Storytelling on The Findings Report

The Pitch

Tue, 30 Jan 2018 00:00:00 -0800

Every day, we are inundated with persuasion attempts. Buy this. Share this. Try this. Like this. The lists goes on and on. With each attempt we add to our collective wisdom about tactics used to make us do things. That wisdom is known in the academic world as persuasion knowledge. In this episode of The Findings Report podcast, we delve into persuasion knowledge and discover ways to reduce its negative effects. We also meet with a research team that has discovered instances in which it can actually help you sell.

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.

20 Minutes of Storytelling

Sun, 07 Dec 2014 15:08:39 +0000

20 minutes.

That’s what is required. Set an alarm on your phone to sound in 20 minutes, then start writing. Your mission: to write as fast as you can and to tell a complete story. It needs a beginning, middle and an end.

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.

A Lesson in Storytelling from Ricky Gervais

Fri, 04 Oct 2013 13:34:57 +0000

As part of its ongoing “Creation Stories” series, FastCompany posted this interview with Ricky Gervais. Gervais is perhaps one of the best comedic writers in the business today, known to most audiences for his work on The Office which he built into a brilliant multinational franchise on the insight that no matter where you go in the world, “we’ve got a little bit of David Brent in all of us.”

Gervais recounts one of the most important lessons he learned as a writer and storyteller. It happened when he was about 13. No matter how hard he tried to excel at creative writing in school, his work failed to impress his instructor.>I always thought my stories were the best. They were more exciting. And whenever I wrote a story and handed it in I always got it back: “Too melodramatic. Write about what you know.” And this was frustrating because I was thinking, “it’s either good or it isn’t.” And I thought my stories were so … who wouldn’t like a story called Jesik about a maverick cop who didn’t play by the rules? Are you mad? … And all the other kids are getting B’s and A’s.

In defense of Super Bowl commercials ... when executed well

Mon, 04 Feb 2013 05:03:00 +0000

There isn’t a bigger forum for television advertising than Super Bowl commercials. It was once Carnegie Hall and the Grand Ole Opry rolled into one—a place for brands and their agencies to raise the stakes and entertain the largest television audience in the world. Some of the most memorable advertisements of all time debuted on a Super Bowl broadcast. So, why was 2013 so lackluster?

Let’s roll back the clock about a dozen years. 2000’s Super Bowl XXXIV is a great case study year—one that set the stage for what ills us now. Just a few months before the dot-com boom would crash, 2000 would go down as a year when advertisers clearly went “over the top.” Flush with cash from a hot economy and an insane startup mentality, agencies convinced their clients to go big or go home. Budweiser unveiled “ Wassup,” 7-Up asked us to “ Show Us Your Can”, and a bevy of .com companies that aren’t with us today proved just how irreverent they could be thanks to work done by a lot of disruptive advertising agencies who are also not with us today. It led many critics to decry the blatant waste of media dollars and argue that advertisers needed to tone down the frenzy. In truth, it was pretty crazy.

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.

Storytelling Architecture

Sat, 11 Oct 2008 23:37:13 +0000

At their best, brands tell stories. Sometimes it is overt, such as when they advertise, and sometimes it is subtle, such as when they cue a story already in your head with a brand interaction. Because stories are fundamental to the richness of our experiences, it’s no wonder that brand managers talk a lot about brand stories, brand storytelling, brand narrative, and the like. Storytelling has been en vogue with brands for years now, even before I tackled the subject in my 2002 book, Legendary Brands. The trouble is, while brand managers want their brands to tell stories, they don’t know how to systematize an approach.