Episode #7. Let us tell you a story… This episode focuses on Storytelling, a brilliant soft skill for marketers to not only connect emotionally with consumers, but a useful tool for internally leading and inspiring your organisation. Joining host Abby is successful author, trainer and strategist Anthony Tasgal. He shares the ‘golden thread’ storytelling method, why you should let yourself ‘wander’ to share inspiration and in an industry obsessed with numbers and data, the importance of emotion to be memorable, resonate and influence your audience.
Resources/brands mentioned in this podcast:
The Storytelling Book – Anthony Tasgal
The Inspiratorim – Anthony Tasgal
A Thousand Ships – by Natalie Haynes
Circle – by Madeline Miller
Iliad – Homer
Sponsored by Labyrinth Marketing
FULL TRANSCRIPT (with timecode)
00:00:00:01 – 00:00:26:20
Hello and welcome to the Whole Marketer podcast. Today’s topic is a technical skill or maybe even a soft skill it’s storytelling. I’m going to be joined by Tas shortly who is an expert in storytelling. But before I do I just want to give you an overview as to why I think it’s so important.
00:00:27:19 – 00:00:51:17
So as marketers we’re now tasked with leading the commercial agenda of the organization leading the front if you will. And they also a big part of our job is to make sure that we are leading and aligning the organization behind the vision goals and strategy. It’s one thing to set it, is a completely another thing to bring it to life with the organization behind you and bought in.
00:00:51:19 – 00:01:08:23
Therefore, gaining the buying of your own team is not enough. It has to be the whole organization to not only align them and make them aware but also to motivate. So why I think it’s so important winning our colleagues across the functions is essential. You know it’s not just the marketing function that are going to
00:01:08:25 – 00:01:41:21
Bring this plan to life and therefore storytelling is a fundamental way in which to bring that story to life for them to emotionally connect with it. I believe we need to use a mix of analytics and insight and emotion to gain by it and storytelling is an approach of skill that has been bandied around for some time. I am personally ecstatic. I’ve got my own personal agenda of having invited Tas on today is an area that I’d like to learn a lot more about. I’ve read about it but really gets under the skin of why and how we can use it.
00:01:42:08 – 00:02:21:29
So on today’s podcast we’ll discuss storytelling, what it is, how to do it, and the benefits of when it’s done well. So we’re going to introduce our expert guest shortly. And Tas or Antony Tasgal is an expert at all things storytelling as well as behavioural economics and what he calls incitement. He’s a fellow course director at the CIM, trainer, lecturer, strategist and author of The Inspiratorium and The Storytelling book. Taz has launched his third book just recently Incitations and is working on book four. His background is an ad agency as a strategist and planner and to be fair he’s one of the most articulate people I know.
00:02:22:01 – 00:02:37:22
Tas, welcome to the podcast. Hello. Thanks for that lovely introduction. Always true. You know me. Sweet thank you. So in your words what is storytelling?
I think I’ll I’ll give you a story to start with.
00:02:37:24 – 00:02:58:06
Shall I? I think that’s the thing I’ve always found about coming from as you say the ad industry is we’ve become increasingly obsessed with numbers and facts and data and information. You know the big sort of the arrival of big data algorithms. You know I wrote somewhere that we’ve become slaves to the algorithm.
00:02:58:12 – 00:03:29:02
Apologies to any fans of Grace Jones which means that I just I worry now that in our industry particularly in sort of marketing comms branding and sales the pendulum has swung so far towards information and charts and bullet points and infographics and large amounts of numbers that we’ve forgotten the essential essence of communication which is actually involving people emotionally getting them to listen. Getting them to remember getting into feel emotionally attached to what
00:03:29:08 – 00:03:44:15
You’re saying. So for me storytelling is it is a necessary corrective to all of those decks. All those charts all of those slides that we’re becoming increasingly exposed to. I use word I’ve coined a few years ago called ‘arithmocracy’.
00:03:44:18 – 00:04:20:27
So we’re not living in a democracy or an aristocracy by the way I need to tell your listeners before I was a planner I was a classicist so there will be some Greek and Roman references and some etymology coming up I’m sure. So. Arithmetic is a Greek word for number as in arithmetic. So I see increasingly living in an ‘arithmocracy’ where everything has to be supported and confirmed and validated by numbers. Now my point is that that’s I’m not trying to be canute and push against that tide completely. But we have to realize that numbers and facts aren’t enough on their own to persuade people and influence people.
00:04:20:29 – 00:04:45:11
We need as I say to get underneath this sort of emotion all the emotional skin of people. And for me that’s where storytelling comes in. It’s the perfect way of understanding how to communicate how to share how to influence how to gain people’s support and even actually have to make people care. So that’s that’s really a very long-winded introduction to what I think storytelling is about.
And how to make people care.
00:04:45:13 – 00:04:48:12
I think that’s a really poignant point.
00:04:48:14 – 00:04:53:28
Why else do you think it’s so important for marketers to use storytelling in today’s age?
00:04:54:03 – 00:05:34:15
I think because again I worked with many many marketing directors, research teams, Insight teams a lot a lot of what they do is as I say influence a lot of what they’re doing is trying to influence consumers to buy their products or services. They’re also trying to influence stakeholders the board the C Suite etc. So what I’m really saying about storytelling is for me storytelling is a great body of knowledge of tips tricks and theory that marketing people should use as a way of really trying to get their point across are really trying to get people that they want to influence to support their views or buy their products.
00:05:34:17 – 00:06:04:00
To do that rather than this relentless barrage as I say facts information because most of the time and I’ve seen many many clients present I’ve watched agencies pitch I’ve seen many many documents and I think over the time I probably this this gives a clue to your audience how old I am. I reckon I probably witnessed or endured something in the area of 10000 presentations just gonna let that sink in for a moment.
00:06:04:04 – 00:06:14:12
I just made my stomach churn if I’m honest.
I’m still here and I’m still there still breathing. But if you asked me how many of those I can remember
00:06:15:09 – 00:06:56:14
How many them actually had an impact on me at the time or even subsequently it’s probably single figures which is a vanishingly small ratio. So again that’s my point is again as a classicist the Greeks all the Greeks or Roman rhetoricians and orators knew the secrets of persuasion and influence. They knew the power of speech and words and rhetoric and language and emotion and reason. So I label them storytelling they come from other disciplines as well but I think Marketing people really need to get a grip on that if they want to persuade people to do what they want which is I think at the end of the day a large part of the job of being a marketing director or a marketing person.
00:06:56:19 – 00:07:06:09
I think that’s interesting because I think the point that I hadn’t considered is that I’m thinking about storytelling about how to win the hearts and minds internally but actually it’s externally as well.
00:07:06:26 – 00:07:48:23
Absolutely. Although the training I do I do various days on storytelling so one is about presentation skills and presentations and the other is about brand storytelling. I spend a lot of my time working with clients for example on helping the Royal Albert Hall. Please God they hope in next year it’s 150 of anniversary or birthday so been helping them tell this story. And what’s fascinating for all the other clients I’ve worked with many of them wouldn’t know a story if it hit them because they’re obsessed with messages and facts and benefits propositions on the other hand Royal Albert Hall has roughly 350 to 400 events a year so you multiply that by 150.
00:07:48:25 – 00:08:08:12
That’s a that’s a lot of events that’s a lot of stories. So the trick for them the task for me working with them has been to try and create a sort of master narrative a master story under which they can actually talk about all the amazing things that they’ve done or the different political social events that they’ve had on as well as some cultural musical events.
00:08:08:14 – 00:08:33:07
So for me brand storytelling is is understanding again some of the ways in which storytellers have always talked about creating as I say a relationship a connection with readers or viewers or an audience and using that for brands in a way that doesn’t make them just look like they are pumping out messages in a very sort of transactional.
00:08:33:09 – 00:09:03:27
You know I have a message and you’re going to listen to it sort of format. So again on a little sort of cliché little sort of slogan I have which sort of straddles behavioural economics and storytelling is massaging beats messaging. So I don’t like brands particularly that obsess with messaging. A client I used to work with always used to what messaging architecture and I think about you but my heart falls literally when I hear that term well architecture as a whole just feels really sterile doesn’t it.
00:09:03:29 – 00:09:49:02
It is and it’s the idea that you have like a building blocks and you have to have blocks and blocks. That’s not how communication works. That’s not how storytelling works. You can’t have a series of different sort of messages and sub messages and sub sub messages again. It’s another example of the language of software and computers and I.T. permeating across the marketing like we were saying before lean and agile. So my point is that messaging is understanding how people feel about themselves. Understanding what makes them feel good understanding how they can make a decision which makes them look good to themselves and to other people and using communication and using brands to do that to make people feel good about their choices.
00:09:49:04 – 00:10:15:12
So that’s one thing where my messaging and messaging messaging I think is far more powerful it’s far more emotive and I think it’s it seems to be in line with a lot of the neuroscience evolutionary psychology all the other evidence that’s coming out in people economics rather than this very cold clinical messaging as I say of giving people facts whether it’s internally or whether it’s externally to sort of consumers and other audiences.
00:10:15:22 – 00:10:37:11
So I’m sat here and I’ve made notes. You know I think I kind of sit here and I’m listening I’m going okay I’ve got some in a massage I’ve got to think about how my consumer feels about themselves what they’re looking for you know what’s their aspirational aspects.
00:10:37:13 – 00:10:58:16
If I was to kind of sit here is there almost like a I don’t want to use the word formula because then we start getting back into architectural territory but almost like what’s the checklist that I need to or process I need to consider if I’m trying to move from a hundred and forty page usage panel deck to a story I want to embed either internally or externally.
00:10:58:18 – 00:11:23:03
Yeah I mean obviously I’m going to you know talk about the first book storytelling book and the fourth one which I’m writing now is like a sequel and I’ve got I think it’s 26 tips in the book as well as some understanding about why Storytelling it is important. But let me give you probably the single biggest I think help single biggest tip which I talk an awful lot about which is what I call the golden thread. Now get it.
00:11:23:05 – 00:11:28:16
So are we ready for a bit of classical mythology? Born ready go for it Tas. Okay.
00:11:28:18 – 00:12:37:02
Thesis and the Minotaur. One of my favourite stories I’ve just been reading all the the modern renditions of great classics classical books and the Iliad. So Natalie Haynes a thousand ships Pat Barker Searcy by Madeleine Miller all these great modern writers going back to the Greek myths and Greek history. But I’m talking about thesis in the minotaur which is a fantastic myth and it’s used in all sorts of areas even like psycho analysis so thesis was an Athenian leader and at the time King minus Crete had defeated the Athenians in battle and his tribute he said right Athenians every year you will send over seven young men and seven young women over to me in Crete on a ship and they will be taken into the centre of the labyrinth of fiendish maze devised by Di Dallas who was the father of Icarus who flew to near the sun and in the centre of the labyrinth lies my son the minotaur half man half bull and those young men and young women will be taken to the central labyrinth and they will be torn limb from limb by the minotaur they did like a bit of gore you know the Greeks.
I love how you bring in the Labyrinth in there as well liking that..
00:12:37:19 – 00:12:42:24
It is well this is that this is the notion of the store it’s a fantastic metaphor which you know that’s that’s why I love it.
00:12:42:26 – 00:13:15:28
So after many years of this happening there arose a hero as I have to say Theseus he said I will no longer allow this to happen I will get myself onto the ship I will sail to Crete I will meet King minus and I will go into the centre of the labyrinth and slay because that’s what I did in those days I will slay the minotaur so true to his word he gets on the ship he arrives in Crete and he goes to the court of King minus and announces boldly to King minus I will slay the minotaur I will save all the young men and women of Athens and I’ll slay the minotaur
00:13:17:17 – 00:13:48:28
when he meets King minus he also sees his daughter Ariadne and as these things do Ariadne falls in love with Theseus and thesis with Ariadne but Ariadne takes him aside says look this is no one has ever managed to get into this enter the labyrinth it’s such a fiendish complicated maze and even if they did get into the centre of the maze they would never be able to slay the minotaur he’s so fierce he’s so brutal and even if they did get the centre even if they did slay the minotaur they did in those days they would never be able to find their way out again.
00:13:50:03 – 00:14:48:29
So according to versions of this myth Ariadne gives Theseus a ball afraid a golden ball of thread and he takes the ball afraid that the beginning of the maze at the outside it amaze he starts unraveling it and he unravels it gradually gradually as he walks around the maze until he gets into the centre and once he arrives at the centre he fights the the minotaur he defeats the Minotaur and he then finds his way out back all the way to the start of the maze and he then ends up taking Ariadne and marrying marrying Ariadne. I talk about the golden thread as a metaphor for whatever you are writing of a presentation or document or speech you need a golden thread. It will help you avoid having a relentless barrage of facts someone once said about history history is one damn fact after another and often our presentations are just one damn chart after another. So
00:14:49:01 – 00:14:56:16
So one of my key recommendations is write a golden thread. Don’t just sort of compose a deck why call the vomit draft. Sorry
00:14:56:18 – 00:15:01:28
Sorry about that if anyone is just now I use vomit. In my work as well say you’re welcome here.
00:15:02:13 – 00:15:34:04
Don’t create vomit draft or if you do at least realize it is the vomit draft and never leave it. Never just present it. You need to work out what’s your thread what’s your argument what’s your hypothesis what’s your point of view. What’s your issue. And then once you’ve done that you ruthlessly edit you ruthlessly take out everything that doesn’t relate to that golden thread. I know it’s difficult and a lot of storytelling is precisely about editing. Ask any writer any storyteller they will tell you that what’s important is as important as what you put in is what you take out.
00:15:34:06 – 00:16:02:05
It’s the golden thread is there as as a as a philosophy as a theory and a practice to make sure that once you’ve got this thread it’s clear it’s visible it’s powerful and you try not to deviate too far from it so your audience always know where they are. They always know where they going. They don’t feel like they’re being lost. They don’t get distracted and start worrying out what’s for dinner. So that’s my golden thread is something that I always talk about and I think it’s a reasonable place to start.
00:16:02:10 – 00:16:17:06
So am I correct to say the golden thread is similar to like a pivotal question or is it more or is it more around the key the key message you want them to take away.
00:16:17:08 – 00:16:19:15
And then you edit back from that?
00:16:19:17 – 00:16:50:20
It can be any of those things. I mean the point about it is is to try and have a constant thread as I say it can be one point. I mean I did a presentation when I was consulting for research company a few years ago and we literally started off the presentation I just wrote we were 9 percent on a wall. I just wrote it on a post that we had it printed up actually all over the wall 9 percent everyone the client came into the room and looking at what’s it what’s going on. And we said look we’ve we’ve looked at your tracking data the brand behavioural data for the launch of your product.
00:16:50:22 – 00:17:26:28
and you’re expecting 30 or 40 percent of people to try and three months. You got 9 percent and that became a thread which was why. What’s gone wrong? Why was it only 9 percent? How did we fail? Was it the communication was it the positioning was it the retail distribution? But the point is that was our thread and it was you know enough data to stuff a mattress. But we didn’t go through that we started off with that was our argument that was our thread. Something’s gone wrong we need to understand why and yes we had all sorts of other data behavioural data and attitudinal data demographic data.
00:17:27:05 – 00:18:00:06
But I convinced the research company not to bury because that’s my problem. Often when we’re doing presentations or writing documents or even doing advertising or Web sites the really important interesting stuff we have to say the insights and I’d like so my insights at some point gets buried in all the other stuff. So again for me the golden thread is there. It’s visible. It’s thin but it’s powerful. But you make sure that you don’t allow yourself to bury yourself and your client and your audience if you like in a vomit draft on it.
00:18:00:08 – 00:18:16:18
So the point is as you say it can be a point of view. It can be a message it can be a hypothesis. It can be one bit of data but you use that as something that is powerful and clear that pulls everyone along with you. When you’re writing or presenting to them OK.
00:18:16:20 – 00:18:20:15
And that fact has emotion connected to it or not necessarily?
00:18:21:10 – 00:18:52:21
I think it should always be emotion. Yes. One of the things I recommend heartily you mentioned to my other one of my three legs. Storytelling and economics and incitement behaviour economics I spend an awful lot of time talking writing training about and one of the key elements of able economics is reminding human beings that despite what we like to believe we are led far more by our emotions than we like to give credit to. We like think we’re hyper rational we’re very sensible We’re Mr.
00:18:52:23 – 00:19:25:09
Spock but actually we’re much more likely to be influenced by emotions. So one of things I will say to people explicitly is if you’re writing a presentation you’re doing a speech or doing a document whatever it might be. Write down the emotional objectives of what you’re trying to do. You’re going to the board you know you’re a marketing director and you’re going to the board to ask for. I don’t know five million for a new ad campaign or to introduce a new variant or to go into a different market. What are the emotions you’re trying to stir?
00:19:25:11 – 00:20:03:07
Are you trying to make them perhaps fearful perhaps make them fear they if they don’t do this the brand will die or they’ll fall behind the competition. Maybe you’re trying to get them a bit angry perhaps that they haven’t been doing this earlier. You might obviously might want to make them happy. You might want to surprise them and say actually we found something interesting that you don’t know. So I would explicitly say people anytime you can write out the emotional objectives of what your communication is trying to do whether it’s a website piece of advertising or as I say even if you’re just going to the board or you’ve got a team meeting it will help you get a sense of what you’re actually trying to achieve.
00:20:03:09 – 00:20:11:09
And again it will just make you feel that emotion is more part of what you’re trying to do. All of all of the time in marketing and beyond.
00:20:11:11 – 00:20:42:12
I love that. And actually, as you were listing those emotions out it sent me back to what I was learning, many moons ago, about advertising within the communication module. It was you know what’s what the types of advertising are there. There’s the fear excitement and so on. So I think it’s actually almost saying let’s take those principles. Think about the emotion and what you want to land in that boardroom. I’ve never thought about crossing over. That’s a really interesting viewpoint.
00:20:42:14 – 00:21:06:06
Thank you Tas. Good thanks. So we’ve got golden thread emotional connection understanding what either your consumers or your stakeholders want to feel about themselves or feel about this topic. Are there any other elements you think Marketers need to include or consider or maybe even skills to learn in order to get better at storytelling?
00:21:06:08 – 00:21:16:19
I think one of the things that that runs through all my books is I’m even though I’m a lapse classicist I’ve become obsessed with sort of science over the last sort of 10-20 years.
00:21:16:21 – 00:21:56:05
So a lot of stuff not just from behavioural economics but from beyond is about understanding how scientists think. So I mentioned I’ll talk a bit about insight. So my second book the Inspiratorium home is all about what is insight and inspiration and how does it come about. When I took an awful lot about how scientists as much as creative people talk about insight and they talk about the Eureka moment they talk about the aha moment. One of my favourite writers from when I was younger was a science fiction writer and scientist himself called Isaac Asimov who perhaps my audience will know wrote I Robot which was a film later with Will Smith of course a foundation and empire.
00:21:56:07 – 00:22:32:12
And he said scientists don’t talk about Eureka and aha moments themselves what they do is they say that’s funny. It’s the emotion of that’s funny. That’s strange. That’s curious. So one of the things I emphasize in all the books and anything I talk about is this sense of curiosity. And I think if I’m being slightly unkind to marketing people that I’ve come across in the last several centuries I do worry that some of that curiosity has been sort of bled out of people.
00:22:32:17 – 00:23:13:18
I think the obsession with as I say the ‘arithmocracy’ obsession with numbers and measurement with the way that marketing people have become increasingly short-termist. And again I don’t think that’s necessarily them. I think that’s just the culture the way that everything’s become about you know the next quarter and the numbers and hitting targets. I think what’s happened and it’s it’s obviously what a lot of the training that I do. What’s happened is people have lost the time or the ability or the desire to just wander a bit and I used would wander deliberately because again as a section in the second book about error about making mistakes which is generally something that we think is bad we punish.
00:23:13:28 – 00:23:46:25
So is doing a talk on a panel the other day about innovation MPD. And I was talking again about this notion that you know innovation is never going to be too direct it’s never linear. A lot of it happens like all obliquely incidentally. So the thing about errare which is the Latin word sorry another bit that’s an opportunity for a robbery is the word that originally is behind the word error but it doesn’t mean to make a mistake in Latin it means to wonder. So what I say to people in marketing and beyond is it’s okay to wander you will make mistakes.
00:23:46:29 – 00:24:32:27
Insight and creativity are definite by definition things that don’t have safety nets. But I’d love them. I’d love marketing people to spend a bit more time wandering and looking at other areas which are beyond their sort of the comforts and certainly looking outside their market. You know if you work in cars or you work in yogurt or you work in retail you cannot spend all your working life just looking at your own market you’ll never come up with anything innovative or insightful or inspirational. So one thing I always encourage people to do and I wrote it particularly in the second and third books is a collection of lots of different anecdotes and stories from evolutionary psychology from science from mythology from etymology as in as a way of getting people to read this and go oh okay.
00:24:32:29 – 00:24:42:05
That’s funny because that’s I think how we feed our brains and make marketing more porous to all sorts of ideas I’m talking about. I
00:24:42:07 – 00:24:43:06
I completely agree.
00:24:43:08 – 00:25:15:14
And I think as we discussed there’s a chapter in my book all about curiosity. The overlap between behavioural science and psychology is the human you know a it is the human and having that curiosity about who they are why they’re doing what they’re doing. And you know it really worries me when I see marketers that are people watching that aren’t curious they are wondering they aren’t looking at markets that are similar to theirs but not the same challenge.
00:25:15:29 – 00:25:26:18
Because without that you’re never going to get to the insight you’re never going to get to the deep rooted reason why. So I completely agree with curiosity. Why is that working how does that work? What are they thinking?
00:25:26:20 – 00:26:03:19
Yeah I’ll give you one example from the new book Incitations. There’s 70 different quotes and expressions that I’ve used and some are from my advertising ideas or slogans some are acronyms some are just expressions and things that people have said that I just think are worth looking at and exploring. So I came across this in a book written by Israeli scientist. He’s actually trying to build a bridge between science and art in terms of understanding how to sort of spread that the lessons of science. And he talks about a line from a fourth century writer I’m sure you’re familiar with being Flavius Sallustius.
00:26:04:03 – 00:26:12:27
Funnily enough it’s not on my reading list. Okay well let me let me just educate you, he wrote something called concerning the gods in the universe.
00:26:12:29 – 00:26:52:04
And again as a classicist I’m constantly amazed at some of the extraordinary philosophy and thinking and mythology that the Greeks and Romans had. And in this this this book Sollustius wrote Now these things never happened but always are. And I read this because the Israeli scientists are in Harman wrote sort of fantastic book 15 evolution of 15 myths explain our world. And it’s a beautiful expression because what it says is that when storytellers and writers and thinkers write what they do is they write things perhaps mythological things that never happened
00:26:53:10 – 00:27:24:13
Things never happened but they always are. In other words they’re always about humanity. And that’s again one of my loves about stories they’re always about who we are. You know you don’t have to be a boy wizard or be neo or you know be in line of duty but there’s something universal about that which makes us think. Yes. That tells me something about humanity. And that’s one of the things I’m just obsessed with about getting people to read these things that they would never perhaps come across.
00:27:24:25 – 00:27:52:06
But there’s something in there hopefully that will just pique their curiosity so that who knows when in the next meeting in the next month in three months when they’ve got to do a marketing presentation in Dallas in November who knows. But something will just linger and it will create a new connection and a new insight that will lead them into a new area. So that’s to me that’s why I think all this whole area of dabbling in new areas, and wandering and being curious is so important.
00:27:52:11 – 00:28:14:03
Yeah. You’re only as good as your last set of inspiration aren’t you. Absolutely. And there’s not enough of it. No. No very true. So moving on to my next question if I may. What businesses would you say or brands do you think have done a good job of storytelling whether internally or externally?
00:28:14:10 – 00:28:58:11
I think a lot of them have probably. Somewhat you know a fairly straightforward and obvious. I mean Apple I think this has been very good at it because so much of what good does again is this massaging not messaging. You know if they didn’t spend all their time talking tech they didn’t spend all their time talking about spec either. It’s very much about the sort of person who is an Apple user. And I think they’ve got that right. Right from the beginning yes they do. You know Steve Jobs talks about you know iPods and iPad but it’s very much about all you the sort of person who aspires but feels themselves comfortable in this space rather than being the sort of person who works or buys Microsoft and I carefully accept I work for Microsoft as well.
00:28:59:10 – 00:29:01:10
But they’re very very different sort of tones of voice.
00:29:01:12 – 00:29:37:10
So one of things that also sort of shoehorn into this section if I can Abby is the importance of personality and tone of voice and character because that’s what stories are stories are as much about character as they are about plot or message. Brands that do storytelling well for me understand that. And again one of my sort of genomic utterances, don’t say the word genomic often enough, is if you look after the form the content will take care of itself.
00:29:37:12 – 00:30:12:05
I think we spend way too much time in our business. And again there may be the sound of your audience throwing tomatoes at me now. But I think we spend way too much time thinking about content in our business what we are saying and nowhere near enough time thinking about form how we say it. And again I think successful storytelling brands like Apple or Virgin or innocent are great because they understand the balance of content and form they understand it is not simply a matter as I said earlier just chucking information at people.
00:30:12:07 – 00:30:43:15
It’s really about the shape that’s what information means. If you look at the word information etymological you would form is there. So information is about how you shape data. So those brands again do you know Apple Virgin the Guardian I think a lot of these brands are very good because they understand that story as I say is a combination of what you say and how you say it. And that sense of understanding that people are a tribal human beings are tribal. I talk about brand my definition of a brand which I’ll give you here for nothing.
00:30:43:17 – 00:30:45:08
A brand is a tribe of shared meaning
00:30:48:19 – 00:31:35:09
That’s that’s the way in which targeting is actually going as tribes. It is not you know demographics 25 to 34 B.C. 1 it’s people who have her demographic. We could although we could do a whole podcast on demographics. I think it’s it’s for me it’s those that you know have shared aspirations that have feel like this is a tribe that I feel like I belong to and I have shared goals and visions and values with and that’s the way that targeting is going and quite rightly so and because we are not segmented based on our age or our demographic status. Interesting yeah you interesting to be able to buy me you know to select media gates.
00:31:35:11 – 00:31:38:06
But it’s it’s not who we are as humans as ever.
00:31:38:08 – 00:32:19:28
That’s right. That’s right. So I think that’s that tribe of shared meaning so I think brands that tell stories create meaning gain meaning is one of the words I I talk an awful lot about you know I’m less interested in messages and benefits and propositions but I’m far more in meaning because it is a word that we all understand human beings talk about me. But don’t go home and say about dinner. How is the benefit of that meal for you dear. You know. But we do talk about what things mean or made a meal or made us feel so again going back to emotion so for me that whole thing about brands that do that well they understand that it’s about creating meaning it’s about understanding your tribe and then talking about stories and anecdotes.
00:32:20:00 – 00:32:32:11
Social media. Above the line advertising whatever and feeding feeding that character that personality and bonding that tribe together under that sort of that camera of that meaning.
00:32:32:13 – 00:32:37:15
So for me that those are some examples and I could give you others but we can move on as well if you will.
00:32:39:26 – 00:33:11:27
I’m just trying to digest it all myself. So I think we’ve got the golden thread. So what’s that one emotive message that you want to land or or key takeaway. And thinking about how you want your audience to fail so what’s the emotion or feeling that they will have and working your deck around that. It’s in the editing not always in the building. It’s about building relationship relationships and connections. It’s also about massaging not messaging.
00:33:12:13 – 00:33:43:08
And it’s about ensuring that you’ve got inspirations so that you are you know using your curiosity to have that so that you can bring that into your next story that you need to tell. For me my thought coming into this was marketers have such a job entailing just to even get internal alignment and buy in as they lead the agenda as they lead the strategy. And I suppose I even forgot about actually there’s the story to be told to consumers as well maybe because it’s such a pain point in marketers lives today.
00:33:43:10 – 00:33:44:16
Getting internal alignment.
00:33:44:29 – 00:33:51:21
And get into the emotional skin was that synopsis everything.
00:33:52:21 – 00:33:56:04
Yeah I think so. I’ve got one other thing on mind. Well that’s right.
00:33:56:06 – 00:34:03:00
That’s great what’s your one top tip you would give to marketers for today?
00:34:03:04 – 00:34:33:15
Okay, I talked a lot about the golden thread. So that would probably be my top tip and I couple of that. But there’s one other thing that I sort of brings together my interesting behavioural economics and storytelling and it’s of understanding how the brain works. So we know that the brain accounts for on average about one and a half to two percent of our body weight. But it needs 20 to 25 percent of all the energy we take in which is hopefully the most important fact that I will leave you with today.
00:34:33:17 – 00:35:04:09
But what that means is the brain is constantly energy efficient or constantly seeking to be energy efficient. So it’s always making shortcuts. It’s always filtering stuff out. The brain is not a sponge. It’s a really misleading metaphor for thinking the brain is a sponge or even the computer doesn’t work in the same way I like think of the brain as an ignoring machine. Yeah a filter. So the brain is always trying to ignore things. So here’s a bit of serendipity. I mentioned that I believe in sort of the insight and serendipity.
00:35:04:11 – 00:35:14:24
I wrote a piece a while ago and it was a typo I just accidentally wrote the wrong letter. So I wrote down the two words attention span with an M
00:35:16:12 – 00:35:44:20
and I look to him for I see that’s quite that works. So my the way I sort of reverse engineered that now to make it not look like it was a mistake is to say that imagine when you’re talking to someone you’re trying to persuade someone you’re talking to the board whatever you’re trying to get if you like from your inbox into their inbox. But my argument is I think most of the time 80 percent of the time whatever. Most of what we say goes into people’s attention span. Why. Because
00:35:44:22 – 00:35:52:05
Because it’s not meaningful it’s not motivating it’s not memorable. It’s not emotional. So I suppose one of my my final tips
00:35:57:00 – 00:36:22:15
I can get through people’s attention spam. Don’t assume that just because you’re lovely and wonderful and smart and every chart you’ve got is packed full of information. But that is enough of a reason for it to get in through people’s attention span because it isn’t. So that’s why we say again as us a final tip Imagine everything you say all right has got to get through your attention spam and then think about how you’re gonna do it.
00:36:23:13 – 00:36:31:06
That’s brilliant. Thank you so much for that and so much for joining us on the Whole Marketer today. Pleasure. Thanks Abby. Thank you.
