THE MASTERSOF STORYTELLING
PAGE 5 Forward
PAGE 7 Tips from the masters
PAGE 13How to use storytelling to
craft experiences that engage
PAGE 17Make it stick: video storytelling
for insight impact
PAGE 19 Storytelling in MRX
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CONTENTS
We all love stories. During childhood
we use them to explore, explain and
engage with the world and we continue
to consume them as adults in our daily
lives. Stories are useful because they
create emotional connections. We engage
with characters, joining them emotionally
on their journeys and investing in their
outcomes. We become involved in the
plot and seek resolutions to the dilemmas
that present themselves as developments
unfold.
These high engagement levels mean that
storytelling with information has a high
level of impact; when we’re emotionally
invested we’re more likely to act on
what we’ve heard. When communicating
insights, this is crucial. As market
researchers, we complete research to
discover insights and strategies to help
our clients make better decisions. So, for
your story to have the happy ending you’re
after as a researcher, you need to motivate
audiences to respond.
So far, so good. But in MRX lots of us have
been on storytelling courses or read the
books about storytelling in business and
yet our stories often fail to land in the way
we desire. With this in mind, at IIeX Europe
in 2018, Keen as Mustard ran a session on
storytelling to step back and get guidance
from people outside the industry – and to
get practical advice from one video expert
within the industry. The idea was to get
guidance to turn our stories from ‘meh!’
into ‘marvellous!’.
This white paper is a summary of what
we learned.
FORWARD5
Being from a film, digital and immersive
agency, Matt and James are master
storytellers, with expert knowledge about
engaging audiences. Their presentation
focused on what we can learn from
world-famous story-telling masters and
how we can apply these learnings to the
stories we tell in MRX.
Engaging with your audience is always
easier when you think of your audience as
people with feelings, instead of numbers.
Here are James and Matt’s ways to pique
people’s emotions, with a little help from
some of the greats:
SURPRISE YOUR AUDIENCE
BUT DO IT CLEVERLY
Alfred Hitchcock
Audiences love surprises, but it’s important
that you structure them correctly so that
audiences feel the tension. As Alfred
Hitchcock said, ‘There is no terror in the
bang, only in the anticipation of it.’ Consider
when you reveal certain information so that
it has maximum impact when it comes out.
Always keep your audience one-step ahead
of your characters - by doing this they then
become involved and once they’re involved
they won’t be able to look away.
DON’T FORGET TO TELL
YOUR OWN STORY
Alfred Hitchcock
No one wants to hear your own personal
life story in detail, but it’s important to make
sure your voice is heard. Small amounts
of personalisation will make the audience
connect with your story, because they’ll see
the relevance of your content. Hitchcock did
this by literally putting himself into his stories,
and by doing this, he effectively branded
himself.
TIPS FROM THE MASTERSJames Mansell and Matt Cole, The Moment
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TRANSFORM THE EXPECTED
INTO THE UNEXPECTED
Stanley Kubrick
Stanley Kubrick once said, ‘I literally go into
bookstores, close my eyes and take things
off the shelf. If I don’t like the book after a bit,
I don’t finish it, but I like to be surprised.’ Put
the audience on their toes - maintain their
interest by challenging their assumptions
and stir a reaction from them. Subvert
exactly what the audience is expecting - as
soon as they experience something they
didn’t expect you have them in the palm of
your hand to go in any direction you choose.
MAKE THE
AUDIENCE CARE
Andrew Stanton
Find the empathy in whatever you’re
communicating. As Andrew Stanton said,
‘The greatest story commandment is make
me care.’ We tell stories to inspire a reaction
from the audience and nothing is more
important to inspire this response than to
make them emotionally invest. If they care
about what you’re saying they have more
motivation to spend time acting upon it and
your information is therefore more actionable.
Your audiences are people and they want to
be treated like this.
BUILD THE CANVAS BEFORE
YOU PAINT YOUR PICTURE
J.K Rowling
‘I plan a lot and usually in table form.’ This
is an important acknowledgement from
Harry Potter author J.K Rowling. It may feel
easier to just jump straight into the story,
but planning is crucial. Deciding what you
want to say before you say it means you
can figure out the best structure for your
information. This will help your story to be
easily digestible for your audience.
Moreover, if certain formats work for you
and you have a recognisable and reliable
structure and tone already established, don’t
be afraid to use what you know. Within
these structures there is plenty of room
to try something new. So, within your pre-
determined structures, go crazy.
THE POWER OF AUTHENTICITY
Ernest Hemingway
In the words of Ernest Hemingway, ‘There
is nothing to writing. You simply sit down at
a typewriter and bleed.’ Truth and passion
resonate with your audience. Using real life
examples allows your audience to relate
to your content, so maintain their interest
with grounding examples that reflect reality.
Hemingway knew that if he was honest
and true, the audience would know and he
wouldn’t have to prove this in his writing.
Make sure your audience know you’re being
true with your work.
MAKE YOUR AUDIENCE REALISE
THE STORY IS ABOUT THEM
Joseph Conrad
Joseph Conrad famously said, ‘Our lives
evoke our character and you find out more
about yourself as you go on.’ Your audience
needs to recognise the story’s relevance to
their lives to be encouraged to take actions
based around it. Involve the audience in
your story and make them realise that they
need the information you’re giving them.
As soon as they realise the story is about
them, it then becomes important, and if it’s
important, it’ll never be forgotten.
IF THE RIGHT LANGUAGE
DOESN’T EXIST, INVENT IT
William Shakespeare
It’s easy to feel restricted by language when
you’re trying to portray a specific point.
So, if the right words don’t exist, why not
make them up? Shakespeare added 1700
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words to the English language including
‘amazement’, so although you may not
be one of the greatest playwrights of all
time, it’s still important to be fluid with your
language so that you’re not confined by
words that don’t express what you mean.
PACE AND TIMING
Shigeru Miyamoto
When creating ideas, take your time. In the
heat of the moment it’s easy to get started
on ideas that you think are brilliant, but
they may not seem that great once the
initial excitement has worn off. So, rather
than rushing into things, prepare to let
ideas develop over time so you can gain a
rounded judgement on them. As Shigeru
Miyamoto once said, ‘A delayed game
is eventually good, but a rushed game is
forever bad’.
REMEMBER YOUR CO-STORYTELLERS
Stephen Spielberg
Stephen Spielberg said that ‘filmmaking is
all about appreciating the talents of the
people you surround yourself with and
knowing you could never have made any of
these films by yourself.’
You don’t have to work alone when
telling stories – in fact, the reality is that
collaboration often leads to positive results
for creative processes. So, surround yourself
with talented people who will help you in
order to get the best results.
Following this advice will help you engage
with your audience as people. Using
surprises, being authentic and inputting
yourself and your audience into the story will
grab their attention and encourage
them to care, increasing the likelihood that
they will take actions based on what you’ve
told them.
Likewise, using a planned structure and
managing your pace and time helps your
audience navigate your content effectively,
helping them to understand it and digest it.
However, being coherent doesn’t necessarily
mean you have to be boring. Think inside
the box and experiment within a defined
structure and be fluid with language rather
than confined by it.
HOW TO USE STORYTELLING TO CRAFT EXPERIENCES THAT ENGAGEAnna Dahlstrom, UX FIKA
As an experienced User Experience
Designer and founder of UX school,
UX Fika, Anna Dahlstrom is a skilled
storyteller, using narratives to understand
experiences of using products and
services. Anna explained that although
data has the ability to tell us everything,
it also has the ability to tell us nothing
at all. This is why it needs to be
contextualised and this context can be
provided through a story.
Anna used one of the oldest storytellers of
them all, Aristotle, to help portray her point.
According to Aristotle’s essay ‘Poetics’, there
are seven elements of good storytelling.
These are: character, plot, idea, speech,
décor, chorus and spectacle. Character,
plot and décor can especially be applied to
customer experience to ensure that those on
the journey are engaged along the way.
PLOT
Defining and visualising the plot is an often
overlooked step. Although there can be
multiple variations, a conventional plot
contains three acts. This structure helps the
audience receive information in a logical
way; a problem will arise in the first act, there
will be an attempt to solve it in the second,
and there will be a climax and resolution
offered in the third.
It’s important to map out your users’
experience to decipher how their actions
span across these acts. The experience of
buying a product or service, for example,
can be mapped out according to this. The
user will become aware of your product (act
1), consider their options (act 2) and decide
to take action/no action (act 3).
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We create stories with the hope that they will
inspire people to feel a certain way and take
actions based on these inspired emotions.
Actions and events change our perceptions
of people and the world, so it’s important
to reveal information at the right time, to
influence the responses you want from
people. An example of this is the Disney
Pixar film, Finding Nemo. When the film
makers showed the death of Nemo’s mother
towards the end of the film, audiences felt
hostile towards Marlin, Nemo’s father, but
moving this event to the start of the film
allowed the audience to sympathise with
him, consequently making him more likeable.
CHARACTER
When thinking about characters, we
traditionally think of the people involved in a
story. However, when looking at a customer
experience, such as a purchasing journey,
discussing the characters means looking at
the devices and products that play a role in
the process, as well as the brand and real
people. Like the characters in a story, these
technical elements mould the plot by their
presence and use at certain points along the
way. So, it’s important to understand which
parts of the story involve which devices
and what roles they play. Stories need to
be compatible across multiple devices, so
consider the mediums that users may use to
engage with your narrative. Moreover, with
advances in AI, devices are becoming even
more prevalent characters in our lives with
increasingly human characteristics.
So, when we think of characters we need to
be identifying all the elements that contribute
to an experience of a story, analysing the
roles they play and when and where they do
this. How we use the characters along the
journey can vastly impact the characters.
DÉCOR
After structure and character comes the
‘décor’, where you should define and
design the environment in which the story
and experience takes place. Despite
mapping, and weaving a red thread
throughout the narrative, it’s still difficult to
control the journey that a user experiences
when there are many characters involved.
Often many stories happen simultaneously.
Linear experiences are unusual these
days; users take increasingly varied paths
to get from A to B, with Google, search
engines and social media providing
different routes and even more convoluted
paths in user experience. So, in order to
deliver a narrated experience, you need to
understand how the set fits together and
to present it so its memorable. Mapping is
more important than ever.
Although all seven elements of Aristotle’s
‘poetics’ form a solid basis for effective
storytelling, plot, character and décor are
especially important for understanding and
defining how best to engage an audience
on a customer experience journey. They
are also the most relevant to us as market
researchers when communicating insights.
Use plot to inspire specific reactions
at certain times to create emotional
involvement towards your topic; use
characters to make the most of the elements
involved in both the story directly and the
elements used to tell it; and décor to find
a wider setting appropriate for your story -
make sure it’s mapped out and fits together
so your story makes sense. These points
will help you communicate effectively,
giving your story the happy ending you
were hoping for by engaging and ultimately
inspiring your audience.
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MAKE IT STICK: VIDEO STORYTELLING FOR INSIGHT IMPACT Zoe Dowling, FocusVision
Finally, we heard from Zoe Dowling, the lead
research strategist at FocusVision. Zoe has
vast experience in using stories to deliver
actionable insights to clients. In particular,
she is experienced with storytelling using
video, a communication method that has
become increasingly popular within the
insights industry in recent years because it
adds to the richness and impact of research.
Zoe pointed out that stories are enhanced by
using a variety of types of ‘small’ data which
create relatable examples that the audience
recognises and empathises with. Big data,
on the other hand, can feel unapproachable
and abstract. There are multiple ways of
integrating small data in presentations,
including text and images, but video is
really powerful and effective for this. Just as
James and Matt encouraged authenticity
and the involvement of both storyteller and
the audience to make stories more relatable,
when used well, video can help researchers
to humanise the data. It allows audiences
to make strong emotional connections with
research findings and makes our insights
more actionable. As Dr Brené Brown said,
‘Stories are just data with a soul.’
Stories must be authentic, and video is
a fantastic way to covey the truth when
communicating. Instead of struggling to
bring a respondent to life with language and
images, video allows presenters to bring
their subjects into the room with them, so
audiences can see, hear and understand
the data for themselves first hand. This
creates a ‘sticky’ memory that grounds
your presentation with solid evidence. It’s
important to be clear that it does not need
to be polished. A gritty home video is the
ultimate authentic portrayal of the consumer
in their natural habitat, which also produces
many extra levels of information about them,
in addition to the core research question.
What are they wearing? What are their
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homes like? How do they speak? All this
adds to the human nuance and insight.
There are certain things to consider to
ensure you’re using video in your stories
properly. Zoe ended by giving some useful
tips to consider:
• Consider your story’s structure. This
could simply be a beginning, middle
and end, or a three act structure as
suggested by Anna, but likewise could
take on a variety of different paths.
• Think about how video fits within the
overarching story.
• Consider the balance between video
and the rest of the story. Is it better to
use multiple short video clips or just one
long one? Remember, if it’s too long the
audience will lose concentration – there is
a sharp drop off rate after 2 minutes.
• If the video is intended to be shareable,
make sure it is contextualised and stands
alone without the need for explanation.
So, when used correctly and thoughtfully,
video provides breakthrough moments.
When the video delivers the right
combination of engagement with imagination
and emotion, you will communicate with
the audience in a way that is authentic,
easily digestible and empathetic through an
innovative connection.
STORYTELLING IN MRX.
As market researchers, our goal is to create actionable insights
for clients. Communicating research findings through stories
is a great way to make sure they understand and relate to the
information you give them, so it can be used effectively. As we
have seen, engaging your audience is the key to this and can
be achieved in a number of ways. Ultimately, however, using
relevant, easily digestible information in formats that entertain
is key. As researchers, we often deal with large amounts of data
that can be confusing. So, reduce the clutter, input small data
and carefully curate a plot and experience that captivates your
audience, cultivating what could be a mess of numbers and
figures into bitesize chunks ready for consumption.
MUSTARDMARKETING.COM
Lucy Davison
WEARETHEMOMENT.COM
James Mansell & Matt Cole
UXFIKA.CO
Anna Dahlstrom
FOCUSVISION.COM
Zoe Dowling
BROUGHTTO YOU BY