Pitch, pitch baby - story pattern for a new product

My pulse is pounding, my palms are sweaty and I'm the first of five to make my pitch. I only have 5 minutes to convince the jury of the New Learning Lab of my new product. They nod at me. I share my screen. The clock is ticking. Showtime!

And did I manage to sell the story consultation to my target group well? With the right story, of course. But let's start at the beginning.

The story pattern for my presentation

The basic pattern I chose for my pitch is “Defeating the monster”. This pattern is particularly suitable for presenting a new product or service. It can look like this in a pitch.

Slay the Pitch-Monster

The story pattern “Defeat the monster” is one of the oldest surviving patterns. The original version can be found in “Beowulf”. As the name suggests, it is about defeating monsters. For marketing, the focus shifts according to this formula: Target Group + Company's Wonder Weapon = Defeated Monsters.

Monsters can be anything from your inner bastard to a lack of competence. In my case, the monsters were the target group:

• I have no reach on social media
• My topic is not understood
• I can't turn information into a story

But as a storyteller, I also have my very own monsters to contend with in this pitch.

Odyssey through the pirate metaphor

When the pitch was more or less finished and I had just inserted a picture of myself as a pirate at 16, a little voice in my head asked if this would be enough of a story. Couldn't this be made into more of a story? The image from the anecdote from my youth turned into a little odyssey through the sea of stories. Suddenly the call to action at the end was: “Let's unearth your story treasures together” and pirate ships sailed through the slides.

But the decisive factor in a pitch is not whether I like it, but whether my target group likes it (Shoutout to Sandra for reminding me). So I had several conversations with the target group and found out: Pirates do become childish quite quickly. And the format of the story consultation really isn't meant to be childish. Not that we won't have fun together, but good stories are serious work.

And so it only remains for me to introduce you to the landing page based on the story pattern “Defeating the monster”, which was created on the basis of the pitch.

You can find out more here (in German): https://www.concept-and-story.de/die-storysprechstunde/

Would you like more than an hour to talk to me about your stories?

No problem! Until the end of February, there is a 10% discount on workshops booked this month. You can find a selection of workshops here!