Marketing Via Storytelling - What Makes a Story

"Stories? We all spend our lives telling them, about this, about that, about people. . .

But some? Some stories are so good we wish they’d never end. They’re so gripping that we’ll go without sleep just to see a little bit more.

Some stories bring us laughter and sometimes they bring us tears . . . but isn’t that what a great story does? Makes you feel?

Stories that are so powerful . . . they really are with us forever" - Dustin Hoffman

Over the next few weeks, I will be writing a series of articles that look at how brands can use storytelling to influence consumers, change their perception and create a narrative. This first article looks at what a story is and what makes a good story, followed by traditional storytelling techniques. The next article will look at storytelling within marketing.

Storytelling is an art. There is no formula to a successful story, however, there are principals that when applied, can lead to success and make the intended connection with the viewer. Stories are fundamentally a chronological order of events told in ways that connect the audience. The quote by Dustin Hoffman embodies this research’s views as to a story. This quote can be broken down into five items that characterise a great story. 

1. Everybody tells stories, a good story can go viral.

2. Stories are "about this, about that".

3. They can make the viewer laugh and cry and go through a range of emotions.

4. We wish they would never end.

5. They stick with the audience. 

Firstly, everybody tells stories. Stories can be anything from a wife telling her husband how her day was, to a movie. Some stories, that are seemingly insignificant have the ability to go viral. The critical requirement for a story to go viral is a strong visual imagery. If the listener, reader or viewer can visualise a story, they are more likely to retell the story. Therefore, stories can be about anything that has the ability to connect with the audience, for a story to be a story, it must have emotion. 

A powerful story has the ability to do three, four and five on the list to the audience. A great story will make the audience emote. If the story has the ability to cause emotion within its audience then it has been able to successfully connect with them. This connection often leads to item four and five. An audience that is connected with a story wants it to continue and is always left wanting more. Evidence of this is present within many viral stories such as the Harry Potter series, where fans are often begging the author for more content as they have connected with the story in ways they haven’t connected with stories before. Moreover, Harry Potter can be used as the prime example as to how a powerful story can stick with the audience forever. Almost ten years after the final film was released, it is still culturally significant. It was such a powerful story at the time that connected with the audience that Disney attempted to buy the rights to Harry Potter-themed theme park attractions (Eventually losing out to Universal Studios). The effectiveness of a story for marketing can be measured in four stages: 

1. Narrative Processing.

2. Affect.

3. Brand attitude.

4. Purchase intent.

There are traditional storytelling techniques that are used as a foundation for the creation of these stories. To understand how to tell a story that will work in marketing, it is first important to understand traditional storytelling techniques. Traditional storytelling is about character development. This is evident in some forms of marketing storytelling, however, often the audience will take the place of the character in advertisement.

An important traditional technique for storytelling is the three-act structure. This structure can be found in almost all forms of storytelling from theatre to books. Simply put, act one introduces a complication for the character, act two develops the complication and act three finds a resolution. Figure 2.5 is a diagram of the three-act structure and the constituent elements.

For a story to connect, there must first be a story event. A story event causes a meaningful change within a character's situation and is achieved through conflict. Often this occurs through a shift in the values of the characters caused by an experience, either positive or negative.

he root of a story is a character's desire. Desire is the backbone of story, and without desire, there is no story momentum. Desire and the story event link. The characters desire will cause the conflict as their external desire causes internal change. For a storyteller to be effective, they must not only understand how a character takes action or is affected but more importantly, why. Characters are taken on a journey where they view and understand their past and must come to terms with the cause of past traumas in order to move on and change. A story exists on two planes: internal and external or needs and desire. The character must have some form of goal or desire throughout the story that ignites movement. This desire can increase or decrease, but not fundamentally change.