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~ The art of story in life, business and business life.

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Tag Archives: video storytelling

Stories worth watching #4: The Voyage of Sumeet and Chetna

26 Wednesday Feb 2014

Posted by herr dennehy in Stories worth watching

≈ 6 Comments

Tags

authentic, Authenticity, brand storytelling, British Airways, business storytelling, change, corporate storytelling, digital storytelling, documentary, drama, expectation, Hollywood, personal stories, plot, Sumeet and Chetna, surprise, true story, Truth, video storytelling

This story literally came flying into my inbox the other day, the subject merely indicating: “British Airways is also doing personal stories now”. The sender surely seemed to know how to catch my attention … and there was no comment as to whether BA’s attempt was successful, in the sense of good-story-successful, not youtube-clicks-successful. She left that to me to find out …

Overcoming an instinctive cerebral reflex of rejection by the notion that this is probably just another ad in sheep’s (or cheap) clothing – and henceforth the source of evil that continues to insult my intelligence by insinuating authenticity while actually shouting out “CLICK HERE AND BUY ME, STUPID!” –, I followed the link anyway. And I was rewarded; in one way, not in every.

…

…

OK, there’s a decent slice from the cheesy cake mixed into this film, but: a really good story it is. And if it’s a well-told story, I do admit to being susceptible to some nice, unpatronizing cheesiness every now and again, that lets me escape from our technocratic, data- and perfomance-driven world … hmmm, maybe I’ll start a list of the best-told and produced stories that made me cry and were not good despite, but because?.

I was glad that nobody was watching when my eyes premiered this film in the office … 😉

…

What’s so good about this story?

  1. That it makes me experience the “like me” effect. Even though it’s plotted in a world completely foreign to my own. Even though the heroes’ sufferings are (on the outside) something I will (probably and hopefully) never be exposed to myself, but (on the inside) something that’s as close to my heart as Romeo and Juliet, Florentino Ariza and Fermina Daza, or László de Almásy and Katherine Clifton.
  2. That it manages to take the seemingly very specific story of an organized, yet later love-match-to-be marriage and its challenges in modern Indian life to the broader sphere of She and He. Of Love and Sacrifice. Of Desire and Deprivation. Of Longing and Letting Go. And so on. Universal themes of togetherness and separation and all the shades of grey in-between. It doesn’t matter, whether our two heroes are Indian, American, German, Chinese or African: These kinds of experiences are all the same, all over the world. We know them, and we feel them when we see them – and feel even more when we experience them as true (and I haven’t found any lead anywhere yet that this story is scripted or fake).
  3. That it clearly follows the storycodeX of Expectation, Surprise and Change in a way that is not totally surprising, granted, but despite its predictability it is convincing and true to its own inner truth. Even though I had a pretty good feeling for how the story will end, I still didn’t want to miss the satisfaction of the closure living up to my expectations. And it did.

Still … Why is this story and especially the overall British Airways campaign behind that story so very far from perfect?

  1. First of all: the music. It begins OK, adequately subtle as the story unfolds, and the hero introduces himself. But after a minute already, the unwelcome feeling creeps over me that a soundscape is about to invade my ear conch, and oh how I hate that. At minute 2:45 it almost becomes unbearable, this crescendo of paternalism, acoustically giving me the order what to feel in a couple of seconds. Again, how I hate that. Although I also hate it when it works, when my heart answers through my lacrimal glands while my brain is saying “No! Don’t! They’re just manipulating you!”.
  2. The documentary start of the film (if you ignore the fast-motion sequences, which you definitely should, they’re so eighties and boring!) maybe does not have the intention of fooling me, but it does. Because in the end it turns out to be an attempt to imitate Hollywood. Especially after minute 3:30, this becomes all too evident: slow motion, seemingly staged or at least retook scenes, too much forced effort on an image-text match. At the end and with Sumeet’s fit-to-campaign-and-landing-page-title slogan “Sometimes we have to go really far to get close”, this becomes even blunter – and leaves a bad taste in my mouth. I hate being fooled.
  3. Speaking about the campaign (the above arguments are a little prone to taste, but the following is a fact): It’s a laudable one, with a nice and true core message, showing the authentic benefits of a brand and its actions for its recipients (or more abstractly: target audience). This campaign goal surely is reached (emotionally, that is, I have no knowledge of the quantitative results apart from 1.8m YouTube views to date). But, in the end, it turns out to be just another poor attempt of deviation, pretending to want one thing (in this case: make people happy and tell a good story), when in the end it’s ever so obviously about another thing (in this case: make people book flights with BA, and not just somewhere down the Brand and Sales Funnel, that would be OK, and expected, and accepted, but RIGHT NOW, STUPID! No subtleness, no intelligent weaving of one story into a greater theme or idea.). When I enter ba.com/getcloser, I don’t (as I would have hoped for) get more content of the kind I have just seen, that is other example stories of BA’s impact on human happiness, not even a “more to come” message in case this is the first episode of a planned series. Nope, nuthin. Instead, a simple, plain, in my eyes insultingly profane flight booking page as you actually would expect at BA.com, not on its apparently os so human “get closer” campaign landing page. And then I even find out, how our happy heroes are exploited for a whole bunch of other online marketing measures such as Facebook quiz asking me (as a story seeker!) how close I am to whomever. I can even win a flight to get even closer. Can it get more right in the face? Phew. And URGH.

A shame. An insult, And a wasted chance of a sustainably credible campaign that started off so promising – with a good story.

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This is NOT a story #1: The Dylan Chrysler Experience

10 Monday Feb 2014

Posted by herr dennehy in This is NOT a story

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

Aristotle, Bob Dylan, brand journalism, brand storytelling, business storytelling, change, Chrysler, Clint Eastwood, conversations, corporate storytelling, David Bowie, digital storytelling, Dirty Harry, drama, expectation, hero, Louis Vuitton, plot, surprise. suspense, tension, true story, video storytelling

Sometimes, a man’s gotta do what a man’s gotta do. And sometimes, the world actually takes notice. Sometimes even a little too much. As in the case of Mister Robert Zimmermanns’ latest coup in a lifetime effort to alienate his lovers, re-assure his haters, and simply do everything possible to not fit into one of those boxes that our world so loves to create to get a grasp at the ungraspable: Life.

I’m talking about the new piece of advertising Dylan has allowed US car manufacturer Chrysler to produce using him as a mighty testimonial:

…

I’m neither going to chime into the (ridiculous and so 1965-Newport-Folk-Festival-like) fundamentalist fan mob’s “OMG! He’s selling out to commerce” outcries, nor will I (at least not yet, that is…) offer any half-baked analysis of why Bob is such a genius, why he’s never there, always the passenger of a slow train coming with no direction home, always already part of a new morning, heading for modern times, leaving blood on the tracks while his worshippers are still marching on desolation row towards the Gates of Folk Eden. No, others have done that before, probably better than I ever could.

Which is why it does indeed surprise me that he still actually manages to surprise, at least some, with his ambiguous “it ain’t me, babe” smile on his face. If it were up to me, he could advertise Pepsi refreshments or Victoria’s Secret ladies garments, I’d still not stop to admire the Zimmermann Phantom and his many ways of deliberate and couldn’t-care-less fanielation. Oh, he already did??? Ahh, whatever. 😉 Those two were at least entertaining, somewhat intelligently composed, and equipped with some more Dylan-esque “in-between-the-line-ness”.

No, what this here is about is my bewilderment by the fact that the Chrysler spot simply is a poor piece of pathetic advertising – and story-wise plainly sucks, because it isn’t a story, but pretends to be. And that a man, who has created himself a well-earned reputation as a musical storytellers of and about his time, agreed to be its centerpiece (I won’t call him hero in this respect, as it’s neither heroic what he’s doing or saying, nor in any way dramatic in the Aristotelian sense to make him deserve this title).

Why Chrysler is doing this, and exactly in this fashion, is clear: It’s an American company, more up-to-date American never than here, appearing desperate and back-to-the-wall-ish, seeing hopes dashing in many an economic sector; automotive, for example. They draw the marketing card of desperation (by the way: already Act II of the company’s Drame du Deséspoir after Act I where they threw Dirty Harry into the ring two years ago): Take a well-known, respected, but still a little controversial celebrity (you know they’ll love or hate him for this!), use clichemotional imagery of what makes America’s nerves shake (no way to err with cheerleaders and cowboys on horses in slow-mo, a little stars and stripes and historical analogies, babies and hard-working factory laborers!), polarize and tease your rivals a little (not too much, just a little to add spice to the saltless soup and give the regulars’ table something to talk about), and end with the all-too-expected “Wir sind wieder wer!” message stolen from se Germans in 1954. Oh, and not to forget: Pay millions to place this ad in front of the world’s eyes at the Super Bowl finale – where reach really still means conversion and conversation. About what, that’s another question.

Why Bob Dylan is doing this, Alias knows. Maybe to escape from the burden of being witty, erudite, convoluted, and the role model of more than one generation all the time, into the shallowness and immediacy of corporate advertising every now and again? Maybe just for the fun of acting while actually being an actor and not a singer-songwriter? Maybe for the dosh? Maybe, maybe, maybe … who cares? I don’t.

But what I do care about being insulted by bad ads and videos and films that pretend to be stories. Why do I think this one is so bad, may have become obvious above, below and in between these lines so far, but a friend of mine recommended I add a kind of management summary at the end of my posts to avoid the feeling of “Wow, that was interesting, but, err, what was it about again?”. So here it is, my dear Performance Passionist: 😉

  1. Nothing’s happening. Nothing’s changing. It’s simply boring. I wouldn’t want to watch it to the end without all the media fuzz about and Bob Dylan in it. I would leave the latest after 30 seconds.
  2. No surprise. No one manages to surprise me here, and seems like no one even wants to. The surprise of seeing Bob Dylan make-up-ed and hair-dyed after 18 seconds is the only surprise you get – and I’m left with the fear that the analogy of Dylan not holing any ball at the end might have a deeper meaning. A message triangle gone video.
  3. No hero, no plot. There is no hero, only a narrator narrating through a non-existent plot. But actually narrator Dylan ain’t telling, he’s just talking, saying things that only scratch the surface of America’s story and the story of every American shown in these two minutes. Shallow and predictable. And don’t mistake the narrator for the hero, neither the story-immanent one nor the one you think you’re seeing. It’s only Bob (whoever that is) playing someone else.
  4. No expectation. Neither within nor without this advertisement am I expecting anything, let alone more – and arousing no expectation is the worst mistake being made here. The fact that nothing is happening could, however, be countered by the tension and expectation of what might happen AFTER the short scene just shown. As it was actually quite successfully attempted in Dylan’s Victoria’s Secret spot in 2009, or in last year’s Louis Vuitton spot with David Bowie. Both not stories per se, but the beginning act of a potential plot continuation, a story teaser, making me expect more to come, wanting to know, if and how this scene continues. Not so with The Chrysler Boredom.

The only chance this spot has for a longer-term success and more sustainable, content-based conversations (beyond the “Have you seen the latest Super Bowl ad with Dylan?” reflex) about the big theme the ad is suggesting (“The people of America and their love to manufacture something with their own hands that provides a living for their families and a sense of pride to be giving the world something it wants, needs, and maybe even copies”), is a prolongation of this mere advertising pretension into the digital space.

A prolongation that includes every little story of every single potential hero in this two-minute film. The young lady wrapped in the Stars and Stripes at second 0:08. The grateful-looking old man at second 0:14. The waitress serving him. The mother with her(?) child at second 0:54. The factory worker at minute 1:04. Or any of the men standing behind the pool table like tin soldiers at the end. These stories, if indeed they exist, would prove that the above big-story suggestion is not just advertising bullshit, that the company able to pay so much money for production and airing of this ad actually is capable of lighting the spark of pride in these peoples’ hearts. That it maybe even manages to help improve their lives. Most importantly, this would prove that they’re not all just casted models for a seemingly authentic TV spot.

… And then there would be the story of this old man with the dyed hair who wants us to believe that he is who he seems to be, that he is actually someone we know, someone like you and me, and not just some Alias playing a role in innocent Billy the Kid’s endless fight against the unjust hands of some imported Pat Garret imitation …

That would be a story. A completely different one. One that many have tried to tell, but no one really knows.

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“What’s IS story? And what ISN’T?” … Part 2: The Human Touch

29 Sunday Dec 2013

Posted by herr dennehy in Ideas

≈ 1 Comment

Tags

A Bug's Life, brand storytelling, Business, business storytelling, change, conflict, corporate storytelling, digital storytelling, E.T., HD technology, Human, human element, human emotions, humanity, plot, Short Circuit, story, story dynamics, surprise, suspense, Toy Story, video formats, video storytelling

Just before tradition forced me to vanish into a (non-white, sometimes rainy, sometimes spring-like warm, but very nutritious) Christmas break, I had touched upon the human touch of stories. In my eyes one of the most amusing and annoying misunderstandings in today’s business communication, the “human element”, right …

A misunderstanding that started off with two seemingly positive and delectable developments, for privateers as well as inside corporations great and small:

  1. Technology (once again), especially the ubiquity of HD-ready devices:
    Just a couple of years ago you needed a real pro with a real pro equipment to produce a pro piece of film for you, privately or as a brand. But today: Camcorders, digital cameras, even smart phones, available at reasonable prices, easy to handle, one-button simplicity and … Tadaah! Here’s your great video! Or at least a moving image with an .mpeg or .mov or .whatever file ending. Or at least something that conforms to the minimum standards of standard video players and standard video platforms. But does that make it a good video, let alone a good, interesting, appealing, relevant piece of communications collateral? More on the nay side, I would say.
  1. Storytelling, the latest magical bandwagon for marketers (and bloggers, haha!) to jump on, mostly without a valid ticket, let alone a driving license:
    I remember, Hippocampus, here we go again: It was some time in the winter of 2008, I was invited to give a 15-minute impulse speech at a conference of top communications managers from all over the world, about the potential of storytelling in business-to-business communications. Very few slides. No flow charts. No processes. No figures. That already scary enough for advertising dinosaurs and communicator-wannabe engineers. Just a couple of quotes, trying to give them an idea of what the heck this humanist and literary scholar was a) doing here and b) talking about. After my 15 Warhol minutes and some drinks at the hotel bar: I thought they had gotten the idea, theoretically.

Unfortunately, I was wrong, I had failed. It turned out that the distilled gist they had taken away was not plot, change, suspense, surprise, conflict or other story dynamics of that kind; it was “the human element”. Not a bad thing at all, don’t get me wrong, and surely a valuable ingredient for a good story full of identification potential and stuff, but: If you think putting one or two humans onto screen, slide or paper turns messaging into story: wrong end of the stick.

Example one:
Interview your real Sales manager human being in front of his real product for a real product website talking about the product’s really great features: Ain’t no story.
Change of approach: Find out who this Sales guy person is, where his passion comes from, what he’s been through to get to where he is today, what he loves to do in his leisure time which might in a way be related to the benefits of his great product? More like it, story-wise, at least some potential story angles there.

Example two:
Show a real cute girl patient in a hospital climbing into a CT scanner, two grown-ups with concerned looks on their faces, underlay some emotional music and a compassionate voice over for a 30-second TV spot: Ain’t no story.
Change of approach: Dig deeper and tell that girl’s (hi)story, her ordeal, the ups and downs she and her family had to go through until they finally found a way to access this unique, life-saving medical device … Bang! There’s your story!

Let’s add another perspective to this human element thing:

Do you think you could lament for the fate of an ant?
http://youtu.be/jB8wKvI0_8E

Could you anxiously witness every minute of a toy’s story?
http://youtu.be/7MM1k1SSlWs

Or an alien’s?
http://youtu.be/_7-2PB4jj2o

Or a machine’s?
http://youtu.be/9rlI3Xg9g_A

Gee, took me long to get my thoughts together here, must be the turkey still weighing on my concentration … so, what I’m getting at:

  1. You don’t need a human being for a good story, you need an element of humanity. And there are many business communication products out there with many humans, but lacking humanity, hence: They don’t work.
  2. Whoever is the hero of your story – man, machine or animal: Whatever happens to him (or her) needs to resonate with human emotions, needs to offer human identification, needs to feel humanly familiar.
  3. Oh and – I may have mentioned it before: Something needs to actually HAPPEN, before you decide whom it happens to.

Yet, the good news at the end of a long post and year: There’s hope and quite a number of really interesting storytelling projects out there in the business world already, rays of hope in a dark, loud and boring corporate messaging world.

So, I’d like to start 2014 with my personal top 5 selection. Permitted that New Year’s Eve is gentle to me …

In any case:

The story goes on … here … soon.

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Social Media = Storytelling

18 Wednesday Dec 2013

Posted by herr dennehy in Ideas

≈ 7 Comments

Tags

Aristotle, brand journalism, brand storytelling, Business, business storytelling, change, conversation, corporate storytelling, digital storytelling, drama, expectation, hero, Marketing and Advertising, social media, story in social media, Storytelling, surprise, video storytelling

Recently at a conference, someone asked me why the hell everyone in business is talking about the need for this new thing called storytelling in communications and marketing. First of all, I told him, I’m happy that they are finally getting it. Or are they? If they call storytelling ‘new’, they surely aren’t…

Thing is: People, and I specifically mean business people, think that a little bit of emotional music, a couple of real humans and a raw look and feel makes a piece of communication authentic, relevant and, yes, a story. Ever heard a colleague come up with a “great story” he wants to write about, or show you a video that portraits “our unique story”? And once you take a closer listen or look, you hear or see nothing but a paraphrased or moving-image message triangle, patronizing the recipient in 20th-century advertising manner, telling him what to think or feel or, in the end, do. No hero, no drama, no expectation, no surprise, no identification.

The great thing about today: In the digitally connected world, people are getting back to the roots of human conversation, gagging for true, real and surprising story, something outstanding, something new to enjoy and share. Ergo: This whole social media thing is nothing but an extended remix version of an old, very successful song.

Why’s that?

Well, sharing aka telling stories has been man’s unique selling point and leisure pleasure ever since he (or she) could communicate (non-verbally or verbally) – around campfires in the Neanderthal or at medieval markets, at children’s bedsides or you name it. In other words: being social, embarking into (however purposeful) conversations with other people. Sender tells, recipient receives, recipient becomes sender, becomes recipient, becomes sender and so on. Being social is having conversations, and conversations are never one way. In the vernacular we call this: Dialogue. Thereby follows Equation #1:

Social = Conversation

And if this is so, that being social and having conversations is the most ancient human trait we can think of, what makes social media or the so-called web 2.0 so special, so revolutionary? Again, easy: Technology. Whenever mankind creates something big, it’s either mimicry or an enhancement of what nature already has in store. As in the case of the Internet and its second-generation 2.0 version, technology has enabled us to bring human conversations from a personal to a global (and sometimes hence impersonal, but that’s a different topic) level. Leading me to Equation #2:

Social Media = Global Conversation

After all this, the end (or beginning?) of this story (or message?) is no rocket or internet science, it’s mere logic: If we only embark in conversation with people that have something interesting to tell, something we can relate to, something that touches either our hearts or our minds or both, the power is not in great rhetoric or bullet points of a fact sheet. It’s the stories we hear about real people with real challenges, real successes, real failures, yes: real lives. Why should this be different in social media’s global conversations? So in the end comes Equation #3:

Social Media = (Global Conversation =) Storytelling

If this is so – and I get a strange feeling I’m not completely wrong here –, then this is just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to successful communication and marketing in the 21st century, be it for a company or your own personal brand. Like: What is and what is not a story? Where the roots are and what can we learn from them? What do Aristotle and the Cluetrain Manifesto have in common?

The story goes on … here … soon.

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