[00:00:00] Chris Do: Hey, everybody, Chris here. We're trying something a little bit different than what we normally do for the podcast. We're doing solo episodes. These are shorter, more contained, built around certain themes and questions I think are very relevant for us to be talking about. So wherever you're listening to this, however you're seeing this, let us know in the comments and the feedback what you think and we'll make some adjustments.

[00:00:39] OK, in this episode, I'm going to talk about the role storytelling has In marketing and in branding or brand strategy, I want to ask you this question, which is to think back on a memory in your life. And almost always, there are two things, two core components that always exist when it comes to memory.

[00:00:56] Number one is a strong emotion, and number two [00:01:00] is a story. Let's examine this before we tie this into marketing and brand strategy, and I think you'll figure it out before we get there. What about emotion? Okay, so if you were to reflect back on what you did last week, and try to recall what it is that you've done, chances are the only things you'll remember are the things that cause an emotional reaction from you.

[00:01:19] The things like driving on the road or the things where you're kind of in a vegetative state, you're not going to be able to recall. It's because this is how your memory works. It's like there's a strong emotion, and emotion frames a story, and you're able to retell that story. This is why storytelling is so easy and giving lectures is so difficult, because storytelling is the most natural thing.

[00:01:38] It's how The human mind works. Erica meets its stories of the operating system of the human mind. And as children, we're so good at telling stories and somehow we lose that art when we grow older, you'll make up stories, you'll make up stories about how the dog ate your homework, you make up stories about how that girl was really into you when she really wasn't, and you'll tell all kinds of stories.

[00:01:58] And something happens to us, [00:02:00] I think, when we get older, we start to follow very specific rules about what facts are and we don't tend to get as excited to tell people, like, how our day went, we just tell them the highlights, the bullet points, and we lose that part. And that's to our detriment, because now here you are on social media saying, Oh, my social account is dead.

[00:02:18] No one's engaging with me. How come? Well, guess what? You're all facts and bullet points at this point. No one cares because it doesn't remind them of anything. And yes, we're hungry to learn the facts and the bullet points, but then a day we'll forget it because I felt nothing and there's no story for me.

[00:02:36] Now let's test this one more time before we get into strategies and tactics, which is, do you remember some of the fables that you were read to as a child, like Aesop's fables, the story of the tortoise and the hare or the boy who cried wolf? How is it that we can remember these stories? decades later after having heard it, and that they've survived multiple generations of storytellers.

[00:02:57] Isn't that pretty wild? But if I asked you, what did you [00:03:00] learn in algebra, and who's your teacher, and what did it look like, you probably can't remember a single thing. And that's the way it is, because teachers don't remember. have yet to incorporate storytelling into how they teach. So the ones that I remember fondly created a story, a narrative around history or science, and they gave me a frame to look at the world.

[00:03:19] And so I can remember those things and I carry them with me today. So now you are the educator. You just happen to be talking about the things that you make, the services that you provide. And so if you want people to remember you, if you want to stand out from all the noise, you have to become a master storyteller.

[00:03:36] It's not as hard as you think, and I'll tell you how to do it in a second. I was talking to Michael Margolis, and he said something to the effect of, a product without a story is a commodity. A product with a story is a brand. So now it's not just something that we, it's like a fluffy, intangible idea. It's like, it has financial metrics that can be used to measure this.

[00:03:58] And I'm going to talk about this. Okay. [00:04:00] I think when a product or service has goodwill, we call that brand or branding. We call that brand equity. The amount of money that you're willing to pay over a cheaper alternative is the amount of brand equity that we have. Two bottles of water, one sells for a dollar, one sells for five dollars.

[00:04:18] The one that sells for five dollars has four dollars of equity. Because you're willing to pay that much more, you're able to command a premium over a cheaper alternative. And the one that sells for a dollar, it's just worth a dollar because that's literally how much it costs to bring that water to you, package it, sell it to you, with a small profit margin.

[00:04:37] And most of us do not want to think of what we do as a commodity. And a commodity is something that is easily replaced and usually is sold for the lowest common denominator, at the lowest price. So how do you incorporate storytelling in what you do? Now, you can follow Joseph Campbell's story, The Hero's Journey, The Hero with a Thousand Faces.

[00:04:56] And it's a little bit complicated, but I want to tell you where this comes from, where most [00:05:00] modern stories come from. The Hero's Journey. It goes something like this. The hero lives in the ordinary world. is approached by a herald who has a call to adventure. And then there's the refusal of a call where the hero doesn't want to go on adventure.

[00:05:17] And if you're thinking, does this sound like a lot like Star Wars? Yes, it's Star Wars. Okay. And there's a little fun fact later, I'll tell you about that. So initially the hero refuses because there has to be some tension behind this. And then the hero meets a mentor. And the mentor helps the hero to cross the threshold to leave the ordinary world and go into the new world.

[00:05:37] Then a bunch of things happen there, and I'll skip over all the boring parts. But there's usually a relapse and a resurrection. They fall back on that journey only to realize the true lesson, and instead of getting what they want, they get what they need. They're successful at the end, having transformed.

[00:05:55] They bring this lesson back to their tribe, their community, and they share that [00:06:00] lesson with them. That's a lot to remember and unpack, but before we do that, I'll tell you the fun fact about George Lucas. So, you know, you're like, wait a minute, Joseph Campbell, George Lucas, what's their relationship? You know, the funny thing is Joseph Campbell mentored George Lucas, and he said he's one of his best students.

[00:06:15] Isn't that incredible? One of the most enduring pieces of fiction in the modern era in cinema, and it hasn't. I guess live beyond multiple generations of geeky fathers and children, I think has survived because George was such a great student. He understood the hero's journey. And when you try to tell a story without the structure of what we've already learned that works, it's usually becomes very forgettable.

[00:06:40] It winds up becoming experimental art, experimental film or literature. It becomes more poetry than something that we can grab onto. Okay, let's make this a lot simpler because I just want to condense this down. We'll boil down the idea so that you can walk away being able to remember it. You just need to remember three words.

[00:06:59] And I'll tell you [00:07:00] where this is relevant to you in branding, okay? There's character, want, and obstacle. You need these three things. There's a character, a very specific kind of person. The more specific, the better. Because when we look at movies that have cardboard characters, they're very empty. It's just surfacy things, and they feel very generic.

[00:07:17] There's no personality there. There's, we're looking for a soul inside that character, and we don't see it because it's poorly designed. The character has to have a want, a desire. Because if they have no want, they're totally at peace with themselves. There's nothing left for them to acquire or to do, so there's no tension.

[00:07:34] So they have a want, and we have to indent an obstacle, something that gets in the way of their want. So the classic version is, poor boy wants to date rich girl. That's classic, right? And what does the character want? Well, he wants that girl to love him. But what's the obstacle? The obstacle is, well, you're poor, you come from the wrong side of the train tracks.

[00:07:55] And you can flip the genders too, like Made in Manhattan with Jennifer Lopez, she's a maid in [00:08:00] Manhattan who falls in love with Ray Fiennes, right? So there's a weird thing. In Sleepless in Seattle, or You Got Mail, it's the same story over and over again. You Got Mail is about two entrepreneurs, two bookstore owners, one from a very small bookshop around the corner, quite literally of what it's called in a movie, and one who owns like a Barnes and Noble chain.

[00:08:23] And they want to love each other, but they can't because they're on diametrically opposing sides of this whole bookstore idea. One's about commerce, one's about community. And so we have character, we have wants, and we have an obstacle. Robert McKee, the king of story, who wrote the book Story, says, no conflict, no story.

[00:08:42] And so what we do as storytellers is we find where the conflict exists and we generate that. Like in a world of fiction, we can generate that. Boy loves girl. They can't get together. Why? Because girl's parents hate boy. Okay. Boy loves girl. Can't get girl. Why? Because girl's gay or boy's gay. You know, it's a lot [00:09:00] of weird things.

[00:09:00] So we can explore the obstacles and that's where the invention comes in when you learn the frameworks. Now you're sitting there thinking, Chris, what's this got to do with branding and marketing? I'm gonna tell you right now, you exist. to help transform the lives of your customers in one way or the other.

[00:09:18] Let's say you're like my buddy, Rich. He helps influencers, authors, experts, thought leaders, be able to tell their story across the podcasting format. So that's how he's going to help them transform their lives. He needs to understand who am I speaking to? If he said people. That's too broad. That goes back into this kind of generic profile.

[00:09:38] So the more tightly he can design his ideal client avatar, the better he can understand what their wants, needs, hopes, and fears are. Who they aspire to be when they grow up, right? So he's going to zero in on people who are entrepreneurial, who are thought leaders, authors, people who care about sharing their ideas.

[00:09:56] Because that now will lead him to a want. Because not everybody [00:10:00] wants to do a podcast. Only specific type of people want to do podcast, want to do professionally and care enough to pay for it. So he's zeroing in on this audience, this core demographic. So they want to be able to create content. So what's the obstacle that they have?

[00:10:14] Well, the obstacle is, well, they're valuable. Their time is valuable and they don't understand the technical components. They don't want to deal with editing. They don't want to deal with publishing. They're not sure what's happening with the algorithms or what the best practices are for the industry. So that's their obstacle.

[00:10:30] So when Rich creates an offer, when he does marketing, when he does storytelling, it would behoove him to speak to the obstacles standing in their way. There's something I learned from reading Phil Jones book, Exactly What to Say, and he has a book of magical phrases that unlock the subconscious. And he says, use this phrase, there are two types of people.

[00:10:49] Two types of people and what you want to do is design one type of person and the other type is the second type is the type of person you ideally want to work with. And you're saying, well, what if they identify as the first type? Well, [00:11:00] you won't have them as a client and the good news is they don't want you as a partner either.

[00:11:03] So it works out beautifully. So in a situation like this, Rich could say something like, In my experience, potential client. There are two types of people. The people who dream and aspire about being influential, but are so worried about others creating their content for them that they have to have absolute control over it, that they don't wind up getting stuff done.

[00:11:23] Or the second type, which is the person who knows what they're talking about, knows how to deliver that to camera or to microphone, but doesn't want to deal with anything because they trust other people to do that for them because they have better things to do with their lives. Which type of person are you?

[00:11:36] So you see how we designed those two scenarios and like, well, I'm definitely type A, you're like, fantastic. Good luck, friend. You're not for me. Allow me to refer someone else to you. And so he needs to understand the character, what their wants are and their wants and their needs and desires can have multiple layers.

[00:11:55] Something emotional, something financial, something business related, something that's much bigger than this. [00:12:00] Because for some people, the reason why they do something is just to be affirmed that one of the parents who never gave them any credit, that they can prove them wrong. And that's a motivation that you have to surface in your content and your communication such that they feel seen and heard.

[00:12:18] When you can use language that they use themselves, they know you know them so well and they're going to start to trust you to handle their content. So that's what we're talking about when we say learn how to tell a story and how you can use this in brand and marketing. I'll give you one more example.

[00:12:34] When I teach brand strategy, Which is us trying to design the ideal customer journey such that strangers become friends and friends become customers. We really have to think about who this character is. We create these things called user profiles or customer avatars. They're basically the same thing.

[00:12:53] We're almost like in central casting to say, if we had the ideal client, Who would they be? [00:13:00] Is it a man? Is it a woman? Are they married? Are they single? Are they old? Are they young? Are they educated? Are they self taught? Where do they live? What is their job title? How much income? So we really designed these character profiles, and we're really casting a very narrow net here.

[00:13:16] Because as soon as we can see them in our mind, as soon as we can feel like, I know someone just like that, we can then make some assumptions about what they want. And when we can understand that, then we can figure out products and services that will deliver the kind of transformation they're looking for in the way that they want it.

[00:13:36] I'll give you an example. Sometimes our clients will come to us and say, well, we want to work with really high powered real estate brokers because we're a commercial developer and we want you to build a website for us. Well, before we accept that as truth, we'll ask the clients, how many such powerful brokers exist in the world that would be considering one of your [00:14:00] spaces?

[00:14:01] And they said, probably no more than 12. So does it make sense for us to build a website that's going to cost you tens of thousands of dollars to reach 12 people? Like, well, what alternative is there, Chris? So, well, why don't we explore that now we can open up the frame and say, instead of zeroing in on what the website's going to look and sound like, we can open the frame and say, well, how do we reach 12 high power people to get them to come to visit the building or to consider the property for the next project?

[00:14:30] It's a whole different conversation. So in this instance, what we wound up doing was saying, Wouldn't it be better if instead of us building a website, we built you a web app, not a real app, but something that could be used on an iPad, where they can flip through pages and look at things in a dynamic way.

[00:14:47] Wouldn't it be better if we messengered each prospect, each broker, one of these iPads, you can even give it to them if you wanted to, because it'll cost you less money than to build a website. And you hand deliver that to them and say, we'd like [00:15:00] to invite you to a sneak peek at this new property. How exclusive would that make them feel like this is top notch development.

[00:15:07] And so you can think like this, you can come up with more innovative marketing and branding concepts that could transform your client's business or your own business. If you're listening or watching this, please take a screenshot and tag me on Instagram. Use the hashtag storytelling.

[00:15:28] Futur: Thanks for joining us. If you haven't already subscribed to our show on your favorite podcasting app and get new insightful episodes from us every week, the future podcast is hosted by Chris Do and produced and edited by Rich Cardona media. Thank you to Adam Sanborn for our intro music. If you enjoyed this episode, then do us a favor by reviewing and rating our show on Apple Podcasts.

[00:15:53] It will help us grow the show and make future episodes that much better. If you'd like to support the [00:16:00] show and invest in yourself while you're at it, visit thefuture. com and you'll find video courses, digital products, and a bunch of helpful resources about design and the creative business. Thanks again for listening, and we'll see you next time.

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