All three books for this week’s reading discussed the importance of stories in the workplace. Stories help people remember things better. They get the audience involved, get them to mentally picture things (we remember pictures better than words), and gets them to connect with others.
The world craves stories. In Squirrel Inc, a squirrel complains that her new idea (that would save the company) is not being heard. She has been feeding them facts and trying to get her audience to visualize the future, but it isn’t working. She is guided to a bartender who helps her by suggesting that she tell a story in order for her idea to be heard. She doesn’t think this story will work in this all-business place, but she tries it, and it works wonderfully!
Similarly, in Made to Stick, there are many problems that are overcome by stories. One example is this group, called the CSPI, has found out that the movie theater popcorn has, I believe it was, close to 3 day’s worth of fat in it. The CSPI needed to figure out how to tell the public and do so in a way that the message stuck. They finally decided to set one container of popcorn beside an equally fat stack of greasy food. When the audience saw this ad, this simple image allowed them to form their own stories. Some of those stories probably sounded something like this: “If I had a container of popcorn a day, I would be eating so much fat, I would probably end up dying an early death!” or like: “Wow, I could eat so much more food for the same amount of fat if I didn’t eat the popcorn.” Either of these stories (and the million unheard others that the audience conjured) caused a boycott on the movie popcorn until the theaters stopped using the oil that made it so fatty.
As in the above sample, it is not necessary for a person to give every detail in order to evoke action. In fact, it is nearly essential for the audience to form their own version. This allows them to own and manipulate your idea. The key to implanting a good idea in the business place is SUCCES: The idea is Simple, Unexpected, Concrete, Credible, and Emotional, and it is told with a Story.
Another example of this is the story created from Doves “evolution” commercial http://youtube.com/watch?v=iYhCn0jf46U. This video shows how a normal person is turned into a billboard model through makeup and photoshop. It tells the story of one woman’s transformation in 1 minute and 15 seconds. There was no dialogue, and very little text. It covered all of the elements of SUCCES and it stuck in my head. When I first saw this (some time ago), I was like, “Wow. How many people out there, know that models are photoshopped for more than just a few zits? Let me share it with my friends.”
See what I did there, I took the Dove story and their idea, and made it my own by making a bigger story in my head and then an even bigger story by passing on the video. [which is the premise of something going viral]
As an interesting side note, I’ve heard (though I can’t seem to find internet “proof,” at the moment, of this happening) that there was a magazine that had this picture perfect beauty on it. The magazine owners wanted to know who this woman was, so they pestered the cover designers, who were not willing to share their source, for a long time. Eventually it was revealed that the woman didn’t exist, she was completely computer generated…. But like I said, I can’t find internet proof.
I really liked your use of the Dove campaign commercial. It was a very good way of showing how a story can be told through only pictures and no dialogue. This type of story can make someone come up with their own opinions and then pass it on. I think they did a great job in figuring out a way to make people stop and think about what they are really looking at when they see people on billboards or magazines. Great example!
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