By Gini Dietrich
The Kardashians. Miley Cyrus. Honey Boo Boo. The Real Housewives. The Real World. Rogue tweets. Lindsay Lohan. Michael Vick. Lance Armstrong. American Idol. Anonymous. Oscar Pistorius. Aaron Hernandez. Sports Illustrated’s swimsuit issue. The manhunt for the Boston Marathon bombers.
It’s no surprise sex sells. And so do shootings and train wrecks and car accidents.
It’s the reason reality television and tabloids exist.
We love the drama, the absurd, and the ridiculous.
It’s the reason we’re more interested in Beyonce lip-syncing at President Obama’s second inauguration than we are about the global state of affairs.
Because of our innate human need to read and share this kind of information, organizations try to sell with sex all the time.
A couple of months ago, a bar in Chicago had a sign out front that said, “I like my beer like my violence…domestic.”
The server who posted this was fired, but not before bars in Austin and Plano, Texas followed suit.
On Sunday afternoon, Kate Nolan texted me a photo of the sign outside of the Timbuk2 store in Chicago.
Very clever and Kate said it worked…kind of.
A woman went into the store because she liked the sign. Unfortunately, she did not buy.
Sex does sell…if you’re selling sex.
The rest of us have to figure out how to sell by telling our organization’s story in a compelling way, which isn’t easy to do.
We live in a world where content exhaustion is very real.
So how do you tell your organization’s story so people care?
Tell Your Organization’s Story
There are five essential parts to your organization’s story.
They include:
- Passion;
- A protagonist;
- An antagonist;
- A revelation; and
- The transformation.
Passion
What is it your audience really cares about? These aren’t customer quotes or testimonials; these are customer stories.
The passion lies in how your product is created, your office culture, the one thing your organization truly cares about that makes you unique and valuable to the world around you.
How can you tell your organization’s story to create passion among the people who will buy your products or services?
How can you create an advantage and use an opportunity—such as newsjacking—to give your organization’s story more legs?
It doesn’t matter what you sell—an oxidizer manufacturing company creates passion around understanding EPA regulations and how they affect air pollution control, a PR firm creates passion around technology advances, an accounting firm creates passion around accountants with personality.
Passion is the first step in telling your organization’s story in an engaging and valuable way.
Protagonist
Now it’s time to create your protagonist.
This one is easy.
The protagonist is you, your company, your product, or your service.
This is typically where stories begin and end, but in our process, this is just the beginning.
To figure out who your protagonist is—the leader of the organization, a social media rockstar within your ranks, a spokesperson, a cartoon superhero of your logo—ask a handful of people in various roles to share five adjectives they’d use to describe the company and two aspects of the organization that are unique or valuable.
Ask people inside your organization and your customers to contribute.
Look for themes or strong responses and combine them into a clearly defined description of your protagonist’s attributes.
As soon as you figure that out, you have passion and you have someone people can believe in.
Antagonist
Now you need someone—or something—or people to hate…the antagonist.
The antagonist is the villain and is often the most overlooked part of an organization’s story.
What is the enemy of your success?
Think about it as an issue or challenge you solve.
What keeps your customers awake at night?
Is it a cultural issue?
Is it an industry concern; perhaps you work in print distribution and the products you make are becoming extinct because everything is going online and you no longer have something to distribute.
Maybe it’s a real problem such as the hassle of setting up payroll, email overload, or managing your organization’s 401K program (which I hate to do, with a passion).
What problem do you solve for your customers?
Is there a big, bad competitor in your industry?
Find your enemy so you have the antagonist for your organization’s story.
The Revelation
Part of what makes fiction so compelling are twists or turns you weren’t expecting.
We enjoy the surprise and delight, even if the revelation is sad, because we like to feel like we’re being let in on a secret.
Likewise, your organization’s story should share something unexpected with customers and prospects.
The Transformation
The final part to your organization’s story is the transformation, or the thing (or things) that is different about the way you do business.
Think about how your company has evolved.
Think about the problem you solve and how it connects with both emotional and practical needs.
What is your value proposition? What can customers get only from you?
It might be intellectual property or a new way of doing things or a super duper cool new widget.
People want to know how you arrived there.
The argument many business leaders make at this point is, “Why would I want to give away our secret sauce? Then our competitors would do what we do.”
Here’s the thing: Your competitors may know the exact recipe to your secret sauce, but no one does it as well as you do.
It’s your secret sauce.
It was created with your people, your thinking, your culture, your passion, and your vision.
If you’re just starting out, your transformation likely hasn’t happened yet, from a company perspective, but there is a reason you’re launching a new business.
Maybe it’s to make your social content shoppable, such as foursixty; or to teach people how to run political campaigns, such as GetElected.
Whatever it happens to be, the transformation is the closing to your organization’s story and it’s also the part that continues to evolve.
So don’t get hung up on getting it perfect. If your organization is anything like mine, it could change as quickly as next week.
Today’s Exercise
Of course, there are tons of examples in Spin Sucks on how organizations are using each of the five storytelling techniques to help you figure out your pieces.
So buy a copy and send your receipt to [email protected]. We’ll send you a package of goodies.
But more, buy a copy so you can do the following exercise and not get stuck and abandon it.
Today I want you to spend 30 minutes creating your organization’s story.
Of course, 30 minutes isn’t long enough to get something perfect for primetime, but it will create a draft for you to begin to test with prospects and customers.
It will create a draft for you to test internally.
It will create a draft for you to begin to perfect.
Set the timer for 30 minutes and get to work.
- Write down what your passion is.
- Write down who you think the protagonist in your story will be.
- Write down who the antagonist is.
- Write down what the revelation is.
- Write down the organization’s transformation.
Now you have your passion, a protagonist, an antagonist, a revelation, and a transformation…and you’re ready to get out there and tell your organization’s story.
The Scavenger Hunt
If you are participating in the Spin Sucks scavenger hunt, today you will visit Corina Manea’s blog.
The secret word is in her blog post, “How to Keep Your Best Performers Happy.”
Just write down the secret word in Corina’s box on your scavenger hunt card (if you don’t have a card, download it here).
We have nine more days—through March 3—so keep playing along.
And don’t forget…if you buy a copy of Spin Sucks between now and March 8, we’ll send you a fun package full of goodies to use in your office.
Just email the receipt to [email protected]. Please include your mailing address so we know where to send the package.
Now get to work! Thirty minutes. Go!
image credits: Shutterstock, DNAInfo, and Kate Nolan