check us out at amperagemarketing.com.

And if you get a chance, we would really appreciate it if you would rate and review us. We'd appreciate any feedback you can offer. So for Bryan Ernest, and me, Mark Mathis, thank you for listening and keep telling stories.