act3 is a communication strategy and design firm that specializes in telling stories.

This blog is our story laboratory, a way to poke, prod, and take a closer look at the stories we see, the stories we tell, and our own assumptions and knowledge about why stories work (or don't). The goal is to better understand what makes a story connect with people, and how to tell better stories.

Like any blog, it's an evolving concept. We hope you'll follow along.

September 23

Overcoming too big and too vague

A couple recent Seth Godin posts have story implications worth exploring.

In Enormity, Seth writes:Seth's head

The problem with enormity in marketing is that it doesn’t work. Enormity should pull at our heartstrings, but it usually shuts us down.

Show us too many sick kids, unfair imprisonments or burned bodies and you won’t get a bigger donation, you’ll just get averted eyes.

If you’ve got a small, fixable problem, people will rush to help, because people like to be on the winning side, take credit and do something that worked. If you’ve got a generational problem, something that is going to take herculean effort and even then probably won’t pan out, we’re going to move on in search of something smaller.

Put another way, if you tell me about malnutrition in Africa, I’m going to feel helpless about it and bad about it. Maybe a little guilty, too.

But tell me a story about a real person — say, Madam Salomey Ameh from Ghana, who was lifted out of poverty and hunger because of a gift of ducklings and training in how to raise them — and then tell me about how I can make a difference to a real person in a similar way, and now you’ve got my attention.

The personal story changes how I perceive the situation, how I perceive my role in the situation, and what I believe about my ability to act.

In Achievable avalanche opportunities, Seth says:

…. Your employees, your investors, your boss [are] willing to put in the time and the energy and the work if they think:
  1. The outcome might be an avalanche of attention, new business and growth, and
  2. Their work makes that outcome achievable, even likely.

If you are vague about the outcome, or if the steps are too complex, or involve sacrificing a goat or waiting for lightning to hit, it’s going to be very difficult to get the group excited. People are far more likely to embrace a smaller goal that feels likely than they are to devote themselves day and night to the amorphous jackpot. The specific jackpot, sure we’ll sign up for that, but amorphous and ethereal is largely beyond our ability to imagine and sacrifice for.

What he doesn’t say but probably would agree with is that stories can turn the amorphous and ethereal into the specific and concrete. It could be a story about what the outcome looks like at a personal level, about someone else who achieved a similar avalanche, or a personal story about why you’re leading the charge toward this outcome.

No matter the narrative arc, a story takes you out of the bland landscape of theoretical goal-setting pablum, and into the tangible technicolor reality of let’s-do-this.

If you’ve been struggling to get people to care enough to act, maybe what you’re trying to get them to act on is too big or too vague.

How can you change the conversation with story?

:: Posted by Eric Ratinoff ::