Too Much Marketing, Too Little Storytelling

Mania for narrative persuasion has sanctified storytelling.

But merely mentioning your company's name less in your copy doesn't make you J.K. Rowling.

Most marketers are storyteller manqués.

"There’s just too much marketing the old way, and too little storytelling," says journalist-turned-marketer Tomas Kellner.

Storytelling takes an understanding of story arc.

Story arcs deliver "the pleasure of pity," said the 18th century playwright and philosopher Friedrich Schiller.

We're led to pity when we learn about other people's suffering. But for the listener to feel pity, the storyteller must:

• Provide vivid details. Because suffering told can't equal suffering witnessed, to provoke pity the storyteller's details must be vivid.

• Make the characters accessible. To feel pity, the listener must experience a resemblance between herself and the sufferer, Schiller says. "Where this resemblance is lacking, pity is impossible."

• Provide tons of details. To work, the story must be complete, Schiller says. No important detail can be left out. "We must have unrolled before us, without a single link omitted, the whole chain of determinations."

• Draw the story out. The suffering must be durable. The listener wants to flee suffering, but shouldn't be allowed to do so too soon.

Storytelling isn't designed to teach, Schiller says. That's what history lessons are for. Storytelling is meant "to move us, and to charm our souls."

Literary agent Julian Friedmann tells it well:

Make the audience feel pity for a character. Then make the audience experience increasing amounts of fear for the character, as you put the character through increasingly worse circumstances. Finally, release the audience from the tension of anticipating the terrible things that are going to happen to that character, and the audience feels great.

Social Media Marketing, Meet Maslow's Hammer

Abraham Maslow said in The Psychology of Science, "I suppose it is tempting, if the only tool you have is a hammer, to treat everything as if it were a nail.”

Social Media Examiner recently asked 5,086 marketers whether social media marketing improves sales. The findings speak volumes:

• One-third of marketers with less than one year's experience in social media marketing say it improves sales, while

• Two-thirds of marketers with more than five years' experience in social media marketing say it improves sales.

As a marketer's experience in social media marketing increases, so does her belief in its efficacy.

Digital marketer Jay Baer wonders whether seasoned social media marketers' belief is simply self-justifying.

"People who have been employed in the social media business for multiple years could be convincing themselves that social media is effective, because if it wasn’t a portion of their entire identity and professional worthiness would be called into question," he says.

But Baer chooses to read the findings as proof of something else: social media marketing works when you commit to it long term, not short term.

"This data shows that time horizon is a great determinant of social media success," Baer says.

I agree with him, and would add: social media marketing is merely 2016's edition of PR; it works when you treat it like an enterprise, not an event.

What do you think?

Innovation's in Our Bones

Whenever I despair of our species, I remember that innovation is in our bones and such a marvelous thing, as two case studies illustrate.

Case Study No. 1

For the past 15 years, UPS drivers have been forbidden to turn left.

That's because company engineers discovered in 2001 that left-hand turns were inefficient, as a UPS spokesman told Fortune.

Left-hand turns wasted time and money.

So the engineers used GPS software to re-route drivers, eliminating left-hand turns.

The move—annually—shaved 20 million miles off drivers' routes; increased deliveries by 350,000 packages; saved 10 million gallons of gas; and cut carbon dioxide emissions by 20,000 metric tons.

Case Study No. 2

In 1940, film comedian W.C. Fields built an exercise room in his Hollywood home. 

He equipped the room with a stationary bike, a rowing machine and a steam cabinet, and hired a personal trainer to help him get buff.

Fields followed the trainer's instructions faithfully, but added touches of his own.

As directed, Fields dressed in sweats and mounted the stationary bike for long rides; but also drank several martinis en route.

He would work out in the rowing machine, but drink gin and sing sea chanteys while at it.

And he'd sit in the steam cabinet for an hour, sipping highballs the whole time.

"This is wonderful—these workouts are going to increase my liquor consumption two or three hundred percent!" Fields told the trainer.

Boldly Go

I need not follow the beaten path; I do not hunt for any path; I will go where there is no path, and leave a trail.

— Protestant hymn

Most executives don't know it, but business strategy and marketing strategy are on a collision course.

• A business strategy comprises proven rules.

• A marketing strategy comprises broken rules. At least, it should.

Marketers who win, Kirk-like, boldly go where there is no path.

Digital marketer Mitch Joel calls it "getting over the lazy."

Sadly, most marketers hope they can manage—or, more precisely, administer—their way to success by bossing around agencies and in-house teams, Joel says.

But that's just "the lazy."

"Maybe 'lazy' is a bad choice of words," he says in Cntl Alt Delete, "but a majority of marketers are simply doing everything that they have always done. The easy path. The road that was laid out by their predecessors."

The beaten path's lazy—and lazy's the reason CMOs survive only 26 months.

"There is no doubt certain strategies and tactics work, but it's the lazy mentality that will take you down."

A Shark in Sheep's Clothing

Sharklike companies scare clients off.

So it's heartening to see a venture capital firm so self-confident it's willing to empathize.

Rare for the breed, First Round telegraphs amity at every juncture.

The firm, for example, advertises on its website the 80 events it sponsors every year.

It doesn't push a calendar of dates and locations, but instead explains why events have value:

Starting a company is lonely, and founders have to make difficult decisions every day with imperfect information. In our experience, the best safety net is the advice and experience of fellow entrepreneurs.

The firm's gentle touch then assures sheepish clients participation will pay off:

Whenever we get members of our community in a room, magic happens. That’s why our Knowledge Program’s robust events—ranging from cozy dinners to major summits—are designed to get real, vulnerable conversations started. People leave with new ideas and actions they can apply immediately to keep growing and getting better. You won’t find any stick-on name tags here—we hate them.

How about you? Is your website all facts and mission talk? Or do you show clients you understand their fears?

When you evidence a bit of empathy, you boost your effectiveness. As direct marketer Hershell Gordon Lewis advises:

"If we can avoid becoming so wrapped up within the cocoon of our organization’s purpose, goals, and means of recruitment, effectiveness has to go up. So as best you can, you should apply this litmus test to any messages you’re considering sending: If I were receiving this message, not sending it, would it motivate me to respond? 

"See how easy? See how rare?"