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Times are tough. Nothing's certain. Fear is rampant.
On the blog for Harvard Business Review, movie magnate Peter Guber warns that "if leaders don't tell and sell a purposeful story that incites their employees, partners, investors, boards of directors, and other stakeholders to manage fear, confront uncertainty, and collaborate with change, someone else will write their future."
So what is a purposeful story? Guber defines it as a "a vehicle that puts facts into an emotional context."
A purposeful story is "built to create suspense and engage your listener in its call to action."
But a purposeful story also lays to rest your audience's fears, Guber says. "Leaders must tell a story that makes fear an ally, not an adversary, ultimately conveying the message that fear—F.E.A.R—is 'false evidence appearing real.'"
By way of illustration, Guber recounts how he convinced Loews to build super-mulitplex theaters in Manhattan in the early 1990s.
Loews resisted his idea for the mammoth movie theaters, afraid the city was already overbuilt. So Guber turned to storytelling.
"I first engaged them with a question. I asked: What if a group of hungry people went into a large food emporium? If one particular food was missing or sold out, there was so much else there they could choose from.
"We should make movies that people consume emotionally with the same availability as a food court. If the movie that brought you to the theater is sold out, there were 15 or 16 other movies to consume and enjoy."
Loews bought Guber's tale and built the theaters, which became "an enormous success."
Guber believes purposeful storytelling provides people a form of "emotional transportation" that can move them from Point A to B.
"Your story and its supporting facts transport the people who hear them to carry your story forward," he writes. "Good stories, well told, turn people into apostles and advocates of your brand, service, mission or cause."
Do you have a story to tell?
In his blog this week, social media maven Chris Brogan crystal-balls the future of online communities.
Brogan believes tomorrow's communities will be:
Wide-ranging. "People refuse to talk about you all in one place," Brogan says. As a result, marketers will have to invest a lot more time monitoring multiple communities. Keeping up with all of them will be "the hardest thing to manage in the future."
Mobile. They have far to go, but location-based apps will eventually be all the rage, especially for "tribes" of like-minded nomads.
Loyalty-based. Today's loyalty programs are annoyances. "Sign up and we’ll bother you until you buy." But tomorrow's will feel like genuine relationships and provide a "feeling like you’re on the inside."
Cause-oriented. Marketers will build cause into communities in the future. "Putting a bunch of people together who love Snickers bars isn’t all that interesting," Brogan says. "Putting people who love Snickers together to work at a soup kitchen to feed the homeless would be a lot more interesting."
Single-identity. People will stop supplying each and every platform a separate biography. Instead, they'll use identity-sharing tools that allow them to port one profile across all the platforms.
Two-way. In the future, marketers will have to become measurably more engaged in the virtual conversations taking place everywhere. If they don't, "things will go poorly for other efforts to build relationships and sell," Brogan warns. But the added investment won't come easily, because "there’s a lot of time and effort involved, and it’s not directly tied back to obvious or instant revenue."
Inc. reports this month that machine-to-machine (M2M) connections soon will "rock the Internet."
M2M refers to automated devices—instead of people—connecting to the Web.
Devices like cars, major appliances and industial equipment.
In fact, there are already more machines than people using the networks run by AT&T and Verizon, according to Inc.
"For people, the conveniences are limitless: empty pill bottles that request their own prescription refills with the drug store, tracking devices for lost pets, cars that upload the latest engine diagnostics to the service department before actually going to the service department, etc."
M2M data mining is also coming our way.
"Forget spam," Inc. warns. "Your biggest worry to come won't be the latest phishing scam. More likely, it will be something like your refrigerator or home alarm system ratting you out to marketing companies."
When you produce copy for a living, you become well-accustomed to revising.
But, even after 30 years in the field, I'm still vexed by the few clients who want one rewrite after another.
Sometimes, they're clients who work at one or two removes from the organizations I'm writing about. Ad agencies. PR firms. Design studios. Consultants.
But just as often, the clients work inside the organizations. Hell, sometimes they run the organizations.
The reason for the rewrites is always the same. They don't know where the organization stands.
They don't "get" the organization's brand. Or the brand keeps changing day by day. Or (the same thing) there is no brand.
In the 1980s, I worked at an ad agency. We had a client (an obscure federal agency) named the President's Commission on Executive Exchange. It was a dream to work for.
About four times a year, on the client's behalf I had to "ghostwrite" short speeches and letters for then-President Ronald Reagan.
Naturally, I was pretty nervous the first time round about writing copy for the Commander in Chief.
But every first draft I ever submitted sailed right through.
Did I have deep expertise in "executive exchange?" No.
Did I have a White House insider's viewpoint? No.
Did I embrace the President's policies? No.
Did I know Ronald Reagan? Never met the man.
It was all very simple. I knew where he stood.
In fact, we all did.
My question to those clients who want so many rewrites: Do we know where you stand?
Five years ago, marketing gurus cautioned us: customers' worldviews had changed.
They no longer trusted institutions of any kind, whether business, government, nonprofit or media.
Arguably, the distrust was deserved. Rascals and reprobates ruled the day's headlines. Kenneth Lay. Bernie Ebbers. Jack Abramoff. Jayson Blair. I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby.
But that wasn't the whole story.
The gurus held out another warning at the time.
Trust—the bedrock of purchasing—had not merely ebbed. It was in near-mortal danger.
As things turned out, the gurus were right. The years of distrust have ended.
We've entered the Age of Suspicion.
Customers today aren't just distrustful. They're downright suspicious.
They no longer give you a pass to treat them as lemming-like receptacles for marketing messages. Instead, they discredit your messages before they've even taken them in.
Everyday objectivity has given way to habitual disbelief. It's as if your attempts to communicate were toxic or, worse, "candy from strangers."
Old-fashioned curiosity, open-mindedness and the benefit of the doubt have vanished. Ordinary trust is a dinosaur.
We see proof of this constantly from public opinion polls.
Recent polls show, for example, that:
- 25% of us doubt President Barack Obama's US citizenship
- 40% think the government is suppressing evidence of extraterrestrial life
- 52% have little or no faith in banks
- 72% believe corporate wrongdoing is widespread
Social scientists teach that trust is a bond based on one person's willingness to become vulnerable to another.
Sadly, that bond has been broken once too often in recent years.
As a result, customers no longer feel safe enough to consider unfamiliar risks, even trivial ones. And their refusal to lower their defenses makes customers virtually immune to most forms of persuasion.
Customers today reject most of the tools that have traditionally functioned as marketers' stock in trade.
Customers no longer tolerate the expert opinion, the reasoned argument, the manufacturer's warranty, the "act now" deadline, or the product-claim based on the avoidance of pain.
If you want to win customers in the Age of Suspicion, you cannot rely on outmoded means of persuasion. You must adjust for mistrust.
To learn how, read my free special report, Path of Persuasion.
