Stories Will Matter As Long As Humans Do

A graphic designer whose name you might know if you know the names of graphic designers recently announced, “The End of the Era of Storytelling” to a group of marketers. Possible ulterior motives aside (this particular graphic designer has a penchant for fashion spreads and elaborate photo shoots), the fact that she even attempted to make this argument to a group of presumably intelligent human beings is absolutely fascinating to me.

It made me wonder, Has social media finally done it? Has it effectively killed the story? Was the murder weapon one hundred and forty characters long? Has the much ballyhooed 8.25-second human attention span rendered every great work of literature, cinema and poetry ineffective, irrelevant, and out of… um… fashion?

And what about our own obsession with the story of each property we own or manage? A waste of time, money and energy? Is no one paying attention? I’ll be the first and most relieved hotelier to announce the end of the era of hyperbole, jargon, hype, and boring, made-up backstories. But those aren’t real stories. With heroes and villains. Beginnings, middles and ends. Plots, conflicts and resolutions. They aren’t the kinds of stories that stay with you and change you in some way (Shawshank Redemption and Up come immediately to mind).

Here’s what I would posit, in stark contrast to this controversial claim made by the aforementioned designerista: With few exceptions, marketers have not even begun to harness the power of story to articulate their vision, focus their efforts, unite their people, and ignite the imaginations of their customers.

At Provenance, we begin every new project with an exploration of the true story of the property—and city—we’re going into. Not just the factual truth, like the history of the building or neighborhood; but the emotional truth. That’s the meaty stuff. And, to share a trade secret, it’s a big part of why our guests enjoy their experiences here as much as they do. It’s not just about getting all the details right; robots can do that (and actually do, at a new hotel in Japan); but it’s the human piece that makes all the difference.

And that is the secret to Provenance’s somewhat unlikely success against much bigger, more established legacy hotel brands: The conviction that humans matter. Hotels matter because humans matter. Art matters and poetry matters because humans matter. And last time I checked, marketers and consumers are, in fact, humans. In fact, I would argue that the best marketers are also the most human. As humans, we crave abstraction, suggestion, inspiration, gaps to fill in.

And what of the 140-character universe we live in? It’s a reality and it is impacting on our digital experience, to be sure. But, even if we go so far as to acknowledge that short stories trump longer-format stories (which is a bit of a stretch), let’s look at what is universally regarded as the most powerful short story ever written, by a certain writer from Oak Park, Illinois:

“For sale. Baby shoes. Never worn.”

This tight little 6-word novel is excruciatingly heart-breaking, and is attributed to Ernest Hemingway. It teaches us the simple truth that stories are about content, not about word count. But it also teaches us something else if we are willing to look a little deeper: Short stories are based on longer ones, meaning that if we didn’t have a context for everything that was implied in this shortest of stories, we might not be as moved by the shorter version. Which is why, at Provenance, we start with a longer-form story, which is meant to capture the emotional truth about the property or neighborhood or city we are about to go into, and then we typically boil it down to a short, memorable, repeatable story. Both are crucial. Why? Because humans are crucial.

As the CEO of a legendary music company recently told me, “In a 140 character world where communications are so splintered and consumers’ attention spans are so limited, it’s more important than ever for brands to have a clear, compelling story underlying everything they do.”

That’s why we do what we do. And why the era of storytelling will come to an end… as soon as the era of humanity comes to an end.