Five ways the purpose-told story builds brands and sales
How can you create purpose, engagement, authenticity and relevance for your brands? By adapting the five rules of Hollywood storytelling to your marketing strategy, says Julian Smith.
For more than two decades, Robert McKee has been Hollywood’s go-to guy on structuring story in movies. More recently, he started offering his storytelling expertise to the corporate world via Storynomics, a seminar he has run only in the northern hemisphere so far.
As a former creative director and writer/director with screenwriting aspirations, I have completed McKee’s acclaimed Story and Genre three-day seminars in the past. I found each a creative revelation, offering deep insights and profound knowledge; you know you are in the presence of a giant intellect, a man who has been described as “a force of nature”.
So when I attended McKee’s one-day Storynomics seminar in the US recently, along with a hundred marketing and communications professionals from around the world, I was hoping for more of the same. But McKee has no formal background in marketing, so I did wonder: how would his purist aesthetic mesh with the corporate commercial imperative?
Hi Julian,
Thanks for sharing this. I’m actually reading Story at the moment, and far from being about formulaic writing (which I expected), it offers significant insights into the universal nature of storytelling.
I suppose you touch on it briefly, but I’m curious, how did he see stories being told in practice by brands? Did he envision them as told from beginning to end in story-friendly media such as TV spots/video content, or did he take more of a transmedia approach, in which each channel would focus on a certain aspect of a brand’s story universe/narrative? Or perhaps he thought of it more as background story to inspire and guide various strategies and tactics?
Or none of the above:-)?
Cheers,
Marius
Hey Marius, thanks for your comment and apologies for not responding sooner, I must have missed the comment alert email from Mumbrella, so I have just seen it.
It’s great that you’re reading Story, I’d encourage anyone in communication, particularly creatives, to read it. McKee’s Storynomics book when it comes out later in 2016 will be a similar revelation for Marketers.
McKee’s medium is film and in the Storynomics seminar he confined his teaching to film, but the principles of course apply in other media, mainly print and audio. McKee sees story as a single dynamic process, so all his story examples were told front-to-back in one complete form. There was no mention of spreading story elements across different channels.
He screened over a dozen short-form films, about half of which were TV ads. One was the 2010 US Old Spice campaign, “Smell like a man, man” cited as an example of strong unexpected storytelling and smart because it was pitched at women. He also played some US ads for Adobe Marketing Cloud, targeting Marketing Managers… well worth going to Youtube and searching them, there are about 5 or 6 spots, all brilliant. His through-line for all examples was “they give the audience what they expect, but not in the way that they expect”. An example of a short-form film longer than an ad that he played was “Unsung heroes of science” which you can find on Youtube; another one I like is Droga5’s “Made the Johnsonville way” in which employees’ crazy ideas for TV ads are brought to life.
Hope this helps,
Cheers~