When we want to break our bad habits or get better ones, we fail regularly, reliably and quickly. We don't have to wait until the New Year for that. By now, there's probably already more room in the gyms on earth than there was in the first week of January, the brief dip in the tobacco industry's sales curves has long since dissolved into nicotine-swilling smoke, and the cholesterol levels show satisfied, slightly too red faces of people sitting comfortably by the sofa instead of on their brand-new yoga mat. Been there, done that. - In order to keep at least one good resolution, I had hung a sign above my desk as a student: "Starting tomorrow, study!" That actually worked splendidly!
Each of us knows it from a thousand and one experiences: nothing is more difficult than changing one's behaviour, even when our head is roaring: "Eat fewer chips, otherwise the day is not far off when a Harley Davidson rider will be parked in your shadow!" Whether it's medical advice or the voice of reason, usually not even the too-short belt brings the compelling arguments into the discussion with the inner bastard to do what's right/better/smarter, because changing one's behaviour is now the very hardest thing to do.
Oh, stop! There is one thing that is even more difficult than that, namely: convincing others to change their behaviour.
too lazy to read on? Then listen to me:
In the blogcast, I read this recent blog article to you. With emphasis, of course!
Everyone who has something to communicate in this direction knows this. Every housewife who, for the hundredth time, harvests the dirty laundry that has been abundantly spread on the field of the entire living space, every personnel manager who leafs through empty timesheets of colleagues who are, however, hard-working, all flatmates who, after completing their deed, stand or sit there without toilet paper and can thus philosophise excellently about the range of meaning of the phrase "empty-handed" ... Train instead of car, paper instead of plastic, eReader instead of paper - the list is endlessly full of small and large matters. And when you finally find yourself as a communication or marketing professional confronted with a task that requires behavioural change, you know that things are about to get really serious.
The best method for change: storytelling
Traditions, habits, behaviour and images are among the most viscous substances in the witches' kitchen of our human existence. There is nothing wrong with that until you want to change it.
The best way to do this is through our unique human capacity for story - for storytelling and storysharing. With story - the Swiss Army knife of communication methods - we hold several effective tools in our hands at the same time. Three of them are particularly useful in this context:
- The New Magnifier
- the perspective changer
- the movement crank
The New Magnifier.
If you want to bring about change, avoid the word "change" in all its manifestations in your narrative. Different is another word for poison! No one wants to change. To change means, implicitly at least, I did something wrong before. To change means toil and renunciation. Fie!
Put your message under the new magnifying glass and suddenly it looks big and beautiful. We would rather have something new than something different (even if there are people for whom everything new is anathema, but we can't touch them with anything anyway).
Let's take the classic weight loss for example: If I tell you: "If you want to lose five kilos, there is a direct and proven way. Change your eating habits, change your meal times and change your exercise habits", then I have done nothing other than sowed the seeds of failure and fertilised them vigorously at the same time. You will turn away with a furrowed brow.
But if I tell you: "I have discovered something completely new, the Bio-Power Fat Melting Principle. By the way, it works very simply...", then your ears prick up reflexively. Then you get the same diet and exercise programme as above, but served up in a new and simple way.
We wantnew! Especially in areas where we have already tried a lot in vain. And a simply as a topping we love in our confusing world anyway. Different must stay out.
The perspective changer.
There is one thought by John Steinbeck that I have remembered particularly well and I recommend it to all story insiders: "If a story is not about the hearer he will not listen ... A great lasting story is about everyone or it will not last. The strange and foreign is not interesting - only the deeply personal and familiar."
That is why a message from a brand, a cause, a person must never be about the sender, but always about the audience. This is one of the central axes of success of the storytelling wheelwork around which everything revolves and around which storytelling turns into story sharing. Where concerns, messages, ideas of the sender are shared with the audience as a common longing.
In my experience, one of the most efficient ways to do this in implementation is not to see the audience as recipients of the message in the traditional way, but much better to win them over as carriers of the message. By this I don't mean (only) using real customers as testimonials who share their experience. That's okay, but it's not even half the battle.
Genuine supporters are not only the audience, but also a supporting part of the whole. If those who are to be affected are so enthusiastic about something that they proudly carry it as part of their story, then the success of a cause can hardly be prevented.
This almost automatically opens the third tool in our set:
The Movement crank.
When I advise my clients - whether individuals, companies or organisations - we go on a Purpose Safari together. This is a simple method that I developed as part of Hero Branding® , so that deeply rooted and often hidden or even forgotten values and concerns - i.e. the inner drive of a company - become clearly visible.
With the spoils of our Purpose Safari, we often play a game with the task: What would we do if we wanted to set up a movement around our found concern, around our values, so that we activate these values broadly, apart from any business considerations?
It is amazing to me every time what great ideas are born. The least that comes out of it is that everyone involved better understands the power and range of their values and sees how multi-faceted that can come alive. That alone is invaluable, so the most important goal of the exercise, because everyone understands where the real meaning of a brand is, where differentiation through relevance becomes possible, and thus the relationship with the audience is rooted and can be experienced in a concrete way.
Most of the time, this results in much more, including a wealth of big and small ideas for communication and a mighty humming engine for everything that can be called content marketing.
And time and again, real movements emerge from this, which I am convinced is the best and most powerful thing you can grow on the valuable and nutrient-rich humus of your (fire) story.
Best Practice Storytelling: The Empire Bites Back!
A campaign from the UK caught my eye the other day that uses the three tools described above very graphically: #EatThemToDefeatThem by the organisation VegPower which is dedicated to the suicide mission of turning children into vegetable eaters. Here, several tasks from Sisyphus' list of duties meet unhappily.
Anyone who has children or was once one knows that they can survive for many years on fruit gnomes, milk slices and noodles with red sauce (aka ketchup) alone, and that the occasional fish fingers with ketchup (aka red sauce) can be called a nutritional highlight. The two biggest threats at this age are going to bed when you already can't sit down from fatigue, and vegetables. Unless it can be squeezed from a red bottle or it's called French fries.
The next hurdle is the evil, evil must, which is about as hated as the mean must-not. On top of that: having to do something that the parents think is good and also sensible, and that is also healthy. It tastes like disaster - welcome to the no-go zone!
And to make matters worse, something familiar has to be changed - see above for effect.
So the people at VegPower and the creators of the campaign have pulled out their story pocket knife and put the following into action in an exemplary clever way.
1. the new magnifying glass
No one talks about different, about changing or anything else like that with VegPower , but they offer a completely new option, an idea in which vegetables no longer appear in the context of being good and eating healthy, but as exactly what the kids know them to be: a natural enemy. Reframing, you could say. Here's the film about it.
2. the perspective changer
- From the first moment, the campaign takes the audience's perspective, that of the kids and indirectly that of the parents. Vegetables are a threat in our children's world, we must and will defeat them, with the best, indeed the unbeatable method we have in store: #EatThemToDefeatThem
- At the same time, the unloved topic of reason is elevated to a completely new, audience-appealing terrain. Many kids reflect on games, action and superheroes.
From now on, it is no longer the vegetables that are the heroes to follow, but the children who become the heroes who attack the vegetables with their teeth.
3. the movement crank.
Another big challenge with concerns like this is that you are really addressing the kids, but you mean the parents and teachers and vice versa. The right tone needs to be struck for everyone. Moreover, these almost oppositely polarised groups use completely different media and need completely different approaches, tools, engagement hooks and calls to action. What you can already see on the VegPower website sounds like a well-laid foundation that, they say, is being vigorously expanded. And must be expanded if it is to be effective.
At the moment, there is not much going on on social media, which is probably due to the very short campaign period, but also and above all to the fact that social media engagements can only serve as a success parameter to a limited extent here, especially since children are excluded from use by law.
That doesn't matter at all, because the power of this movement unfolds best, in my opinion, where real vegetable-shredding hero life takes place: at home, with friends, at school, in the grocery store, at events ... #EatThemToDefeatThem has the makings of an alternate reality game and true immersive story telling. It almost doesn't get any better than this, because it allows meaning to be experienced as a relationship, only and exclusively through Time with Brand, the most precious and valuable thing a brand, an initiative, a company or an organisation can ever get.
Of course, this also takes time and patience, as change as a whole - especially social change - is better thought of in generations than in years.
We want to share in the story of others.
Everyone wants to be part of something, preferably part of something bigger, where like-minded people believe in the same thing and you can become a little bigger than you are in the process.
Will this campaign work? I have no idea! "Nobody knows anything," said Oscar® double winner William Goldman.
Whether this campaign is good, the film is well received, etc.? As always, one can have different opinions about that. In any case, the storytelling mechanism is smart, and if - as the inventors of #EatThemToDefeatThem say - this is just the beginning and the audience's involvement gets to where it should be, then I am convinced that everything is there that is needed to make the future of carrots, cabbage sprouts & Co. look as sinister as the inside of a primary school pupil's stomach.
The fact that people expect companies and brands to make a strong contribution to social renewal and activities with social impact is good and right, undisputed and even studied and confirmed worldwide. That this is valuable and important for society, just as it even has a massively successful economic effect for the companies themselves.
In the article "In the beginning was the word. In the beginning was the value.-Storytelling that inspires", I wrote more about it.
Storytelling is more than good storytelling.
Storytelling is often understood, even misunderstood, as the packaging of facts into emotional stories, and by far too short-sighted. This is undoubtedly part of it, because we humans remember facts at best, if at all, but will never forget strong stories. We humans make decisions emotionally, stories are the best way to do that. But that is only the beginning.
Story touches truths, longings and values deeply rooted in us, activates them and shares them with others. This is the true core, this is what evolution programmed into our social operating system as probably the most powerful tool.
Regardless of whether you are a global corporation, an SME or a heroic lone fighter as an EPU - every person, every brand, every company has and needs at least one archaic value and the story it activates, around which everything revolves. If you don't have a magnetic value as a living theme, there is only one other thing left: the price. And in the end, only bans and orders remain as arguments.
So to all those who say, "It doesn't apply to me and my brand!", I would like to recommend those words that my grandmother, when she was still the little Story Dudette, smeared on the door of Old McDonald's with ketchup (aka red sauce): "No Story. No Glory."