OH WHAT A FEELING!

There’s something not quite right with messaging.

[Don’t get your hackles up, please.  We’re not maligning words or choices or their arrangements.]

In every map, every grid, every page in which we capture the essence of a business, it falls flat.  Sure, we can add emotional words, even exclamation marks (though save us from too many).  Yet the story is somehow lacking.  Words alone aren’t working … at least, for us.

Of late, we’ve been applying an idea from the design world.  Which is, the creation of mood boards, once assembled from a bunch of oversized, colorful magazines, even photography books.  With a glue stick, scissors and a generous foam core board, a collage develops that reflects themes and a vague essence of feeling.  Interior designers, artists, creative directors, fashion folks use these liberally; in fact, they guard the completed boards with their lives, keeping them ultra-confidential until the project has been revealed. 

So what stops us – communicators and branding experts – from starting our stories this way?  It connects the heart and the brain.  It helps coordinate a corporate tale.  And it quickly lets others know exactly where we’re going.  Yup, a series of pictures (yes, with words) relates the beginning and middle and ongoing events that make up a business’ life.

No Moody blues, here. 

THE ELEMENT OF SURPRISE

              Raised eyebrows.

              The Trojan Horse.

              A wrinkled forehead.

              Japan attacks Pearl Harbor.

Today, our lives are spattered with surprise – whether we express it verbally, facially, through startled or synchronized actions.  Nothing says that better than dialing into the news or following a particular account through all its iterations.  [Think of the latest Netflix phenomenon, the Making a Murderer.]

On the other hand, our work lives, for many reasons, are fairly immune from surprises.  We’re informed about company happenings, exchange information with colleagues, and labor pretty hard to get our jobs done well.

Or are we protected?  In days of mergers and acquisitions, of stock markets reacting to every little up or downtick, and of corporate cost consciousness infiltrating many activities, surprise has got to be a staple of our lives – and managing it, commonplace. 

How to do that?  Obviously, reinforcing good words on how to deal with change is a given.  Many learning and development gurus usually recommend a basic course or book or module.  Or exploring on your own and with a team.

There’s also another path – one that can be embedded weekly.  Which is the telling of stories with a surprise element.   It can be communicated in a series of narratives or ongoing conversations.  Or simply a look at the business’ history to demonstrate how surprise is usually not, really truly, an out-of-the-blue startle.

Shock, after all, is not a strategy.

MINDING OUR STORIES

With stories now becoming the center of what we do, everyone has an opinion about best ways, best techniques, best values.

Visual storytellers insist on incorporating principles like authenticity, relevancy, sensory and archetype.

Community organizers, long-time astute power users of tales, propose three interlocking circles:  the story of self, the story of now, and the story of us.

And (not to be forgotten) corporate types espouse messaging and expression as part of a strategy that considers goal and audience front and center.

To be honest, everyone’s right.  And wrong.

A brain researcher (Princeton neuroscientist Uri Hasson, to be precise) is showing us new ways to think about creating compelling narratives. 

Which is:  It’s all about how our brains react and respond to stories. 

In a series of incredibly complicated analyses and tests, he and his team reveal that different people respond in remarkably similar ways to great stories, no matter what the media.  Using MRIs and other medical technologies, the scientists prove that the best of storytellers have gotten into our minds and altered them in some predictable ways.  Even better:  That the storyteller somehow makes the listener’s/viewer’s brain match his/her own.

You heard it here first:  We predict soon we’ll be taking our ads, messaging, and digital promos to the docs for brain imagery … not just copy-testing.

MAKING STORIES MATTER

Every person has a story.

So, too, every corporation.

What will make the difference, as marketers and communicators insist, is how we articulate and tell the story.

Of late, we’ve been mesmerized by Marshall Ganz, a lecturer at Harvard’s Kennedy School and a not-necessarily-well-known labor organizer, who worked for the likes of Cesar Chavez, SNCC (a Boomer alert!), behind the scenes at President Obama’s first election campaign, and other transformational initiatives.  His story point of view relies on three - and only three - elements:  the story of self (why we’re called on to do what we do), the story of us (what the organization has been called to do, a/k/a vision, mission and values), and the story of now – our challenges, our choices, and our hopes.

It’s a powerful angle, these three elements, one that many message platforms and business narratives don’t capture simply enough.  Which begs the question, or many of them:

              How often do we edit our stories – explaining how we are finding a better path?

              Are our message platforms as powerful as the real story we can tell?

Do we, can we thoroughly explain what it means to be our organization, looking to the future through our past and present lenses?

If a story is intended to help people cope with change, eliminate the FUDs (fear, uncertainties, and doubts), uncomplicate the complex, and persuade, then there’s a real mandate to objectively review our stories often.  After all, change happens both inside and outside our worlds; we need to make sense of those events and teach each other what they mean through our stories.

No question, it takes real courage to edit a decades-old narrative, refreshing it to reflect the here and now, with authenticity and candor.  The questions then lie with you, our readers:  Are you ready for that challenge?  And how difficult has that path been?

ONCE UPON A TIME

Much has been written of late about stories and storytelling.

Mel and Pat Ziegler, founders of Banana Republic and serial entrepreneurs, narrate their concept’s early days (BGB, before The Gap buy-out) in Wild Company.

Kentuckian (and former Pittsburgh Pirates player) J.Peterman, no newbie to the art of romance, re-started his eponymous catalog in the early 2000s and is, fingers crossed, succeeding this second time around.  In fact, his newest wrinkle is an online travel adventure bulletin board, building a community for sharing off-beat customer experiences.

Forward-thinking marketers are declaring that do-good promotions are passé, trumped by experiential marketing … and, you got it, stories.

But who’s telling stories?  More, who’s telling them well … and authentically?

Other than actors, of course – and anyone who’s been schooled in presentations (sometimes) and improvisation (occasionally). 

Those of us whose professions rely on tugging hearts and plying emotion – with the whole truth and nothing but  – are, quite frankly, not always so adept at spinning tales.  We forget about protagonists and antagonists.  Rush through the narrative because time is limited.  Ignore the intake of breaths around the plot and the climax and denouement.   And don’t rehearse the actual delivery.

It’s as important inside a business as it is in talking products or services with real-life buyers.  Entertainment for a reason (not for frivolity’s sake) tells our rapt audiences as much as possible, gets them to experience the event through different lenses, underscores a point without preaching, and, in short, screams “genuineness” with a purpose, memorably.  Storytelling’s an art … and an important element of persuasion. 

Which MBA or higher-ed institution will be the first to pioneer that idea in its curricula?