VIDEO: A lesson in how to tell your brand's story ... from Kevin Spacey

From the Content Marketing Institute:

If you haven’t seen this video from actor and House of Cards star Kevin Spacey, it’s worth the five minutes of your time. The speech, edited and served up by the folks at Telegraph UK, contains a road map for brand storytelling worthy of global enterprise brands.

Here are some key insights, derived directly from the words of Kevin Spacey, that all content marketers need to take to heart ...

How empathy can improve your storytelling skills

From Anna Li at Poynter.:

“Journalists naturally need to be empathetic,” Leticia Britos Cavagnaro told Poynter via Skype. Britos Cavagnaro, adjunct faculty at Stanford School of Engineering’s Technology Ventures Program and associate director of National Center for Engineering Pathways to Innovation (Epicenter), co-teaches the d.school’s creativity and innovation class with Tina Seelig. Most people come to a “story with an idea, a perspective or a hypothesis,” she said; being empathetic means having the “ability to talk to someone and really let go of those preconceptions.” 

The goal of empathy is to gain insight or “put myself in the shoes of the other person or the many different stakeholders,” Britos Cavagnaro said. Use empathy by asking open-ended questions and actively listening to uncover people’s needs and motivations. Asking “Why?” often is effective. 

Northwestern University Knight Lab’s Miranda Mulligan said in an in-person interview that it’s important to challenge your assumptions and test whether they’re valid. 

Ask yourself: What would my audience like to know?

5 reasons why a story is better than a list

Andy Crestodina makes his case at Copyblogger:

Our minds are wired for stories. They are fundamental to human experience and understanding. When’s the last time you read a list that made you laugh or cry?

1. Stories create a feeling of discovery. They can surprise and delight readers. Andrew Stanton of Pixar tells us in his TED Talk to “Make the audience put things together. Don’t give them four. Give them 2+2.
2. Stories have conflict and resolution. This structure creates suspense and holds readers’ attention.
3. Stories have characters. This humanizes the topic through voice and personality.
4. Stories make people care. By answering the all-important why questions, stories have the power to inspire readers. Why do you do what you do? Why do you love it?
5. Stories allow the reader to empathize. This creates a connection between the audience and the content that is otherwise impossible.

My take: Surprising and delighting audiences is all well and good. You can make them laugh. You can make them cry. But if your stories fail to contribute to selling them something, then you are going to have a very short life as a copywriter for paying clients. Lists sell better than stories. The exception is the case study, which can (when properly designed) convert prospects into customers.

Why you learned everything you need to know about storytelling from Cinderella

Sean D'Souze at Copyblogger uses the story of Cinderella to illustrate how to write a a story that your audiences will actually read and remember:

If we examine the Cinderella story closely we see three basic elements …

1. The sequence
2. The suspense
3. The roller coaster

I argue that these same elements exist in every great story, and that it’s crucial that you write and use stories in your content marketing efforts as a way to differentiate yourself from the mass of mediocre media publishers out there.

To read more, click here.

How Twitter is reshaping the way we tell stories

From Rita J. King at Co.Exist:

Twitter forces us to learn how to play compelling characters in a shared biography, a snapshot of this moment we are living and sharing right now, but I can’t help thinking about a comment made by Noam Chomsky in Manufacturing Consent. He talks about context in the mainstream media, and the need for more space to explain ideas that go against the grain of the status quo. Twitter also has a context problem: when you come late to a conversation, for example, and only see a couple of previous tweets.

The science of storytelling: How a well-told story can influence behavior by changing the brain's chemistry

Paul Zak is a professor of economics at the University of Pennsylvania, where he organized the first doctoral program in neuroeconomics, a new field that integrates neuroscience with economics.

Using a series of experiments than include brain scans and blood testing, he makes the case in this video for constructing stories along a specific arc:

1. Exposition
2. Rising action
3. Climax
4. Falling action
5. Denoument

This is the structure that gives a story the power to influence behavior.

4 tips for more effective storytelling

From Kathy Oneto at Fast Company:

Some tips on storytelling can be found from research consultancy Latitude, which recently released part one of its study, “The Future of Storytelling,” which identifies trends and audience attitudes about content. The tips Latitude provides on telling stories are the following:

1. IMMERSION--Create an immersive experience through content that is delivered in multi-media and that is multi-sensory;
2. INTERACTIVITY--Allow the consumer to become a part of it;
3. INTEGRATION--Ensure there is coherence across the many touchpoints; and
4. IMPACT--Make it lead to action

Why brand journalism works, from a former CBS News reporter

From former CBS News reporter David Henderson:

Brand journalism works to engage audiences. Why? Because it delivers stories audience want to hear. People have heard more than enough PR-type promotions, and therein is the rub. The big stumbling block is acceptance of new concepts by the PR and communications industry. They won’t budge from decades-old habits and tactics.

The way I see it, sharing a story that audiences care about is a whole lot more effective to get someone’s attention than falling into the predictable rut of traditional PR … which has not changed much in decades. While technology has changed, PR has remained in the mode of announcements, promotions, publicity and pushing stuff at audiences that by and large no longer are listening.

The science of brand journalism

Brand journalism tells stories. And that, Fast Company reports on its blog, is a powerful strategy:

Stories affect us on both on an incredibly deep intellectual and emotional level that we are just beginning to understand.

That quest began when scientists discovered that fictional stories affected the same region of the brain that reacts when we ourselves are engaged in real-life drama. Stories create a bonding empathy which causes us to strongly identify with the made-up protagonist, as if we were, in fact, that person. In other words, stories have such impact because our brains actually get a little mixed up as to what’s real and what’s not. ...

Scientists have also determined why stories are so important to our intellectual activity: Our brains use them to process different strands of information and make sense of it all. It’s no secret that our early ancestors created elaborate stories about various mythological gods to explain various natural phenomena they couldn’t understand. Frankly, all of us are always after an explanation for why things are the way they are.

Storytelling: How 1 and 1 makes 3 -- a lesson from Ken Burns

From video journalist Adam Westbrook: 

(Documentary filmmaker Ken) Burns has a difficult job: make stories from the past compelling on screen. It’s tough because your characters are dead and the action you want to film has long since happened. You are left with interviews with historians, still photographs and empty buildings. As a former historian myself it’s a genre I’ve long thought needs a fresh approach – but I’ve been looking at it in the wrong way.

Watch this short film (itself superbly produced by Tom Mason and Sarah Klein) and you’ll see the Ken Burns approach isn’t so concerned with what we see. For him it’s all about crafting a compelling story.

How to tell a story like a photojournalist

From the Phoblographer:

Photojournalism is the process of documenting the happenings of life on camera through photography. These days, it tends to extend into videography but the main elements of the practice still hold their roots in still image capture. Photojournalism can still be a tough job as far as getting work and images that are different than other photojournalists but that is still a story that would hold an audience captive.

There are many factors that go into photojournalism. Many of them are ethically related and others are just how the industry works. But to tell a good story there are certain shots that are essential.