Storytelling is joke telling

What's the story? #3 - why storytelling will always be the key to building great brands.

Monsters Inc. Finding Nemo. Toy Story.

Apart from being much-loved animated movies, that have become part of our culture – and maybe your childhood – what do they all have in common?

Andrew Stanton. You may not know the name, but he is the creator of them – as writer, and also sometimes director.

He gave a brilliant TED talk a few years ago, the premise of which was: “storytelling is joke telling.” He started off with a great joke.

What does he mean by this, and what does that mean for those of us making marketing communications?

That everything we do should be funny? No, even though humour is probably the most powerful tool advertisers have.

It’s “knowing that everything from your first sentence to your last is leading to a singular goal.”

And, more importantly: “ideally confirming some truth that deepens our understanding of who we are as human beings.”

But WTF has that got to do with advertising?

The greatest, and most successful, advertising does this too: whether it’s a TV spot, OOH ad or Instagram Reel.

The problem is, that the vast majority of advertising doesn’t. It never has. But now that AI makes it even easier to create ‘content,’ even less thought and effort goes into what that content is, because it costs almost nothing to produce. If it doesn’t work, you just spew out more tomorrow. And the next day. And the day after that. Who cares right?

Well customers for one.

Employees and shareholders too.

Andrew Stanton finishes his talk with one simple rule about storytelling: “Make me care.”

Or, to put it more bluntly, for marketers and brand builders: if you want to sell more sh*t, you need to make consumers actually give a sh*t.

See Andrew Stanton’s TED Talk here: https://lnkd.in/ekaxQpGbsfs