Secret of great marketing stories: "The truth behind the facts"
George Lucas, being interviewed recently by Kara Swisher of The Wall Street Journal, was pontificating on the difference between circus and art. He said that YouTube is circus - which the movie industry calls "throwing puppies on the freeway," because you just create something and put it up and see what happens. He then said that art, on the other hand, is "where the person contrives the situation and tells a story, and hopefully that story reveals the truth behind the facts."
This comment really caught my attention, because that's exactly what good marketing is supposed to do: reveal the truth behind the facts. And if you think about how George Lucas spins his stories, you realize how far marketing is from the ideal he describes. Most marketing copy, by the time it goes through the dual filters of management paranoia and legal review, comes out dull and lifeless. All the human interest is sucked out of it and only the dry facts remain.
It is possible to tell company stories in an interesting way, much as a top-notch business journalist would, without horrifying those who must approve the copy. But it requires a level of skill that you don't find in the normal crank-it-out marketing writer.
Before we talk about how you can solve this problem in your own company, let's look at an example of a lively business story that "tells the truth behind the facts."
The Wall Street Journal provides a daily example of top-notch business stories. A recent front page story starts with these two paragraphs:
In January, a recreational vehicle in remote West Texas suddenly started blasting the Steve Miller Band's "Space Cowboy." It was a triumphant moment for Slacker Inc., a start-up trying to move Internet radio out of the computer and into the car.
Parked on the side of a road near Fort Stockton, Slacker's 36-year-old founder Celite Milbrandt uncorked a 1982 Chateau Lafite Rothschild to celebrate. A few hours later, he pointed the RV toward Las Vegas. There, Mr. Milbrandt demonstrated the mobile service for the potential investors at the annual Consumer Electronics Show and ultimately raked in an additional $40 million in investments for his company.
-Sarah McBride, "Internet Radio Races to Break Free of the PC," The Wall Street Journal, June 18, 2007
Anyone responsible for telling your company's story should be emulating these reporters, rather than turning out the usual sanitized drivel that passes for marketing copy (press releases, backgrounders, brochures, website "about us" pages, etc.).
Great stories paint pictures
It is the verbal images that make the difference in the Journal story. It's the middle-of-nowhere image of the RV sitting in West Texas (anyone who has been there knows how "middle of nowhere" that place really is). It was the fact that the RV started blasting out Steve Miller Band's "Space Cowboy." It was the bottle of 1982 Chateau Lafite (note it wasn't just "a bottle of champagne").
In order to get coverage, before you are anything else, you must be interesting. The images and the truths revealed in The Wall Street Journal story are interesting. They reveal the truth about the dedication and determination of the founder, who was willing to take his RV to the vast expanse of West Texas to find out if he had succeeded in getting a signal on his automotive Internet radio device. They show that he wasn't the only one who was impressed by the success of his device; investors were, as well, to the tune of $40 million. These human interest elements are missing from almost every press release written.
The typical, factual version of this same story would read something like this, "Slacker Inc. has succeeded in proving the feasibly of mobile Internet radio and secured $40 million in financing at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas, 2007." Boring, boring, boring.
You shouldn't wait until you are lucky enough to be covered by the well-trained writers of The Wall Street Journal to get this kind of story told. At the very least, you should make sure your company history is interesting.
First you must find a good writer. You could Google "freelance copywriter," which will lead you to sites such as Guru.com and Elance.com, as well as some sites for individual writers who have managed to show up high in the Google results. You can spend many hours searching through examples (which is the best test). But there is another way. Start keeping track of the writers who write good business stories in magazines, on websites, and in the local paper. Writers are often open to freelance jobs, and a good one might be persuaded to bring your corporate backgrounder and "about us" pages to life. The example they set can then be used as a template for subsequent pieces, written by the run-of-the-mill writers who either work on your staff, for your PR house, or are hired on a freelance basis.
When you want your "regular" writer to create another piece or web page for you, make sure the writer has the good examples at hand, and encourage the writer to do some interviews before generating copy.
For example, before writing a corporate backgrounder or the "about us" pages, a writer should be asking executives and customers these questions: What was the dream the founder had? Who did he enlist to help the dream come true? How did he recruit the others? What did they do? What did they sacrifice to get where they ended up? What did they discover? What surprised them? What caused them to stumble, and what inspired them to try again? Were there humorous or ironic moments? Did something serendipitous or unusual happen? Who else had tried something similar, and failed? Why did they fail? Why did the founders think they would succeed? Why is the company's product so important to customers? Which customers have had success with the product, and what are their interesting stories?
Memorable brands don't just happen. Someone does something to make them memorable. Someone gives the story life, and human interest.
The best stories contain little vignettes that give life to the facts, and paint a picture of human dedication, creativity, resourcefulness, bravery, and compassion.
Breathe life into your story. The more life you give your story, the more your story will spread.
