The Scripted Message Sets Us Up To Fail - Can we be real and keep our marketing people happy?
I love what I do.
A while ago we did a video shoot for the Deakin Law Clinic, a Melbourne based law firm that's part of Deakin University.
The Deakin Law Clinic provides free legal assistance to the vulnerable and disadvantaged.
This shoot reminded me why I love what I do. The team at Deakin was so courageous about sharing their stories, their passion was truly inspiring.
The question on my mind after the shoot was:
Why do the people in one organisation have courageous conversions with relative ease, while other organisations make people anxious about being themselves?
Courageous Conversations
We all have the capacity to be courageous in conversations with our friends, our family and hopefully our colleagues.
We instinctively know these conversations are no accident: they happen when we have trust and mutual respect.
Trust ensures the conversation happens in an emotionally safe space. You can trust that the other person responds in a way that is helpful and supportive.
Respect means that you value the other person’s opinion because she/he is going to be honest with you.
Camera…. action!
How differently do we become when we are filmed!
We tense up. We freeze. We forget the most basic things.
I’ve had CEOs in front of the camera who forgot what the mission was of the company they founded.
The mental stress of trying to rattle off a script in front of a camera while also ‘performing’ in a way that connects to the audience is a huge cognitive task.
No wonder that we tend to ‘stuff up’.
The scripted message sets us up to fail.
Scripting is a great tool for actors and newsreaders. Scripting helps you get a concise, clear message and get it right in one take. It's a process designed to save on production cost.
The problem with scripting in the context of business or educational video production is that we tend to underestimate is how much skill and experience it takes to retain a script and perform it well.
Better Keep it real.
We should never set our own colleagues and staff up to fail like that.
As leaders, we should not discount how coercive a request for performing a scripted message can be for a staff member.
Getting your junior staff to read out a script and act. What could possibly go wrong?
This video, created by the Department Of Finance, was widely shared and mocked in the media.
Let's try to imagine what this must have felt like for the junior staff members in the video? They're just starting out in their career and now they're in a 'hilariously awkward recruitment video'?
Control vs creativity
The reason we tend to script our messages is control. As content producers, we don’t want to be judged. We want to prevent failure: it’s only human.
Ironically, if we look at the Department Of Finance video, control is exactly why things went wrong.
Trust and respect your people
Control is a leadership problem.
As leaders of organisations, we have to ensure trust and respect are key values when we involve our people as talent in video content.
Trust that they can represent our organisation and will do a great job putting our key values and mission into their own words.
Respect that they are individuals with their own unique voice.
Scripting and authenticity don’t mix
Going ‘off script’ doesn’t mean you end up an inconsistent or incoherent message. The key to being real is to do so in a way that's appropriate to the context and organisation.
To keep on top of that here’s a useful model we developed for interviewing people;
Key messages > Guided Conversations > Finding The Gold
Here's a short video we put together to explain the framework and show an example:
The key messages are the basis of your content, but instead of scripting the message, consider writing them down as talking points to be the basis of a Guided Conversation.
A Guided Conversation is a framework for interviewing that ensures you have control over the message while also getting the Gold.
The Gold is when those magic moments happen when people light up, when they become passionate and emotionally involved in the content.
The gold is what creates a meaningful connection with the audience.
Be courageous, build the trust and show respect. Now let’s start digging!
This statement from the article ?here really nails It. Spot on. C O E R C I V E ?indeed? “As leaders, we should not discount how coercive a request for performing a scripted message can be for a staff member.”
I help people become bad-ass spoken communicators.
5 年??agree
Senior Marketing, Communications and Project Management Professional
5 年Really appreciate the great insights here, Robert!! And you are so right, scripted and authenticity don't go together. You are great at finding the nuggets of gold in anyone's story, and if focused on exactly that, you have an amazing video or presentation.
Top-Tier Marketer
5 年Wow....What an amazing read AND videos and you are so spot on with this. I especially loved the last video where you captured the “Gold”. The message is so strong and completely correct. I’ve been there myself as a keynote speaker with 120 people in the room where I did a scripted session and it felt fake and unprofessional. The next time I did a similar keynote I went with my own style and flow, no script. That was from the heart and the audience loved it. So did I. Same? goes when you’re in the office. I’ve always encouraged my staff to be themselves, no judgement. Almost every single time they would excel and we would even uncover unknown strengths which we would try and cultivate together. You get what I call a power team, almost like family.
I help Leaders influence better when speaking, Professional Speaker
5 年You said it all when you said "The problem with scripting in the context of business or educational video production is that we tend to underestimate is how much skill and experience it takes to retain a script and perform it well." "Performance" coaches really set people up for anxiety and stress that is the exact opposite of what you want to create. That finance video was hilarious. Appalling script as well.