All great marketers are storytellers. Yet, too often, we get tripped up over the science of branding and strategy, get ensnared in the numbers, and lose sight of the real power of advertising: Crafting and telling a great story about the product, person, service or cause we’re selling. That’s right, SELLING!
Thespians have been using that term for years. “Get out there on stage and SELL IT!”
The Selling is in the Telling.
I’ve been doing several workshops lately on the power of crafting better stories, and I need your help.
We created a simple one-page work sheet with this premise: Capture the pragmatics of left-brain intellectual thinking and migrate these strategic factoids to the romance of the right brain where your engaging story is created.
Test Drive our Sustainable Storytelling Worksheet
Do you have a story you’re dying to tell? Or is your brand story not resonating as well as you like? Want to give it a try?
- Download the sustainable storytelling worksheet SustainableStorytellingWrksht
- Fold it in half on the dotted line.
- Write your answers in the margins below each thought on the left side of the page.
- Once completed, it’s recommended to go have a beer, glass of wine, or some other vice, and let your brain simmer for a while.
- Return, unfold the page, now write your story in the red lines on the right side of the page. You don’t have to worry about writing “War & Peace” because you don’t have that much room. Please use focused, active and descriptive words to bring your black-and-white thinking into color.
- Describe your “Hero” from your brand statement
- Tell us your “Back story.”
- Your challenges and opportunities create your “Inciting Incident” that has turned your world upside-down, for better or worse. Every great story has one. What’s yours?
- Your communication goals are your “End game.” How do you want your story to end?
- Finger your antagonists. Identify the competition, people, economic and environmental forces, finances, doubters, you name it, that stand in your way.
- Now move into Act II, “The Love Story.” Write about the people/customers that you need to marshal to help you achieve your goals, what they care about, and how you help them achieve their goals.
- Now pen your finale; how your character will arch from Hero to Victor, despite all of the ugly nastiness of market dynamics in between.
Please let me know how this exercise works for you. I believe you can use this worksheet for everything from creating your brand position strategy, to a creative brief for a comprehensive campaign, to messaging for individual ads, to internal communications. What do you think?
