Storytelling on The Findings Report

Burberry uses cinematic trailer to tell its story

Wed, 02 Nov 2016 14:53:00 +0000

Yesterday, Burberry introduced a three-minute “cinematic trailer” titled The Tale of Thomas Burberry to kick off its holiday season campaign and to celebrate the 160th anniversary of the brand. In 24 hours, the film has already enjoyed nearly 2 million views on YouTube and has received a widely positive critical response. One comment on YouTube says it all. “I wish I could see the whole movie.”

The story fictionalizes the life of Burberry founder Thomas Burberry, who introduced the world to gabardine and became the outfitter of choice for the daring and the adventurous, long before the brand that bears his name became a fashion icon. The film’s fact-based foundation, expressed with ample creative license, gets a boost from beautiful cinematography, a reputable cast that includes Sienna Miller, Lily James and Domnhall Gleeson, and the deft storytelling hand of Academy Award-winning director Asif Kapadia.

Telling a Story Without a Literal Narrative

Sat, 12 Oct 2013 18:14:30 +0000

In his thought-provoking book The Storytelling Animal, Jonathan Gottschall constructs a compelling case that we are all natural born storytellers. We can’t help it. It is part of our brain’s wiring. It is how we comprehend the world. Even when we’re not trying, we’re always constructing stories.

I come back to this fact of life often, especially when someone says they can’t come up with a story; when they tell me they have writer’s block or they just aren’t creative enough to put a story together. That’s bunk. Each of us has been piecing stories together without much conscious thought since we were infants.

Storytelling and Points of Relation

Mon, 07 Oct 2013 00:42:12 +0000

Today is my father’s birthday. Had he lived, he would have been 72.

Each year that he is gone the anniversary of his birth becomes more significant. I can’t really explain why because in the later years of his life we were not close. There are many reasons for our estrangement. None of them are important to this story, nor do they matter in the context of a blog about storytelling. Except, that’s not entirely true. Let me explain.

The 2 Critical Story Skills They Don't Teach in School

Tue, 20 Mar 2012 15:49:00 +0000

In schools across the world we teach young people many skills and bits of knowledge; like how to read and to write, how to solve quadratic equations, or how to calculate the atomic weight of Hydrogen. We arm our children with the most powerful concepts we can imagine in our overly analytical minds, so much so that we stress ourselves out and stress our children out in the process. However, I’ve noticed that we don’t spend enough time teaching our children two critical skills that are essential to life. We don’t teach them how to tell a story and we don’t teach them how to listen for one.

Answer the Question

Sun, 05 Jun 2011 00:30:00 +0000

My first “real” job was working for James A. Doolittle, a Los Angeles theatrical producer who was something of a legend in his own time. Mr. D liked to hire assistants who graduated from his alma matter, USC, and I found myself in the right place at the right time. I think I may have been the last of the long series of USC alumni who counted a tour of duty with the old man as a proud rite of passage. He was in his eighties then. I was about 23. A few years later, after I finished business school, I realized that all I really needed to know about business I learned from Jimmy Doolittle.